When You're Talking Hendriks, You're Talking Heaters
There are few surprises from Liam Hendriks.
Just ask the San Francisco Giants. The Oakland closer came in to pitch the 10th inning Friday night with the A’s holding an 8-7 lead.
He threw 13 pitches. Specifically, 13 four-seam fastballs. He struck out the side, sealing the Oakland win.
He pitched in the ninth inning a day later. This time the A’s lead was 7-6. He thew a dozen pitches, nine four-seamers to go with three hard sliders. He issued one four-pitch walk with two out, but again got the save, his seventh.
Hendriks clearly hasn’t gotten the memo. The fastball is dying. A look into pitch selection from Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci charts the increasingly diminished use of the fastball as a pitcher’s weapon since 2015. It still gets thrown a ton, mind you, but slightly fewer than 50 percent of pitches being thrown in 2020 are fastballs.
While there are few fastballs being thrown in baseball this year, those general statistics don’t hold sway with everybody. Hendriks, for one, is all about fastballs, mostly of them 97- and 98-mph heaters that issue the hit-me-if-you-can challenge.
Some of them will be hit. But if the first one-third of the 2020 season is any indicator, not that many of them. Hendricks has appeared in 11 of the A’s first 23 games entering the final game of a two-game set in Phoenix Tuesday. The A’s are 11-0 in those games, and, according to BrooksBaseball.com, about three-quarters of the pitches he’s thrown have been fastballs, and that number is spiking.
It’s easy to forget that it was just in 2018 that the A’s designated Hendriks for assignment, meaning any team could claim him, and no one did. He wound up spending half the season at Triple-A Nashville after re-signing with Oakland, at which time he seems to have committed more to just throwing the gas.
By last year, he was an All-Star closer. This year he’s still closing effectively, which is odd for the A’s, who haven’t had the same man lead the team in saves since 2012 and 2013, when another Australian, Grant Balfour did it.
Hendriks isn’t trying to fool anybody. He throws his best pitch, throws it a lot and challenges hitters. He’s not perfect; he’s allowed two runs in his 11 appearances this year and has a 1.42 ERA for his 11.1 innings pitched through Monday, complete with 17 strikeouts and three walks – although just one walk since opening day.
For that, he credits the way the A’s approached the Summer Camp. The A’s didn’t start out playing games on Day 1 like some clubs. They had their pitchers build up as they would in a regular spring, although admittedly for a shorter period of time. Only then did they mix in intrasquad games and the two exhibition games before the July 24 opener.
“I think we planned, the organization planned, for this ahead,” Hendriks said last week. “But with the rash of injuries coming across the league and the fact that the A’s have pretty much been OK with that by limiting guys. (They weren’t) burdening somebody.”
A’s manager Bob Melvin and his staff had it planned that way, building up rather than having their pitchers raring back from Day One.
“Certain pitchers will start out slower than others. After an abbreviated camp, he was throwing 94, 95, And now he’s at 98, which is kind of what we saw last year. And to strike out three guys in that fashion was very impressive.”
Talking Tuesday, pitching coach Scott Emerson said the last thing he wants Hendriks to do is to go away from his fastball. Even on all-fastball Friday, the coach didn’t want to see anything else.
“I just kept thinking, `Keep throwing it,’” Emerson said. “It’s 97, 98 (mph) and the hitters are late. I’m watching Liam and their hitters are tell us they’re late on it. Why make an adjustment? He maybe just moved the fastball a little bit more, according to the count. You know he felt it.
“He knew he had a good fastball and the hitters knew `I’m swinging, I’ve got to started early.’ That’s why the fastball is still the No. 1 best weapon, because you can move it around. If I throw a fastball up close to the eyes and then throw it down in a way, I can lose four mph. so there’s a different perceived velocity. So, I’ve got different pitches with just my fastball. Liam does a great job of that.”
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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