Daniel Norris described the experience of striking out David Ortiz in his MLB debut as ‘surreal,’ like something out of a movie. The 21-year-old left-hander’s first big league start didn’t follow the same script, but he still showed promise in a 7-5 loss to the Seattle Mariners Thursday.
Norris acknowledges that the mid-nineties fastball and pinpoint command he displayed earlier in the year are now eluding him.
“It’s obvious my stuff’s not really there, so it’s tough to try and pitch without your stuff,” he said. “Sometimes that’s part of the competitor that has to come out and I think that’s what I tried today is just go out there and compete.”
Norris started strong, limiting the Mariners to one walk and no hits through his first three innings. He relied heavily on a fastball in the 91-94 mph range, and while he threw nearly as many balls as strikes, the Mariners didn’t generate much hard contact against his offerings early on.
Yet in the fourth inning, Norris faltered, allowing a single and a walk before being removed for the first of five Blue Jays relievers. With Norris on a pitch count in the 50-60 range, manager John Gibbons called for Todd Redmond, who took over and promptly allowed a single and a home run with two runs charged to Norris.
Numbers aside, it’s been an ‘unbelievable experience’ for Norris, who continues absorbing as much as he can from his teammates. Still, he wasn’t as aggressive as he wanted to be in his final outing of the year. He threw just 29 of his 59 pitches for strikes, a pattern that also surfaced in his relief outings, when he threw just 41 of 79 total pitches for strikes.
“Not only is the velocity down, but just command of it is just different,” Norris said.
Gibbons saw Norris try to be aggressive before encountering some mechanical issues that prevented him from keeping the ball down.
“A lot of lefties are like that,” Gibbons said. “There’s some funk to the delivery. It’s not a smooth, polished-type delivery, so he battled that a little bit, but when he can iron some things out he’ll get more consistency, I think.”
As for the diminished velocity? “It’s in there,” Gibbons said. “Everybody has seen it.”
Pitching coach Pete Walker has worked with Norris to solve any mechanical issues, but it’s also possible that the left-hander is fatigued after pitching more than 130 innings. Ultimately the sessions with Walker didn’t restore Norris’s stuff, and as a result he ended a tremendous season in a bittersweet way.
“I was a little frustrated,” he said. “I haven’t been sharp since I’ve been up here, so that kind of nags on me. I want to go out there and have a good showing and feel better.”
Seattle’s four-run fourth inning was disappointing for the Blue Jays and their top prospect, but considering where he began the year, it’s telling that he has already earned a big-league start. Norris made his way from Class A Dunedin to Toronto in just one season, with stops at double-A New Hampshire and triple-A Buffalo along the way. The 2011 second-round selection posted a 2.53 ERA across three minor league levels, generating more than one strikeout per inning pitched at each stop for a total of 163 strikeouts in 124.2 innings. Along the way, he topped Baseball America’s mid-season list of Toronto’s best prospects.
The performance earned Norris a spot in the Blue Jays’ bullpen as a September call-up, and he made four MLB relief appearances with mixed results. He struck out three — including the memorable Ortiz strikeout at Fenway Park — while allowing four hits and three walks allowed in 3.1 innings. All along, Gibbons has urged Norris to use the same approach that allowed him to succeed against minor league hitters.
“When he got here I basically told him ‘it’s still the same game,’” Gibbons said. “Yeah, everything’s magnified up here, but being a pitcher, if you make your pitches you’re probably going to get them out. If you don’t you’ll get hit. That’s the way it works.”
Norris certainly has the stuff to retire big league hitters, and now it’s a matter of challenging them the way MLB’s best pitchers do. Norris enjoys watching Clayton Kershaw pitch precisely because of the way he attacks the strike zone.
“He never nibbles, he just goes right at guys. Here’s my heater, hit it. Here’s my slider, hit it. Here’s my curveball, hit it. It just goes to show that you can get guys out by just attacking them,” Norris said earlier this month. “They’re going to get themselves out.”
Norris knows he needs to throw strikes to succeed. A winter away from professional mounds should eliminate any fatigue and allow him to attack hitters more consistently. Then he’ll be that much closer to completing his Hollywood-esque ascent from prospect to polished big leaguer.