TORONTO – Jason Grilli watched the post-season last fall from his bed after surgery to repair a ruptured Achilles tendon, caught a glimpse of Roberto Osuna on the mound, and wished he could make a small suggestion to the young closer. This past May 31, the Toronto Blue Jays rescued the grizzled veteran from the Atlanta Braves, and five days later, when the Boston Red Sox roughed up the 21-year-old, came an opportunity to pass along that bit of wisdom.
“The powers that may be brought us together and it’s a small piece of advice but he understood everything I said,” Grilli recalls. “Basically what I told him is if you play a CD, it’s the same every time, so if you’re going to take your sign and be in a rhythm, hitters are trying to be in that rhythm, and timing you right to a synchronization with your windup and delivery.
“I said, ‘Man, just switch it up, even if it’s holding the ball.’ People say to me, ‘You take long.’ No. I’m trying to vary things up. When a hitter starts to think in the box, it plays to a pitcher’s favour. We have the ball, so control the situation. If they want to step out, that’s fine. They’re just trying to hear the song as it’s played on the CD. So play the song live, because if you go into a little jam session, they can’t follow you.”
Osuna took those words to heart, and spent the next several weeks trying to shut down games while mixing in the occasional live rendition of his repertoire, to follow Grilli’s analogy. Over a series of subsequent jam sessions, Osuna developed a little pause in his delivery when he’s over the rubber, something to mix in on occasion and disrupt a hitter’s timing. He debuted the hitch Sept. 15 in Anaheim against the Los Angeles Angels, when he entered the ninth with a 7-2 lead, offering the necessary margin for error to experiment a little bit.
A few days later against the Mariners in Seattle, he used it a couple of more times, and again Saturday versus the New York Yankees, when he also introduced a slide step in an at-bat against Jacoby Ellsbury. On Sunday he blew just the seventh save of his career, while pitching on back-to-back days for the 21st time this season, underlining how even the most dominant of pitchers can’t stay static.
Tuesday against the Baltimore Orioles, maintaining his usual velocity while pitching for the third time in four days, he allowed the first two batters to reach before inducing back-to-back grounders, the second of which was a 5-4-3 double play that closed out a 5-1 win.
“Grilli was like, ‘Hey, just try to change their timing a little bit. You make their timing better by doing the same thing every day. Sometimes do a slide step. Do whatever you want, try something new, something they haven’t seen yet and see how it works,’” Osuna says of the conversation with Grilli after he gave up two runs on four hits in the ninth inning of a 5-4 win June 5 at Fenway Park.
“I like it. It’s something new, just to find a way to make a better pitch. The (pause) helps me to stay back and stay on top of the ball a little more.”
Introducing a new element in-season is always tricky for a pitcher, and Osuna carefully developed his additions. Since relievers must carefully manage their workload, he practised the delivery twists on a mound without actually throwing the ball.
The key was in maintaining the right balance points before and after releasing the ball. Once he had that down, “it’s just about the confidence,” he says.
“If you feel good and have the confidence that’s going to work, go out there and try it,” Osuna continues. “I’m always coming into situations where I can’t make a mistake, so I was a little bit afraid to do it in a game. But I’ve been doing it for the last week and I’ve been feeling pretty good. I did it with the five run lead there (in Anaheim) and felt good. I did it in Seattle and it worked, so that gave me more confidence.”
Osuna’s willingness to simply consider making a change during an excellent sophomore season impresses Grilli, who points out that his young teammate also sought out any information the veteran might have.
“A lot of young guys are like, ‘Hey, I got here by myself, let me figure it out by myself.’ He was very open to it,” says Grilli. “I told him it’s like adding two more pitches. Really all I’m doing is helping a guy who’s going to have a beautiful career whether I said something to him or not. If it makes him better I’m happy to share the same advice passed down to me.”