After Payton Tolle’s debut, I wrote that he already has one of the best fastballs in the major leagues. The combination of velocity, shape, and extension creates a pitch that can be unhittable. I expected some regression outside of the energy factor that is Fenway Park, but in his second outing against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the metrics were just as good. The velocity was down a touch, but the vertical movement and extension were actually both even greater than in his first outing.
Unfortunately for Tolle, the Diamondbacks entered the game with a plan to hit his fastball and had the personnel to execute that plan. In the first inning alone, Arizona fouled off five fastballs, three of which came with two strikes. In the second inning, they fouled off six more two-strike fastballs. Tolle threw 52 pitches and allowed two runs in the first two innings. It was a textbook example of why a major league starting pitcher needs to have a plan B.
The most important thing about plan B is that it has to be different from plan A. Remember Jurassic World, when they tried to make a bunch of money by making another dinosaur theme park, but they didn’t change much from the first dinosaur theme park, and it didn’t work again? Instead of making more dinosaurs for people to look at — or fastballs for hitters to hit — you have to try something else.
Tolle did just that. He threw just nine fastballs out of 25 pitches in his third and final inning of work, opting instead of a mix of cutters, curveballs, and changeups. Unfortunately, Plan B went about as well as the plan in every Mission: Impossible movie, where even though the plan is pretty fleshed out, something goes wrong and Tom Cruise has to do some crazy shit to fix it. Except Payton Tolle doesn’t have Tom Cruise’s improvisational skills or weird smile where he’s kinda got one tooth in the middle of his mouth.
That’s all a long, probably-amusing-only-to-me, way of saying that Tolle tried to use his secondary pitches but couldn’t locate them consistently. He fell behind nine of 17 hitters 0-1 compared to just seven of 21 in his first outing. Count leverage is hugely important at the highest level, and Tolle consistently found himself behind in the count, at the mercy of Dbacks hitters. Let’s take a look.
Here’s Gabriel Moreno with one out in the third inning.
Tolle’s first pitch of the at-bat is a cutter, way too far inside for ball one.
At 1-0, he throws a fastball that probably should be a strike, but Narvaez has to reach for it so he doesn’t get the call. On a day when he wasn’t hitting his spots, it’s hard to expect the umpire to give Tolle the benefit of the doubt.
He goes back to the cutter at 2-0 and gets a called strike. It appears as though he was trying to jam him to escape the 2-0 count, but misses away. It’s a good result regardless.
He tries a curveball at 2-1 and it’s not close.
And then he yanks a fastball to put Moreno on first base.
Here’s Blaze Alexander in the next at-bat.
It’s a 0-0 cutter, again downstairs for a ball.
That’s a much better cutter with Alexander looking for a four-seamer. He gets the whiff to even the count.
That’s more like it. Tolle elevates the fastball, and even at just 93 mph it’s able to get by Alexander for strike two. Personally, I would probably go back to the high fastball. It’s his best pitch, and it’s hard to hit when executed properly.
He opts for the curveball and spikes it in front of the plate.
Right idea, wrong spot. It’s the four-seam from Tolle but it’s too high to get a swing.
Back to the four-seam at 3-2, and it’s outside for ball four. That brings up Ildemaro Vargas with two on.
Four-seam, way too high. Ball one.
Here’s a cutter, also too high for ball two. At 2-0, a cutter inside to jam Vargas is a good idea. Anything to induce weak contact, really.
That’s a good cutter from Tolle, and Vargas is out ahead of it.
He goes back to it, but Vargas sees this one all the way for ball three.
You probably didn’t need me to tell you that throwing pitches nowhere near the strike zone is a bad thing. It’s a bad thing, because when you try everything but your fastball and can’t throw anything for a strike, hitters can sit on one pitch. That’s what Vargas is doing here. It’s not the worst pitch Tolle has ever thrown. In fact, with his fastball, he can probably get away with this when his other pitches are working. They weren’t, though, and because Vargas is ready for a fastball, pure stuff can’t mask the location. It’s over the fence for the Diamondbacks third, fourth, and fifth runs of the night.
There’s good news, though. There are going to be a lot of people who tell you that Tolle has been “figured out”, and that isn’t the case. He needs to get better at commanding his secondaries, there’s no doubt about that. At the same time, his secondary pitches become less important if he can simply command his fastball better.
Here’s a look at his fastball heatmap from his latest outing. That’s a lot of fastballs that are about belt high. Despite the poor location, Arizona didn’t exactly tee-off on his heater. They fouled off 33% of them, which isn’t a good thing, but it does show how even when he’s not hitting his spots, the best they can do is fight them off until they get one they can truly handle. Credit to the DBacks, they did exactly that. At the same time, they’re one of the best fastball hitting teams in the majors. Other teams will likely try to take a similar approach, but it’s not as easy as Arizona made it look.
In the long term, commanding his secondaries is going to be important for Tolle. If he can flip a curveball in for a strike or backdoor a cutter consistently, he’ll have more leeway with his fastball. In the short term, if he can’t find a quick improvement to his breaking ball command, hitting the top of the strike zone with the four-seam will be key.
The important takeaway here is that Tolle isn’t broken, or figured out, or whatever sports radio talking heads want to tell you he is. He’s a pitcher one year removed from college baseball who’s made two big league starts. Roman Anthony is out for a while. The pitching staff is running on fumes. I’m stressed. You’re stressed. The people in charge of the dinosaur theme park in Jurassic World are probably stressed. Give the kid a minute, though, he’ll figure it out.