Nate Eaton Needs to Ditch His Four-Seamer

We’re not supposed to search out this charming anymore. I do know that. The Period of Place Gamers Pitching was established all the best way again in 2017, when Jordan Walker was a scant 15 years previous. The shine has formally worn off watching non-pitchers huck batting observe fastballs towards the overall neighborhood of dwelling plate throughout rubbish time. However might we perhaps take pleasure in this one, simply as soon as extra, for a deal with? I promise I’ll be additional grouchy as soon as we’re performed.

There are some things that make this occasion of place participant pitching significantly enjoyable. The primary is that the participant who took the hill is completely essentially the most thrilling alternative potential. When the Baseball Savant arm power leaderboard debuted in October, Nate Eaton ranked on the very prime, with a 98.1 mph common throw that made Esteban Rivera weak within the knees. Originally of the 2022 season, Eric Longenhagen hung an 80 on Eaton’s arm, writing “Eaton has below-average offensive means, however he can play quite a lot of positions and he has top-of-the-line throwing arms in skilled baseball, a rocket launcher that may advantage a glance on the mound if/when Eaton and the trade declare him to have plateaued as a place participant.”

Fortunately, we didn’t have to attend that lengthy. On Monday, the Kansas Metropolis utilityman performed the fifth completely different defensive place of his younger profession, pitching a scoreless backside of the eighth in an 11-2 loss to the Rangers. He threw 22 pitches, placing out one and permitting two singles. Eaton threw 5 pitches upwards of 94 mph, whereas Kansas Metropolis’s starter, one Zack Greinke, topped out at 91.3 mph. It’s two days later, and Greinke’s ultimate curveball is simply now about to cross dwelling plate.

Eaton touched 94.9 mph and his fastball averaged 93.2. Amongst all pitchers who’ve thrown no less than 10 pitches this 12 months, that places him within the fortieth percentile, proper between Taijuan Walker and Max Scherzer.

It’s not nearly the truth that Eaton was throwing fuel. He threw three completely different pitches: a sinker, a four-seamer, and a slider. He additionally threw three of the usual 70 mph place participant pitching meatballs. Statcast categorized them as changeups, however they had been simply get-me-over tosses with a four-seam grip:

Eaton threw 45 innings in faculty, posting a 6.60 ERA and a 1.91 WHIP. He’s not precisely Shohei Ohtani (although I assume that, like everybody else who isn’t Shohei Ohtani, he needs he had been). Nonetheless, in case you surf over to our model new Pitch Modeling leaderboard, you’ll see that his stuff graded out as delightfully strong:

PitchingBot was much less impressed, but it surely appeared to have a tougher time classifying Eaton’s pitches (which is comprehensible contemplating how few he threw). All the identical, a plus sinker and a plus slider in accordance with Stuff+ is nothing to sneeze at. Location+ didn’t love his command, however he nonetheless caught the black of the plate a couple of instances. He began leadoff batter Travis Jankowski off with a 94 mph four-seamer on the skin nook and ended up retiring him on a weak chopper to second base. Take a look at his first pitch to Ezequiel Duran:

That’s a 93.3 mph sinker with 17 inches of arm-side run. Eaton adopted it with one other sinker, this time at 94.3 mph. Duran managed to foul it off, however he appeared suitably impressed with Eaton’s stuff, mouthing one thing that appeared like, “Wow,” and glancing towards the third base coach as in case you to say, “I believed you mentioned this man wasn’t a pitcher!”:

After two sinkers that ran in underneath Duran’s fingers, Salvador Perez arrange proper on the skin nook. Eaton missed his spot excessive, however Duran had had sufficient. He can not have been anticipating to see league-average velocity, not to mention a mixture of two-seamers and four-seamers on each side of the plate. It’s protected to say that Ezequiel Duran now not discovered the state of affairs amusing:

Eaton’s slider averaged 82.4 mph, with 4.5 inches of horizontal break and 45.4 inches of vertical break. That makes Tylor Megill’s slider a reasonably first rate comp for our functions. Enjoyable reality: In keeping with Baseball Savant, that slider has been value -1.4 runs per 100 pitches over the course of Megill’s profession, making it his finest pitch. Right here’s a slider Eaton threw to Duran, juxtaposed with a current slider from Megill to Bryan De La Cruz:

Duran ended up sending a slider that spun greater than it broke via the 5.5 gap for a single. That delivered to the plate essentially the most enjoyable potential matchup for Eaton: Corey Seager. You see, Seager was dead-set on revenge. In the course of the offseason, Mike Petriello calculated that Seager was the batter with essentially the most to realize from an infield shift ban. Mike additionally famous that groups might nonetheless shift an outfielder over towards the Seagers and the Joey Gallos of the world. The Royals have been doing simply that, and within the fifth inning, Seager bought robbed but once more, grounding out to the quick proper fielder, some turkey named Nate Eaton:

Reduce to the eighth inning, and you must think about that Seager was out for blood. Eaton threw a juicy meatball and Seager extracted his vengeance from Eaton via essentially the most poetic means conceivable: a reasonably hard-hit groundball that simply barely made it via the appropriate facet of the infield:

With the Rangers threatening, Eaton retired Brad Miller through a lineout and fell behind 3-1 to Adolis García, who had already hit a grand slam earlier that evening. Eaton battled again with a four-seamer for a referred to as strike, after which threw one other proper by García for the third out:

That was the top of Eaton’s evening. By far essentially the most fulfilling a part of the inning was the truth that Eaton appeared decided to not take pleasure in it even somewhat bit. This was the least jovial occasion of place participant pitching in baseball historical past. Check out the 4 screenshots under. So as, they’re Eaton on the brink of pitch for the primary time within the huge leagues, Eaton after retiring his first huge league batter, Eaton in a pitching jam, and Eaton after placing out his first batter and shutting out a scoreless inning. Simply watch all these feelings wash over his face:

Eaton’s grim dedication rubbed off on completely all people. You understand how when there’s a place participant pitching, the TV broadcast is often stuffed with photographs of teammates falling throughout themselves with laughter, or perhaps the batter and the pitcher sharing a sheepish grin after a very wild pitch? There was none of that. And I imply none. The one time cameras caught anybody smiling was after the strikeout to finish the inning. Eaton’s teammates smiled; Eaton didn’t.

Even when he spoke to reporters after the sport, Eaton by no means got here remotely near saying he’d had enjoyable whereas pitching. “I wish to say it felt good,” he head-faked, “but it surely’s clearly not a great state of affairs to be in if I’ve to come back in and pitch. Yeah, that’s about all I bought proper there.” For a man with a 0.00 profession ERA, he appeared downright despondent:

That’s not somebody who simply recorded his first huge league strikeout. That’s somebody who simply came upon how Previous Yeller ends. However that’s okay. We’re speculated to be performed having fun with ourselves anyway. I mentioned that I’d get again to being grouchy after we had been completed right here. Eaton simply beat me to it.