Kelvin Herrera's contract makes him a lock for a second season even though the ratings and reviews for his pilot have been dismal.
Give him credit for trying to hook an audience before the end of Season 1.
With a four-up-four-down effort on Wednesday, Herrera has strung together four scoreless outings. Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down with the applause. Herrera's posted four consecutive zeroes a couple times even during his massive midsummer issues, and he's only managed to lower his ERA from 6.90 to 6.20 with this stretch. There's no saving this year from "disaster" status.
The wrinkle here is that he's reintroduced the cutter this month, and in heavier portions. Wednesday's appearance was the first time he'd thrown more cutters than any other pitch since April:
I wrote about how the cutter appeared to be the most effective pitch for the post-foot-injury Herrera back in April, but then a different issue (back stiffness) appeared to mess with his entire approach. Whether he was trying to get his old power back or just didn't trust his ability to spin pitches, Herrera shelved his cutter over June, July and August, throwing a total of two over a three-month period.
Now here he is Wednesday night, throwing six of them and getting four whiffs, including three for strike three.
It's not so simple as cutters = success. In his outing before the scoreless streak, he only threw one pitch. It was a cutter to Kyle Lewis, and it ended up over the center field wall.
Also, the cutter he used to strike out Jordan Luplow with his final pitch was a up-and-in mistake that Luplow almost ran into reading the spin, and he couldn't check up.
He also prefers to limit his cutter usage to righties, starting it on the outer half and fading off the plate, like this one to Oscar Mercado:
Herrera didn't use it against lefties even earlier in the season, which made his multiple cutters to Carlos Santana in the eighth inning on Wednesday notable. He missed down and in with what precedent said would be his only effort, but when he threw a more tempting cutter two pitches later, Santana couldn't hold up.
That was only Herrera's 13th strikeout of a left-handed batter in 90 plate appearances (14.4 percent). He's issued 10 walks, and although five of those are intentional, that still points to the same issue that Herrera hasn't had much of a way to attack unfavorable matchups with any confidence.
The lefty issue is a sidebar to his overall issues retiring batters of any kind, but perhaps confidence in one area indicates confidence in others. Unless Herrera returns from the offseason fully free of foot and back issues, he'll probably need that cutter to extend his second life as a reliever. And given how much he's spent battling his body the last two years, it's probably a good idea to hone that cutter regardless.
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Count Mike Petriello as the latest to treat Guaranteed Rate Field with new eyes:
