Prince Fielder's Tough World Series

When Alex Rodriguez struggled during his Yankee postseason, the baseball world responded with an A-Rod doomsday scenario. But what we can see as Buster Posey, Miguel Cabrera, and Prince Fielder have struggled to varying degrees, one of things we all correctly acknowledge is that pitchers clearly bear down on a team's top hitters.

In the first three games of this World Series, looking at the 3-4 batters for each of these teams, Pablo Sandoval has been the outlier. Sandoval is 7-for-11 (.636) with three homers and four RBI. He has more hits, homers and RBI than the other three batters combined: Posey is 3-for-11 with one RBI, Cabrera is 2-for-9 with one RBI, and Fielder is 1-for-10 with no RBI.

One set of Giants who I don't believe has gotten enough credit are the Giants' advance scouting group. Not only have they done an outstanding job in helping their pitchers point out weaknesses of the Tigers batters, but they must be commended in guiding the San Francisco defense in positioning them for the hard hit balls that the Tigers batters have hit.

Let's look at how the Giants have pitched to Fielder.

The first thing you can see is that the Giants have worked Fielder from the middle of the plate outward.

Of the 30 pitches Fielder has seen, only six have been on the inner-half of the plate. Fielder has swung at three of those pitches and missed on two of them. During the regular season, on pitches on the inner-half of the plate, Fielder his .276 with 12 homers and had an OPS .908

This is not to say, that Fielder wasn't dangerous on pitches on the outer-half of the plate during the regular season when he hit .330 with 18 homers and an OPS of .952.

He's hit .111 on those outer-half pitches in the World Series going 1-9 with a single and two whiffs. 

So what's the difference?

Fielder has clearly been anxious (understandably) this Series and he's chasing, and to their credit the Giants pitchers are feeding into it.

Fielder has seen 20 pitches out of the strike zone. He has swung at nine of them and he is 0-7 chasing those pitches, striking out twice. In the Series, Fielder has seen only one pitch in the black and none in the corner.

This continues Fielder's regular season tendency of swinging at pitches low and away out of the zone

Just to make Fielder's batting life more of a living hell, of the 30 pitches Fielder has seen: 

• 14 have been fastballs
• 5 sliders
• 4 Cutters
• 4 Change-ups
• 3 Curves

So, my bottom line is: be impressed with the Giants scouts, but be even more impressed with the Giants pitchers for executing a very effective game plan.

Cain is Able: Gets it done on the Hill and at the Dish

The San Fransisco Giants completed a three game run against the defending champion St. Louis Cardinals to punch their ticket to the World Series, and they did it on the back of their pitching staff. Zito and Vogelsong spun two gems to force a game seven, and Matt Cain took over the rest. 

Let's do an inning by inning breakdown of how Cain stiffled the Cards.

1st INNING

Cain struck out Jon Jay swinging with a nasty 2-seamer at the letters. He gave up a bloop single to Beltran, but managed to strand him in scoring position with two weak fly balls.

2nd INNING

The second was a little shakier for Cain, as he allowed runners to get to second and third with two outs before getting Lohse to lineout on a great leaping catch by Brandon Crawford. Cain also showed off his skill at the plate in the bottom half, as he knocked a hanging slider back up the middle for an RBI single to put the Giants up 2-0.

3rd INNING

After allowing a leadoff single to Jay, Cain settled in and got three straight outs to retire the side. To this point in the game, Cain had  only struck out two batters, inducing five fly balls and only two ground balls while walking one. Let's take a look at his pitch location through the first three innings.

Cain's Pitch Locations through 3 innings of NCLS Game 7

Coupling this with the contact rate of hitters, it is easy to see that his command of his pitches was excellent.

Contact rate versus Cain through 3 innings of NLCS game 7As you can see, the spots that Cain was hitting most frequently were a virtual dead zone for Cardinals hitters through the first half of his outing. Even though Cain wasn't striking out hitters at a high rate, he maintained good control of all of his pitches and continued to induce outs.

4th INNING

Cain gave up a leadoff single before retiring three straight via fly out, strikeout, and ground out respectively. At this point, the game had gotten completely out of hand, with the Giants leading 7-0, it was Cain's job to get outs. When this happens, a pitcher can begin to focus on pounding the strikezone, attacking hitters, and pitching to contact. 

5th INNING

Cain retired the side in order, forcing a ground out, a lineout, and a fly out. One important thing to notice during this outing is the amount of line drive outs to this point in the game: three; any one of those could have landed for a hit early and completely changed the dynamic of the game, but every pitcher knows how to appreciate a hard hit ball right at a fielder.

6th INNING

After hitting the first batter and allowing yet another line drive out at the second baseman, Cain gave up a seeing-eye single through the left side of the infield. He settled down to punch out David Freese for his last batter of the day.

Cain's pitch location from the 4th to the 6th inning

As you can see, Cain's location shifted more towards the middle of the plate. Usually this is asking for trouble for a pitcher, but as mentioned previously, Cain had been given a big lead, and his excellent compliment of pitches led to a very successful outing and a trip to the World Series. This will be the Giants' second trip in the past three years, and they will ride the success of their starting pitchers as far as it will take them.

Zito Paints Corners, Proves Us Wrong

Barry Zito gets hit hard by righty batters. The Cardinals' righty-heavy lineup mauls lefty pitching. Those facts set up a grim scenario for Zito last night as he sought to keep San Francisco alive in Game 5 of the NLCS. So, naturally, he worked deep into the eighth inning with nary a run allowed. Wait, what?

Zito tossed 7.2 scoreless innings, striking out six Cardinals hitters and walking none unintentionally. The lefty showed a marksman's touch, throwing 73 of 111 pitches (not including the intentional walk to Pete Kozma) for strikes. Zito threw quality strikes, as his heat map from last night attests:

Zito's pitch location against St. Louis in Game 5

Zito left just 18% of his pitches over the horizontal middle of the strike zone, compared to the 24% average for left-handed starting pitchers. Avoiding that spot is crucial, as Zito (.566 slugging percentage allowed on middle pitches) gets crushed when he catches too much of the plate.

Kudos, Barry Zito, for displaying ace-like control and command, and for reminding us why October baseball is magical, mystifying and humbling.