Quote:
Originally Posted by raybec 4
He'll never put together a consistent season unless he can get out of his own head.
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Ah, the Lance Lynn Memorial Headcase Argument for people unwilling to learn about a pitcher's arsenal.
This is just so goddamn lazy. No, Carlos Martinez is not now and has not ever been a headcase. You know what he was? A guy that really really struggled to get the ball to the glove side of the plate without telegraphing it. That's it.
For the last 2 seasons he's struggled to get the ball away from righties without giving it away. Now that's not a big deal against RH hitters really - his stuff allows him to kill righties without really needing to tunnel a pitch glove-side. But where it hurt him badly was against lefties - he needed to be able to get in their kitchen to keep them honest and he just couldn't do it. With his sinker moving away and his 4-seamer needing to deviate from its usual path to get there, pitches inside to lefties were easy to identify. So depending on the hitter, they could either sit on the inside pitch and kill it when he telegraphed it or they could
spit on the inside pitch, eliminate that zone and look to drive pitches to the opposite field when Carlos went away. That's how they were able to deal with a changeup that should have otherwise baffled lefthanded hitters, IMO.
Consequently, just like Lynn before him, he often came apart in innings that featured lefties heavily (Lynn's problem was also lefties but he never developed a proper counter). So what changed? No - he didn't get more mentally tough 3 seasons after his best friend died. He picked up a damn cutter.
That cutter is an equalizer. It moves at virtually the same velocity as his sinker and has the same
vertical movement as his sinker. For 90% of its path to home plate, the thing looks like his sinker. Then it goes the
opposite direction; right at the hands of lefties and right off the barrel of righties. It makes him a TON harder to hit. Now they not only have trouble hitting that pitch, but they have trouble identifying it and it makes them unable to sit either way so it makes the sinker more effective as well. It also makes him less reliant on the 4-seamer so he can deploy it more judiciously and to greater impact.
Carlos Martinez is no more mentally tough than he's ever been. And being mentally tough wasn't his problem. His problem was first and foremost a simple gap in his stuff. He had a large spot in the strike zone he couldn't get to without telegraphing it. He doesn't have that spot anymore.
Now he's not quite this good; there's been a little bit of luck buried in his performance to this point and sooner or later hitters will adjust to the cutter and he'll stop being able to wreck lefties with it like he has. But he isn't pitching well right now because he's suddenly decided that he shouldn't be a wuss anymore. The guy didn't pitch his way out of the DR to get a big deal with Boston only to see it voided by MLB and get suspended, work his way into a better deal with STL, battle his way to the bigs, make 100 major league starts, pitch in the WS, lose his best friend and THEN decide to grow up.