This story ran in the Aug. 3 issue of Sportsnet magazine.
Allowing one earned run on seven hits and four walks is a pretty decent day for most pitchers. Not Chris Archer. That’s the sum total of what he’s done to the Blue Jays over the course of three starts this season.
The Tampa Bay Rays ace has been like kryptonite to the Blue Jays’ superhero offence, which leads the majors in runs. Archer has struck out 31 Blue Jays over 29 innings this year and allowed just 20 Toronto batters to reach base, only four of whom have made it around to home plate. If the Blue Jays are going to achieve something with their best offence in franchise history, if they’re going to finally return to the playoffs from the palace of parity that is the American League East, they’ll likely need to figure out Chris Archer.
Easier said than done. The current Jays are batting .186/.245/.305 collectively against Archer in their careers,combining for just 41 hits and 15 walks in 235 plate
appearances. Some of the Blue Jays’ best hitters can’t seem to solve him at all: Edwin Encarnacion is 4-for-31; Jose Bautista is 3-for-29; Josh Donaldson is 2-for-13.
Only two Blue Jays with more than five at-bats against Archer are hitting over .300—Dioner Navarro, who’s 7-for-21 with a couple home runs, and Jose Reyes, who’s 10-for-28 with all but two of his hits being singles. But even those who have had success against the Rays youngster don’t feel especially comfortable standing in against him. “Let’s be clear, I don’t see him well,” Reyes admits. “I just try to grind out my at-bats against him and look for a good pitch to hit. I’m looking for that fastball—that one in the zone at 97, 98. If I’m lucky, in an at-bat I might get one of those.”
Reyes sits on the fastball because, at an average speed of 96 mph, sometimes touching 99, it’s at least easy to recognize: It’s all over you. Archer has been using it less than in previous years, but if you get good wood on it, the ball will travel hard somewhere. He throws his fastball with a little bit of sink, resulting in an above-average number of ground balls. But as a hitter, you take your chances with that pitch, because you don’t want to try to hit Archer’s slider. “He’s got, to me, the best slider in the league right now,” says Navarro. “I just try to see the ball and hit the ball. I think that’s the best chance I’ve got. He’s got outstanding stuff.”
Archer seems to throw two variations of that slider: One that moves away from right-handed batters and another that dives down against left-handed batters with what’s closer to a curveball’s action. Making matters tougher is the nearly 90-mph velocity of the slider, unusually high for the breaking pitch, which makes it look like a fastball out of his hand. If you don’t swing through the pitch’s wicked movement, there’s a good chance you’ll swing too early or too late, fouling the pitch off at best. “For lefties, we get to see the slider a little bit better. But it’s still nasty. When it’s moving at like 89, 90, it’s just going down too quick,” Reyes says. “So when I see it as a lefty and it’s that nasty, just imagine how a right-handed hitter sees it. It’s kind of an unhittable pitch.”
Unhittable is a fair assessment. Of the 83 times Archer’s slider has been put in play this season (a startlingly low number when you consider he’s thrown more than 750 of them) it’s resulted in a hit on just 34 occasions, and 26 of those are singles. The league is slugging .223 against Archer’s slider, and .396 against his other pitches. Maybe you can get lucky and make contact, but it likely isn’t going very far.
Navarro, one of the three current Blue Jays ever to homer off Archer, got a 2-2 backdoor slider from him in the first inning of a game last September and walloped it into the right field seats. It was only the 18th time a major leaguer has hit Archer’s slider out of the park since he broke into the league in 2012. “It was the nastiest slider he ever threw in his life,” Navarro says with a grin, unable to pass up the opportunity to boast. “And I took it deep.”
Navarro’s also one of only two Blue Jays to earn a run against Archer this season, after he took a 1-1 fastball deep in late June. It was only the second extra-base hit Archer had surrendered to the Blue Jays all year. A three-hit, two-run fifth the Jays scraped together against him in July now stands as their best inning against him
this season.
For the Jays, the key is capitalizing on the rare opportunities Archer slips you, putting a good swing on anything even close to a hittable pitch. “You have to attack him early. If he gets into his groove, it’s going to be tough to beat him,” Reyes says. “If you have an opportunity to score some runs early in the game, you have to do it. Because after two or three innings, he’s going to get going.” The Blue Jays have only managed to put a runner into scoring position five times against Archer this season and came away empty-handed every occasion save for one, when Rays third baseman Evan Longoria spiked a throw to first on what should have been a routine, inning-ending groundout. The run was unearned; there was no RBI on the play.
It has to be frustrating for Toronto’s hitters, but they give him credit, just as Superman had respect for kryptonite. “He’s de nitely one of the best pitchers in the game right now,” Reyes says. “He’s got a long career ahead of him. We’ll see where he goes. Right now, it’s unbelievable what he’s able to do.” @ArdenZwelling
