DUNEDIN, Fla. — Trent Thornton throws a whole bunch of pitches. Four-seamers, two-seamers, cutters, curveballs, sliders, and a change-up he’s spent his 2020 spring training focused on improving.
It’s not a bad thing. Variety and unpredictability can be real weapons for a big-league starter trying to turn a lineup over three times. But it gets a little tough early in camp when you’re gradually increasing workload towards the start of the regular season. You only have so many in-game reps to play with.
Take Wednesday, when the Toronto Blue Jays pitcher made his second start of spring. He was budgeted for 45 pitches on the day, but after he got through two innings on only 30, he was lifted from the game because the pitchers coming in behind him need to work, too. And over those first two innings, Thornton only threw his curveball once, and didn’t get to use his two-seamer at all.
Of course, he always has the option of heading back to the right field bullpen to throw the rest of his quota. And Thornton can work on whatever he wants during side sessions in between starts. But it’s just not the same.
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“It’s always better to see it against live hitters — to see how they’re reacting to the ball,” Thornton said. “And [to see how] sequencing and stuff goes, too. If I’m using it correctly, it should work out to my advantage.”
It’s a problem unique to spring training, and unique to a guy like Thornton, who will want to get all the work in he needs to over the next four weeks as he’s breezing his way to being named Toronto’s fifth starter by the end of camp. If he wants to play around with some new sequencing, or experiment with how certain pitches play off one another in different counts, now’s the time.
And progress is being made. Wednesday’s outing, in which he allowed two runs on three hits while striking out two against the Detroit Tigers, was an encouraging step from a stuff and location standpoint as Thornton was dotting his live fastball all around the zone.
During his first outing of spring, Thornton had to fight to find his command in the early going. He showed similar signs Wednesday, starting his first four batters with a ball — and six of his first seven. But each of those misses was followed by a strike, as the 26-year-old honed in and didn’t let things escalate.
“I thought Trent was better today. His command was better,” said Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo. “I thought his stuff was better than the other day for sure.”
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Thornton cruised through his first inning on 13 pitches, allowing only a single. And he was within a strike of stranding another runner in the second, when he got ahead of Tigers catcher Austin Romine, 0-2. But Romine forced Thornton into the zone by spitting on three-straight off-speed pitches before driving a full count fastball over the wall in right-centre field.
“That’s the one sequence that I wasn’t happy with because there were two pitches in that at-bat that I should’ve shook and went with something else — because it was a little off of my attack plan,” Thornton said. “But he hit a pitch that was up and out, which is where I wanted to throw it. He just got it. It was a good swing.”
Thornton was happy with the action on several of his pitches, including that lone curveball which generated a swinging strike, and the four-to-five change-ups he estimated he mixed in. That off-speed weapon is the most important one for Thornton this spring, as he’s working diligently to hone his command of it and turn it into an effective tool against left-handed hitters.
His first time out, Thornton deliberately tried to get himself into counts in which he wants to use the pitch this season. This time around, he stuck to a more realistic approach, trying to set up hitters as he will when games begin to count, letting the course of the plate appearance and the pre-game plan he’d formulated dictate what he throws next.
When you have as many offerings as Thornton does, the options can be endless. And perhaps one of the lessons learned from his rookie year — in which he was at times spectacular, at times unreliable, and at times tipping his pitches on the way to a 94 ERA+ with 8.7 K/9 and 3.6 BB/9 over 154.1 innings pitched — will be to feature more variability.
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Last season, he started just under half the batters he faced with a four-seam fastball, according to PitchFX data (and in their first plate appearance of a ballgame, that number was closer to 65 per cent). Nearly 30 per cent of the time, batters saw a first-pitch breaking ball. Just under 15 per cent got a cutter. And only seldomly did Thornton use a first-pitch sinker or change-up. If he’s able to build a good feel for all those pitches this spring, he could unlock some fresh sequencing to help him keep batters off balance.
Considering how elite the spin rates are on his breaking stuff, and the fact he generated whiff rates of 15 per with his slider and 16 per cent with his curveball last season, it must be tempting to save them for two-strike situations. But if he can show hitters he’s willing to drop one in for a strike early in a count, or even take advantage of a geared-up bat with a first-pitch change-up located down in the zone, it stands to reason Thornton will only make himself more difficult for the other side to game plan for.
Of course, none of Thornton’s secondary weapons matter if he can’t locate his fastball for strikes. It all starts there. And Wednesday was a positive step in doing so more consistently, which will help set up all those curveballs, sliders, and change-ups. Or maybe even play off of them in reverse, if the mood strikes.
“I definitely feel a couple steps ahead of where I was last year,” Thornton said. “My body feels good. Everything feels strong. I was pretty happy with how today went as far as execution, for the most part. And everything feels pretty sharp right now.”