Breaking Down Fernando's First Appearance
- Thread starter Darnell's Son
- Start date
This. All day. ALL DAY.
And he threw two extremely hittable pitches - one that resulted in Cano's tater, and the other that should have resulted in a Cano tater on the previous pitch. The at-bat was two successful pitches followed by a comedy of errors.
A fair amount. For starters, it's a reasonable presumption that the waste pitch on 0-2 was agreed upon in Leon's mound visit, as Leon didn't put any signs down. Throwing a ball 50 yards outside to a great hitter is a pretty miserable strategy, but at least the pitch wasn't hittable.
The fastball that Cano fouled off was probably supposed to be on the corner, but Abad put it on a tee - on that pitch, I don't understand why they went back to the fastball (bad on Leon) but Abad didn't do himself any favors with that location. He also could have shook Leon off - but that creates a new line of analysis - trying to get inside the heads of a "not at all developed battery rapport." I don't have any business trying to analyze that element, so I'll give Abad a pass for not shaking the sign off.
On the fifth pitch, Leon could have set up either inside or outside, and Abad could have deliberately put a curveball in the dirt - either Cano bites again, Cano hits it weakly (and possibly into a double play) or - worst-case scenario - it's a 2-2 count. Instead, he was calling for it low/in the dirt, dead center. It was a super risky pitch call on 1-2 and I don't think it was necessary to take that big of a risk.