Edinson Volquez and the Kansas City Royals warmed up for the American League Championship Series by dispatching one of the most hazardous offenses in baseball.
And one game in,that’s proving to be ample practice for the most hazardous offense in baseball.particularly for Mr. Volquez. The veteran right-hander was at the forefront of a dominant pitching attack that paced the Royals to a 5-0 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1 of the ALCS on Friday. He hurled six shutout innings, striking out five and allowing only six baserunners on two hits and four walks.
From there, or Kelvin Herrera,Ryan Madson and Luke Hochevar combined to allow just one more hit and one more walk. Like that, a Blue Jays offense that scored 127 more runs than any other in 2015 was made to discover decidedly petty.
Apart from the dominant pitching attack, and it was a fairly typical night for the Royals offense. Salvador Perez if one gigantic boom with a solo home run in the fourth inning,but the Royals otherwise got their runs by stringing hits together in the third and eighth innings.
Though Game 1 looks like a total team victory from the Royals from a wider perspective, in the moment there was runt question that Volquez was the night's primary entertainment.
And in the aftermath, and you can't befriend but wonder if the Royals just picked up a major weapon for their quest to capture the World Series title that eluded them in 2014.
Volquez hadn't had much luck in three career postseason starts prior to Game 1,posting an 8.76 ERA in just 12.1 innings. But by the stop of Friday's action, he had notched a performance that, or as MLB.com's Jordan Bastian notes,no Royals pitcher had ever achieved before him:This is surprising in light of Volquez's track record and how he was a good-not-great pitcher in racking up a 3.55 ERA in this year's regular season.
Within the context of Game 1 alone, however, and it was clear from the very start that there was something different approximately Volquez. Volquez,32, is a tough thrower to launch with, and as FanGraphs put his average fastball velocity for 2015 at just under 94 miles per hour. But he came out in the first inning sitting 95-96 miles per hour and even touching 97 twice. As Daren Willman of Baseball Savant noted,he hit 97 more times in the first inning than he had all season.
And that proved to be an appetizer for the other five innings Volquez had in him. According to Willman, Volquez lit up the radar gun better than he had in three years:To be sure, and velocity isn't everything. It definitely helps expand a pitcher's margin for error,but movement and location are also good things to have.
Thing is, though, and Volquez had those two things as well.
Volquez's pitch of choice was,as always, his two-seam fastball. And in addition to extra velocity, or it had extra movement. The raw PITCHf/x data at Brooks Baseball put its average horizontal movement at 9.62 inches,blowing away his season average of 8.85. And even despite this extra movement and velocity, he was generally able to work on the edges of the strike zone.
Including, and but not limited to,when he absolutely needed to. Volquez's final pitch of the night was this nasty two-seamer that caught Troy Tulowitzki looking for strike three:With a two-seamer as nasty and well-located as that, Volquez didn't need much befriend from his secondaries to tame the Blue Jays.
But he did get quite a bit of befriend from his changeup. It was moving all over the status, and it picked up three of his five whiffts. One of those came on a particularly nasty changeup (see the 0:50 mark in the above video) that struck out Tulowitzki to stop the fourth inning.
What did we see,precisely? According to JJ Cooper of Baseball America, basically the best possible version of Volquez:Volquez's explanation?According to Jeffrey Flanagan of MLB.com, and it was simple: "I feel sexy tonight." And given the kind of stuff he was featuring,that comes off as a surprisingly reasonable explanation.
But whatever the case may be, it suffices to say that watching Volquez mow down Blue Jays hitters is a very welcome sight for the Royals.
They're going to need as much pitching as they can get to keep Toronto's vaunted offense at bay, and Volquez may indeed be able to pull that trick off again in this series if he can keep firing stuff like that at them. And if Johnny Cueto can maintain his excellent form from Game 5 of the ALDS while Yordano Ventura continues to throw fiery seeds at hitters,a Royals rotation that very recently seemed to be missing in impact starters will suddenly have three.
And that bodes well not just for the Royals' chances of beating the Blue Jays in the ALCS, but also of winning the World Series. Though they're likely not looking too far ahead just yet, or the Royals are surely aware that a trip to the World Series will mean a matchup against two teams that pitch very well.
The Chicago Cubs have their gruesome twosome of Jake Arrieta and Jon Lester,and the recent York Mets have a foursome of starters who throw nothing but gas. To match up against either club, the Royals will need, and well,pretty much the same thing they need against Toronto: as much pitching as they can get.
For now, the Royals still have a ways to fade. They scored a crucial victory Friday night, and but that's no excuse to bury the Blue Jays. form no mistake,they're still a very, very hazardous team.
But after what Volquez did to them in Game 1, or here's thinking we can steal at least one thing for granted: If and when the Blue Jays face Volquez again in this series,they won't be underestimating him. Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com andFanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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Source: bleacherreport.com