Sliders: In the age of ‘Missing Bats,’ this slow-throwing Dodgers pitcher is an outlier

Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of baseball.

It’s the Age of Missing Bats, with pitchers training to throw the hardest fastballs and highest-spinning breaking balls a lab can design. The Athletic chronicled the trend all week: the hunt for strikeouts, the impact of tech, the gurus who changed the craft, the heightened risks of injury.

Here at Sliders, we humbly present Ryan Yarbrough, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ long reliever with the slowest average fastball in the game. Of the 149 pitchers with at least 45 innings through Wednesday, Yarbrough’s average fastball — 86.5 mph, according to FanGraphs — ranked last.

“It’s kind of like ping-pong,” Yarbrough said recently, explaining his approach to pitching. “Something soft comes in and you’re mixing speeds, keeping them off balance and right in between. Anytime you can keep guys uncomfortable and especially put them in bad counts, it makes it really fun.”

Going easy on the radar gun helps the left-handed Yarbrough go longer when he pitches. He is roughly on pace to become the first pitcher in 18 years to work 100 innings out of the bullpen — with an asterisk.

Technically, Yarborough has done this before, as a rookie lab rat for the 2018 Tampa Bay Rays. That season, Yarbrough was 16-6 with a 3.91 ERA in 147 1/3 innings — and while 118 2/3 of those innings were thrown in relief, it was mostly predetermined. Yarbrough was the primary “bulk guy” when the Rays pioneered the use of the opener.

“From the outside looking in, you’re like, ‘OK, he doesn’t have games started, but everything else was a starter basis,’” Yarbrough said. “I never really tried to focus on that too much, because the end result was still there. If you look at the scoreboard going into the game, you’re just not starting. But I was coming in like the second or third inning really consistently.”

This season, for the first time in his seven-year career, Yarbrough hasn’t started at all. And when the Dodgers reached the halfway point of their season this week, Yarbrough had worked 49 1/3 innings — just two outs shy of a 100-inning pace. The last pure reliever (not a bulk guy following an opener, that is) to work 100 innings in a season was the New York Yankees’ Scott Proctor in 2006.

“I was shocked when you told me that,” said Proctor, who now works as a wealth advisor in Florida, specializing in professional athletes. “But I know the game has evolved to be more role-specific. Ballplayers are a commodity, they’re an investment, and teams are trying to protect their investments.”

The modern pitching assembly line doesn’t churn out many models like Yarbrough, whose long-relief role would seem to be critical as starters trend toward shorter outings. Of Yarbrough’s 21 appearances through Thursday, 17 had lasted more than one inning.

“He’s been a linchpin for us,” manager Dave Roberts said. “There’s some other guys that we don’t use back-to-back (days), so to be able to have him take down two to four innings has been huge. That multi-inning role is an outlier these days. He’s a different guy, which is a nice change of pace.”

The typical reliever is a former starter who probably didn’t have enough quality pitches to fool hitters more than once in a game. But that pitcher’s fastball might play up in shorter bursts, and data can determine how his off-speed pitches might work against specific hitters.

“It’s evolved now to where there’s certain parts of the lineups that are best for you to face, which really limits your length of outings,” Yankees closer Clay Holmes said. “There’s way more matchups, and you don’t really have your starters handing it off to (just) one or two guys to finish the game.”

Even if a team does have a designated long reliever, he can often pitch himself into a higher-leverage short role. The New York Mets’ Reed Garrett started this season in the minors and joined the team in early April, working more than one inning in six of his first eight appearances. At that point, Garrett had an 0.61 ERA while averaging nearly two strikeouts per inning. The Mets recognized what they had, and 17 of Garrett’s last 22 appearances have lasted one inning or less.

“It’d be cool to go 100 innings, and for a while, I felt like I was on pace for it,” Garrett said. “You’ve got to bring value somehow, and if a guy can go 100 innings out of the bullpen for the team, I think that brings value.”

One impediment to the 100-inning mark is minor-league options. If a pitcher works three or more innings, he’ll probably need at least a day or two of rest. And if that pitcher can be sent down without having to clear waivers, the team can do it and summon a fresh arm.

Yarbrough, 32, is not in that category. He pitched well in relief last summer after a trade from Kansas City, then signed a one-year, $3.9 million contract to return to Los Angeles. He’s delivered as the team expected, with the lowest strikeout rate on the active roster (4.4 per nine) but a stellar 3.28 ERA.

“It all comes down to communication,” Yarbrough said. “You watch the game flow, you have an idea when you’re coming in, who’s available, who just threw the other day, when it’s been a couple of days. So you move your body around and once you get on the mound, it’s just a matter of getting going. You learn as you do it, and I’ve done it enough in my career where I’ve had a good enough sample size to figure it out.”

The 100 relief innings mark seems plausible to Yarbrough (“I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be,” he said), but to others, like Holmes, it seems like a relic from the days of Goose Gossage, Kent Tekulve and Willie Hernandez.

“One hundred innings out of the bullpen seems crazy nowadays,” Holmes said. “That’s a lot, especially being able to repeat it year after year.”

Proctor did it just once, with 102 1/3 innings to help the Yankees win a division title in that 2006 season. He led the American League in appearances with 83, and matched it the next season (while throwing 16 fewer innings) for the Yankees and Dodgers. Arm injuries plagued Proctor after that; in parts of three more seasons, he had a 6.59 ERA.

“I don’t look back anymore,” he said, when asked about the toll of the innings. “I will tell you what people don’t realize. Two years in a row with 83 games, OK, but there might have been another 20 games when I got up — or got up multiple times — but never pitched. And that workload is what adds on more. I didn’t learn to manage it until my later years — playing catch and getting loose, being ready to go into the game without wearing yourself out.”

Yarbrough won’t come close to 83 appearances this season, let alone all those extra times when he only warms up, which should help his longevity. He’d love to reach 100 innings, he said, but his goal is much simpler: just help the high-powered bat missers around him.

“We have so many good arms,” Yarbrough said. “Whatever I can do to help fill that void, I’m all for it.”

Even more on Willie Mays’ last game

Last week in this column, we shared footage from Willie Mays’ final day as an active player, in Game 7 of the 1973 World Series. Mets manager Yogi Berra left Mays on the bench instead of using him as the potential tying run with two outs in the ninth inning in Oakland. Wayne Garrett — a lefty hitter facing a lefty reliever, Darold Knowles — popped out to end the season and clinch a second consecutive title for the Oakland A’s.

On Wednesday at Citi Field, before throwing out a ceremonial first pitch in his father’s memory, Michael Mays brought up the at-bat that never was.

“I can’t understand that part of history,” said Mays, who was in the Mets dugout and watched as his father gripped a bat but never got the call. “I would say stranger things have happened, but they haven’t. That’s the strangest thing.”

Garrett hit 16 home runs that season, second most on the team to John Milner. But Cleon Jones, the Mets’ starting left fielder in that World Series, said the players wanted one last chance for Mays.

“Wayne was a good player, but he was no Willie Mays,” said Jones, who joined Michael Mays at Wednesday’s ceremony. “There’s only one Willie Mays on the team, and in baseball.”

Even so, Jones said, a different decision haunts him when he thinks of 1973. The Mets held a three-games-to-two lead heading back to Oakland, giving Berra a chance to use lefty George Stone for Game 6 and saving Tom Seaver — on full rest — for a possible Game 7.

Stone was 12-3 with a 2.80 ERA in 1973, and had held the Cincinnati Reds and A’s to one run in 7 2/3 innings that postseason.

“George Stone was our best pitcher down the stretch,” Jones said, “so we felt like — Willie, myself and someone else — went into Yogi’s office and said, ‘Let’s save Seaver for the seventh game and give him that extra day’s rest. Let’s pitch George Stone.’ And Yogi said, ‘If I did that, the writers would eat me up.’ I said, ‘Not if we win. You gotta take chances. You gotta be in charge. You’re the manager, damn what the writers think.’ And he just wouldn’t do it.”

Seaver pitched well in a Game 6 loss to Catfish Hunter, and the Mets turned to Jon Matlack — also on three days’ rest — for Game 7. Matlack had thrown 23 innings that postseason without allowing an earned run, but the A’s knocked him out in the third with two-run homers by Bert Campaneris and Reggie Jackson.

Stone worked two scoreless innings in relief that day, keeping the game close enough for the Mets to have life in the ninth. But Mays never got to help, and never really got over it. It was a topic, Michael Mays said, that was not to be mentioned.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Mays said. “If you brought that up, my father would say, ‘I don’t know too much about that.’ That’s not a real subject of interest to him. The moment was the moment.”

You've read a lot about Willie Mays' legacy. I wondered how did Mays himself saw it. Here's how his son, Michael, answered that question: https://t.co/X5zoBm57Fv

— Tyler Kepner (@TylerKepner) June 27, 2024

Off the Grid

A historical detour from the Immaculate Grid

Cole Hamels, Braves/2,000 strikeouts

Cole Hamels made an interesting point at his retirement ceremony last week in Philadelphia. While people speculated about a possible return to the Philadelphia Phillies’ roster — after the team traded him to Texas in a 2015 rebuild — he never did. If he’d come back to the Phillies, Hamels said, folks would have expected his vintage self, and he knew his shoulder wasn’t right. Better to leave on a high, with a no-hitter as his final game in red, than return as a shell.

Hamels ended up making his final appearance with the Atlanta Braves in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic. He gave up three runs in 3 1/3 innings before empty stands in Baltimore. He would later sign with the Dodgers and San Diego Padres, but never returned to a big-league mound.

The Atlanta cameo made Hamels an answer on Tuesday’s Grid, which asked for a 2,000-strikeout pitcher who pitched for the Braves. It also made me think of other top pitchers who had a tenure with a team that lasted only one game. Here’s a rudimentary list, with three Hall of Famers and a couple of Cy Young Award winners — feel free to add more in the comments.

Dazzy Vance, Pittsburgh Pirates, 1915 (2 2/3 innings, 3 runs)
Christy Mathewson, Reds, 1916 (9 innings, 8 runs)
Satchel Paige, A’s, 1965 (3 innings, 0 runs — at age 59)
Dwight Gooden, Houston Astros, 2000 (4 innings, 4 runs)
Corey Kluber, Texas Rangers, 2020 (1 inning, 0 runs)

Classic Clip

The Natural, 1984

It’s summer blockbuster season, but you won’t find many baseball movies at your local multiplex. It’s been decades since the golden age of the baseball film, which began 40 years ago with “The Natural,” Barry Levinson’s spellbinding adaptation of the Bernard Malamud novel.

“That’s the movie that changed baseball movies going forward,” said Rick Cerrone, who worked in the commissioner’s office at the time and served as a consultant on the film. “Without ‘The Natural,’ there might not be a ‘Major League’ or ‘Field of Dreams,’ all these movies that came out. Because this was the one where people said, ‘I guess you can make money with a baseball movie.’”

Released in 1984 — one of the most memorable summers for movies — “The Natural” more than held its own. It ranked sixth in domestic box office sales that summer with $47.9 million gross, ahead of “Purple Rain” and trailing “Ghostbusters,” “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” “Gremlins,” “Star Trek III: The Search For Spock” and “The Karate Kid.”

Cerrone, who later worked for the Pirates and Yankees as a media relations director, was on set at War Memorial Stadium in Buffalo for the climactic at-bat by Robert Redford, who played an aging slugger with a tortured past for the fictional New York Knights.

“We were standing behind the camera alongside Glenn Close — she had her Knights jacket on to keep her warm; it was really kind of cold — and it was the scene where Roy Hobbs breaks the bat, and he does it and he runs to first,” said Cerrone, now the editor of Baseball Digest. “And when I watched the movie with a close eye, I thought something seemed odd: when he hits that long foul ball, the bat does not break. I mean, the bat is very much intact when he hits the ball. You would have seen it shatter had it shattered.”

There were a few other subtle inconsistencies, Cerrone noted — two different plate umpires in the scene when Redford-as-Hobbs tears the cover off the ball with a swing, for one — but mostly the film took remarkable care to recreate, in precise detail, the look and feel of baseball in the 1930s.

And while the golden age of baseball movies ended with the 1994 strike, MLB teams have finally caught on to the flourish that gave “The Natural” its cinematic majesty: the shower of light after the hero’s homer explodes the stadium circuitry.

“It’s funny, I think about that now when a guy hits a home run, even at Yankee Stadium — the lights go down and then all these lights go on,” Cerrone said. “It took them 30, 35 years for someone to think of that — ‘Let’s do a light show when they hit a home run!’ — but that’s what happened with ‘The Natural.’”

(Top photo of Ryan Yarbrough: Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)