ARLINGTON, Texas – Marco Estrada didn’t think much of his curveball in Game 1 of the American League Division Series but he really only needed one good hook to plant the offering in the minds of the Texas Rangers hitters.
Consider this sequence to Carlos Gomez leading off the bottom of the first: 86 mph cutter low and away for a strike; 72 mph changeup low and away for a ball; 87 mph cutter up-middle fouled off on a bunt for a strike; 74 mph low-middle changeup for a ball; 74 mph curveball up and away for strike three looking.
Right off the bat, even though Estrada says his curveball “maybe wasn’t breaking as sharp as it normally does,” he gave the Rangers plenty more than simply his fastball and changeup to worry about.
“Most hitters that go up there against Marco are either on the fastball or the change,” says Russell Martin. “When I’m catching, I feel like you can sense when guys are sitting on a certain pitch. The key is to get them caught in between and when you have them caught in between, that’s when you can use that curveball as that third pitch when guys really aren’t looking for it. They’re beating themselves up trying to hit the changeup or the fastball, they’re not even thinking about the curveball, and he’s got a good one. He has a cutter, too, that he threw a couple times today. He can throw any pitch in any count and that’s what makes him so tough.”
Estrada was more than tough, he was dominant in a 10-1 victory, allowing a meaningless ninth-inning run on four hits with six strikeouts over 8.1 innings. The performance is among the best ever delivered by a Blue Jays pitcher in the post-season.
Here’s what his teammates most appreciated about his outing, and that 2-2 curve to Gomez:
***
Marcus Stroman: “They were so off-balance the entire game. He had everything working to the point where they didn’t know what to sit on. You could tell by how late their swings were on the heaters and how out in front they were on the changeups. He kept them in between and he kept their timing to where he felt like he could do essentially what he wanted at any point. It was pretty special to watch how unreal he was and how he’s able to keep guys so off-balance with that changeup. His changeup was unbelievable and then he started mixing in the cutter and the curveball. So he’s got so many weapons and then he has that 76 mile an hour changeup in the back of their heads on every pitch, and he works off that. His heater, even though it’s 90, plays at 95, 96 because of that changeup.”
***
J.A. Happ: “With that fastball-changeup combination he uses so much, to be able to all of a sudden drop the hook in there 2-2, as a hitter, you’re usually trying to eliminate pitches, that makes it really hard when you’re not able to do that. It did probably set the tone. He filled up the strike zone, got ahead and used everything. Really, you couldn’t ask for anything more. He was outstanding.”
***
Aaron Sanchez: “It’s huge to have secondary stuff right out of the chute. I mean I know for myself, once you have confidence in that, especially that he got a big punchout, not only does that guy see it, but eight other guys in that dugout have watched him go 3-2 curveball. He’s so effective with his fastball and changeup, when they know he has a third pitch working, I wouldn’t want to say he’s in the driver’s seat but that set the tone really early.”
***
Kevin Pillar: “You’ve got to understand what a pitcher’s best pitch is and what his best secondary pitch is and when they have a good feel for their third pitch, as a hitter you know it’s going to be a long day, it’s going to be tough. We might have been able to figure something out with (Cole) Hamels, and maybe he wasn’t controlling a pitch as well as he normally does and as a hitter you eliminate that pitch. For them facing Marco, they couldn’t eliminate anything. He had the cutter, the fastball, the curveball and the changeup working. It makes for a long day for hitters.”
***
Jason Grilli: “Just his pace, it just looked like there was a calmness and control. Obviously you can’t have a performance like that without being that way. He was in control and it showed.”
***
Russell Martin: “He makes my job easy. I put a target out there and it just seems like he hits the target. I could be blindfolded it seems like sometimes when he’s pitching out there. It’s not really something you can teach, he just has that natural ability to hit his spots like no other.”
***
Marcus Stroman: “(The 2-2 curveball to Gomez) lets the entire lineup know he has that pitch working. If hitters put that in their head, like hey, he’s got his third or fourth best pitch working, they know they’re going to be in for a long day because of how elite his fastball-change combo is. From that point on that put that in their heads and it looked like that, like they were battling to stay on balance the entire game.”
***
J.A. Happ: “He’s got that confidence out there and he was just locating. It’s one thing to get ahead and it’s another thing to locate every time you get ahead. Eventually guys are going to start getting aggressive and when they do, if you’re locating you still have a good chance. That’s what you saw, guys were aggressive and they still weren’t squaring him up that great. That’s as locked as I’ve ever seen him.”
