TORONTO — Hyun-Jin Ryu’s spent his entire career pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers, an extremely successful MLB franchise that’s been to the post-season seven seasons running, so keep that in mind here. But it’s not for nothing that Ryu’s team won 20 of the 29 games he started last season. And 10 of the 15 the season before that.
That’s a .682 clip in all, good for a 110-win season under normal circumstances, or a 41-win season in this strange, fan-free MLB world we’re temporarily living in. Of course, extrapolating that is an insane exercise and no team will ever have a rotation entirely compromised of Ryu’s. But it’s a pretty good thing to at least have one.
“You need guys like that. That’s how you win in the big leagues,” Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo was saying Friday afternoon, holding a Zoom media availability while wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt. “Because Ryu’s pitching today, we know we have a chance to win.
“You can see it on the good teams in the big leagues. The teams that make it to the playoffs, they’ve all got two, three, four good starters. That’s how you never go into losing streaks. You always have the chance to win every day. That’s where we want to get. And Ryu’s one of those guys.”
Now, three or four front-line starters is a luxury the Blue Jays do not have. But Ryu gives them one, and the results so far speak for themselves, as Toronto won its first game of the season Friday night, 6-4, over the Tampa Bay Rays.
If Ryu doesn’t miss a turn in Toronto’s rotation, he’ll make 11 more starts, and possibly one or two extra if the Blue Jays can get creative and utilize off days to keep him on a five-day schedule. That’s at least 20 per cent of this shortened season, and every win he helps the Blue Jays achieve this year is the equivalent of 2.7 wins in a normal one. There’s the potential here for Ryu to have a sizable impact on this club’s chances, particularly now that eight American League clubs will qualify for the playoffs.
Which is all to say there’s a lot riding on him. And it seems like he feels it. Ryu called Friday’s start “nerve-wracking” and described the sensation he experienced on the mound as “like I was floating in air.” You don’t hear that every day from a guy with 125 starts — career ERA a sparkling 2.98 — on his FanGraphs page.
“That’s what this game does to you,” Montoyo said. “Everybody wants to do well.”
By his own estimation, Ryu didn’t pitch up to his standards, but he was certainly good enough, holding down a very good Rays lineup over 4.2 innings while Toronto’s offence went to work in support. He didn’t have his best fastball command, and said he couldn’t find his normal balance on the mound in the early going. Not that the results demonstrated that struggle.
Ryu went three-up, three-down on 10 pitches in the first; three-up, three-down on 12 in the second. He allowed a double and a walk in the third, but proceeded to locate some ridiculous changeups to Hunter Renfroe with those two on and two out, getting two called strikes and a knee-buckling swinging one to escape the mini-jam.
Hyun-jin Ryu, Wicked 79mph Changeup. pic.twitter.com/wQTZz8SK4S
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) July 25, 2020
A run crossed in the fourth, when Manuel Margot reached on a force out before Mike Brosseau went down below his knees to drive a well-located sinker to the wall in right-centre. And the Rays extended Ryu from there, as Willy Adames worked a six-pitch walk. But then Ryu gave Kevin Kiermaier fits, locating five straight pitches on the outer edge of the strike zone until he got the swing-and-miss he was after.
As he does. Ryu’s best weapon is his command — his ability to locate five different pitches for strikes on the edges of the zone. Pitching up-and-down, side-to-side. Changing speeds, mixing-and-matching, picking corners. Sequencing and variability are everything for Ryu, as he uses unpredictable pattens to keep hitters off balance and guessing. And with a steady mix of four-seamers, sinkers, changeups, sliders and curveballs, he was doing just that.
But what was strange about the outing were the three walks from a guy who walked only 24 over 182.2 innings last season. And that caught up to him in the fifth, when he lost Hunter Renfroe with a two-out, full-count changeup that missed by a mile.
Ryu went 3-2 to the next batter, Yoshi Tsutsugo, as well. And the next pitch was his worst of the night — an 89-m.p.h. fastball, up and over the plate, that Tsutsugo lofted into the left-field seats. Two pitches and a Jose Martinez double later, Ryu’s night was done.
“My changeup, it got better as the game progressed, which I was happy about. My fastball command just wasn’t there,” he said. “It was so easy to tell it was a ball coming out of my hand. So, that’s something that I definitely need to work on and improve moving into the next game.”
Ryu was able to ride his secondary stuff into the fifth, but appeared to lose some effectiveness in that final inning, finally wearing down under the pressure of some pesky Rays plate appearances. And that’s understandable. It’s the first game of the season following a rushed, three-week training camp, after all. While Toronto’s starting staff is in pretty good shape from a workload perspective, they’ll all be on pitch counts during this first trip through the rotation, and the late fade we saw from Ryu is the reason why.
Still, he threw 97 pitches — 54 for strikes — and reached back for the odd 92-m.p.h. heater, which is as hard as he’ll throw. That’s encouraging and sets him up to surpass 100 pitches in his next outing — provided things go well — as he did nine times last season. He was only supposed to pitch around 85 on Friday. But Montoyo clearly wanted to give him every opportunity to get that final out in his fifth inning. And when the Blue Jays manager finally did make the walk, Ryu wasn’t giving up the ball easily.
“He didn’t want to come out. That’s what I love about the guy,” Montoyo said. “I knew Ryu was like that. I heard from the Dodgers that he was like that — which I love. That’s beautiful. But I knew that he had too many pitches and I had to make that move.”
Something to build on, certainly. But a familiar result to the ones he helped produce so many times over seven seasons in Los Angeles — a team win. During a year in which each game is worth two-and-a-half times what it normally is, it helps having a guy like Ryu going once every five, giving you a chance
“Honestly, I think I was the weak link in today’s game,” he said. “So, as long as I pick up my pace and then everyone else does what they did today, I think we’ll be fine moving forward.”
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiY2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnNwb3J0c25ldC5jYS9iYXNlYmFsbC9tbGIvYmx1ZS1qYXlzLXJ5dS1vdmVyY29tZXMtbmVydmVzLW1ha2VzLXN0cm9uZy1maXJzdC1pbXByZXNzaW9uL9IBamh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnNwb3J0c25ldC5jYS9iYXNlYmFsbC9tbGIvYmx1ZS1qYXlzLXJ5dS1vdmVyY29tZXMtbmVydmVzLW1ha2VzLXN0cm9uZy1maXJzdC1pbXByZXNzaW9uL3NuLWFtcC8?oc=5
2020-07-25 04:23:00Z
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