Back on April 26, White Sox rookie reliever Jordan Leasure had a high-leverage appearance that did not go well.
Summoned in the middle of the seventh to help out a fire that had started on Deivi García, Leasure walked the first two hitters he saw with eight straight balls, pushing home a run. He recovered to induce an inning-ending groundout, and the Sox offense kept adding to the point that it was just a footnote in an eventual 9-4 win. But the 25-year-old did not regard it happily and resolved to apply Reliever Memory™️ to the whole affair.
"I kind of washed those first nine pitches from my memory," Leasure said two days later when he recorded his first career save. "I don’t think about it anymore, just move on."
Hmm. Did you notice that part where he remembered how many consecutive balls he threw, including the detail about going 1-0 to the third hitter he faced?
"The outing I did bad? I remember every pitch," Leasure said Friday.
Which makes the level of consciousness Leasure reached in wriggling out of a bases loaded, nobody out jam in the seventh inning on Friday all the more notable. Descriptions of it require some unpacking.
Some symptoms Leasure described certainly are in line with someone who experienced a teensy-weensy case of dissociation.
"I can't even tell what pitches I threw to who, I don't even remember," Leasure said. "Whatever [Martín Maldonado] called, I was throwing it. Right now I can't even tell you what sequence I threw to which hitter."
Manager Pedro Grifol described his ideal balance as an 80-20 split in pitch calling responsibility in favor of the catcher, though agreement in the organization on this is far from universal, since a wave of Sox pitchers started calling their own games via PitchCom last season.
"Because that means the work before the game was really good and there’s a lot of trust there," said Grifol, a former catcher himself. "I don’t like it either way, 100 percent. I don’t like pitchers that have the transmitter and they’re calling their own pitches, for many reasons. It could be we’re trying to unintentionally intentionally walk somebody, and they want to get them out. We’re trying to maybe go strike to ball in a 3-2 count because we have an open base, and they want to get the guy out. So the communication is not really great when the pitcher’s doing it 100 percent of the time, and when the catcher’s doing it 100 percent of the time."
This specific instance of a rookie pitcher in one of the tightest spots of his brief major league tenure, and a 37-year-old catcher whose feel for pitch calling and game management is his raison d'etre on the Sox roster, is good example of where you would anticipate the balance swinging dramatically to one side.
But while it might be hindsight, a major component of the dynamic seemed to be Leasure being a level of locked in that made connecting to other humans unneccessarily labor-intensive. Also the bases being loaded ironically further encouraged Leasure to detach from earthly concerns, because any considerations of controlling the running game went out the window.
"I think I get so focused on each pitch that the previous one, I forget about," Leasure said. "Before you know it, there's two strikeouts and there's one pitch left to get. It kind of flew by, which can be a good thing. If I was in a different position or if I was a starter, it probably wouldn't be good. But the position I am in now, I can take advantage."
On the side of town where Mark Buehrle used to pitch, a long explanation of the benefits of a pitcher getting to the point where they're just executing whatever is called is probably not required. But late-inning relievers specifically swap out having to think about how to sequence against hitters over multiple at-bats for the pressure of high-leverage, where every hanger and missed spot can be game-changing.
For that, the level of detachment Leasure idealizes seems geared for his work environment, and speaks to why relievers can sometimes feel a little flummoxed when the moment around them doesn't trigger this level of concentration.
"Not even feel anything," Leasure said when asked what he wants to think about in those moments. "Whatever my body is doing, I don't feel it. I'm just feeling the ball come off my fingers. My focus is just looking wherever I want to throw the ball. If it ends up there, great. If not, whatever. It doesn't happen every time. But I don't feel my body, I'm just feeling the ball and my fingers and then the rest of me."
Now, when things are going wrong, specific thoughts about body position and imperfections in motion tend to creep in a little bit more. Leasure considers himself pretty self-aware in regards to how his body is moving, but wants those thoughts relegated to the realm of catch play, side sessions and other moments built for tinkering.
There were some inefficiencies in Leasure's arm path earlier in the season that he felt led to some of the 94 mph readings on the radar gun. His plus extension and the unique approach angle his arm slot makes his fastball play just as much as a couple miles of velocity, but that there's meat on the bone as far as his best heater would serve to explain why Leasure is only sporting a 16.7 percent strikeout rate so far -- less than half of what he managed in Triple-A last season.
"I feel like there's more coming," Leasure said. "It's some mechanical stuff I've been working on with Ethan [Katz], some arm-path stuff that I've gotten away from me from last year. As I've started to clean that up, I've seen the velo jump a little bit more."
It obviously hasn't hampered Leasure too much, as a four-out save follow-up on Friday night lowered his ERA to 2.20 on the season despite pitching in increasingly tight spots. And after all, when the moment really gets big, instead of reaching back for more, he can always just black out.
"It probably helps," Leasure said with a smile.
