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It has been an ugly start to the season for Maeda, but given the root of his struggles, there's good reason to believe he’ll turn things around. No one should be giving up on Maeda just yet. If he can correct his command issues, he’ll resemble the pitcher who stabilized the Dodgers rotation amidst all its injuries a season ago while turning in a top-25 fantasy season. Anyhow, according to the Baseball-Reference Play IndexMaeda is the first pitcher since Tommy Milone in 2011 to homer in his MLB debut and just the 11th since 1913, which is the back end of searchable data. "When Kenta has missed, the hitters have been there," Baldelli said ruefully of a pitcher who has not resembled the Cy Young runner-up of a year ago. Defrocked closer Alex Colome bounced a 95-mph cutter off the bill of Josh Naylor's helmet, then walked three hitters to force in a run.
He had two home runs in Japan, and he won a steak dinner from Roberts with a home run during batting practice. Maeda showed some early jitters, but the Padres could not capitalize. He hung a first-inning curveball to former Dodger Matt Kemp. Crawford caught the ball on the warning track. While Maeda warmed up, Ellis said “you could tell he was anxious, excited.” The atmosphere at Petco Park was hardly raucous.
Hiroshima Toyo Carp
Add in the middle of the zone, where every hitter crushes basically everything, and the difference becomes even more stark. This season 29.4% of Maeda’s pitches have been in the zone at the belt or higher. In his banner rookie campaign, he was in those two hitter-friendly parts of the zone on 19.6% of his pitches. Five of the seven of the homers Maeda has allowed this season have been either at the belt or higher in the strike zone. From his overall pitch heatmap, we can observe the move up and back toward the middle of the plate this season from last year. Innings, and six complete games with two shutouts.
"The way we've played these games, we've had our guts ripped out over and over again, is what I said." Notice all the blues, pinks and purples at the bottom of the strike zone? We can also see that Maeda has induced the sort of exit velocities a pitcher likes to see when he has kept the ball down. Maeda again began 2019 in the Dodgers starting rotation before transitioning to the bullpen at the end of the season. He made 26 starts , finishing with a 10–8 record and 4.04 ERA with 169 strikeouts. Again, there are a few hard-hit balls among his low strikes, but the majority of those will be put in play on the ground.
Maeda went deep in Japanese game show
He also became the youngest pitcher in Japanese baseball history to achieve the pitching Triple Crown in the same year. He won the Sawamura Award for the second time in 2015. More than half of the balls hitters have put in play against Maeda have been in the air, and more than one-fifth of those have turned into souvenirs. Now, to be fair, a 22.6% HR/FB ratio is unsustainable, even for the most homer-friendly pitcher in the league.
But really, Baldelli had already pretty much emptied the bench, using Nick Gordon as a defensive sub, Gilberto Celestino as a pinch runner, and Willians Astudillo as a pinch hitter, all in the ninth. I guess Maeda is probably faster than Ryan Jeffers. During the spring, Maeda often mentioned his excitement about getting the chance to hit.
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Clayton Kershaw thrust his arms skyward and howled. The Padres are the first team in history to be shut out of its first three games. When he has driven the ball down and below the zone, he has produced good results. Thanks to Statcast, we can highlight plate appearance results by location. Here’s what Maeda’s chart looks like this season.
MLB Scores Yesterday's MLB Games, Scores from any date in Major League history, MLB Probable Pitchers, Baseball-Reference Stream Finder, ... It's also available for football, basketball and hockey. Martinez over Justin Turner The Dodgers over the weekend signed J.D. Martinez to be their designated hitter, and saw franchise stalwart Justin Turner leave for a similar role with the Red Sox. We look at the choice of Martinez over Turner, with was surprising in how vcal the Dodgers were in wanting to bring Turner back to Los Angeles. It might be tough to see the light at the end of the tunnel right now, but Baldelli wanted to make sure his team knows that he recognizes the toll this stretch has taken on them.
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Maeda was selected out of PL Gakuen Senior High School by the Hiroshima Toyo Carp of Japan's 2006 NPB Draft . He played in 2007 for the Carp's secondary team, before being called up to the NPB team in 2008. In his rookie season of 2008, Maeda posted a 9–2 win–loss record with a 3.20 earned run average in 19 games . In 2009, he was 8–14 with a 3.36 ERA in 29 starts. In 2010, he performed even better with a 15–8 record, a 2.21 ERA, and 174 strikeouts in 28 starts.
Tyler Duffey surrendered a home run to baseball nobody Eric Haase in the seventh. Taylor Rogers didn’t get past the first batter of the ninth, although that conveniently means he couldn’t blow the save. That honor went to the ACE, Alex Colome, since Rogers left with an injury. Maybe he’s faking it so they can’t trade him this week? Colome let Robbie Grossman hit a two-run homer to tie it up. Because ahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...
Over the league-wide home-run surge of the last two seasons, just two pitchers—Jaime Garcia and Francisco Liriano—put up an HR/FB ratio higher than 18%. Maeda could be terrible the rest of the season, and his HR/FB ratio would still likely fall a few percentage points. The saucy, uni-testicular catcher continued his red-hot return. In the second inning he doubled in Donaldson.
The point of this team meeting, then, was that Baldelli understands how demoralizing it is for his players to be in so many close games but fall just short, time after time. Heck, Cruz is legging out infield hits and triples at age 40. The team set a franchise record with 27 scoreless innings to start a season. In his big league debut, Maeda scattered five hits and struck out four over six innings. Puig hit the season’s second home run, in the eighth inning. Maeda has inside the upper third of the strike zone on 11.9% of his pitches this season.
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