ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Regression arrived Monday night against a slew of Tampa Bay Rays right-handed hitters, accentuating the career-long problem José Urquidy must correct.
Underlying metrics suggested Urquidy’s first four starts of the season involved at least some favorable fortune. His fifth created some equilibrium. Urquidy entered it with a 5.31 FIP to accompany his 3.66 ERA.
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Tampa’s overpowering offense torched Urquidy for six earned runs across 2 2/3 innings of the Astros’ 8-3 loss at Tropicana Field. He exited the mound with a 5.64 ERA and more urgency to solve his struggles against right-handed hitters. The Rays stacked their lineup with six righties against Urquidy, a righty with reverse splits. That group of right-handed bats finished 4-for-9 with two walks and a sacrifice fly.
Of the eight outs Urquidy recorded, three came against the two true left-handed hitters in Tampa’s lineup. He entered Monday holding lefties to a .603 OPS during his major league career, though switch-hitting Rays shortstop Wander Franco did whack two well-struck hits against him while hitting left-handed.
Right-handed hitters have a .779 career OPS against Urquidy, a reverse split he’s been somewhat able to mask. It’s worth wondering how much longer it can continue. After Monday’s carnage, Urquidy is allowing right-handers to slash .333/.379/.519 in 54 at-bats this season.
Urquidy is a strike-thrower with a hittable, hoppy four-seam fastball he uses to flood the zone. A sweeping slider should be his neutralizer against righties. He threw it 29 times on Monday and received 12 swings. Just three were whiffs.
If Urquidy’s slider is not performing, he is almost powerless against right-handed hitters. He throws a changeup and curveball, but uses both almost exclusively against left-handers. His slider moves down and away from right-handed hitters — who know he has no other offering to show on the inner half. Laying off the slider, if they see it out of hand, becomes easy.
“I think I have to throw more inside (to right-handed hitters),” Urquidy said after Monday’s start. “Most of the hits (against) me are (on pitches) away. I think I have to throw more in and practice that.”
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Last season, Urquidy tried to incorporate a cutter to assist on the inner half against right-handers. He shelved it in early June after struggling to balance learning a new pitch in-season.
Urquidy is trying a new offering again this season: a sinker he learned during the winter. He threw it six times on Monday, including to induce an inning-ending, rollover groundout from Isaac Paredes during the first.
“That’s what I wanted to do, throw it here for ground balls,” Urquidy said, “and I have to keep doing that. Throw more inside and move the hitters.”
Valdez’s velocity
Velocity doesn’t dictate Framber Valdez’s success. He’s blossomed into a budding ace with a sinker that hitters smash into the ground and a curveball that generates whiffs more than 40 percent of the time. Movement, command and spin are all more important than how hard he throws.
Saturday’s start against the Atlanta Braves accentuated just how much. Valdez threw 44 sinkers and averaged 95.9 mph — one mile per hour harder than his average last season — sacrificing some of his downward command for a spike in speed.
Valdez struck out nine across seven innings of three-run ball, so this isn’t an indictment of him or a quality start against an elite lineup, but rather an explanation of the delicate balance Valdez must discover between velocity and his vintage self.
Manager Dusty Baker even acknowledged after the win that “we don’t know if we want to see him throwing quite that hard” because of concerns the team has about Valdez’s movement profiles.
“There’s always going to be a velocity-movement trade-off. It’s more a command thing,” pitching coach Josh Miller said Saturday.
“Sometimes when he throws too hard, quote-unquote, he’s up in the zone a little more often than we’d like him to be. Movement was OK (on Saturday), pretty consistent with his norms. But the (velocity) definitely ticked up. I think his command was a little bit more inconsistent in terms of being down versus being up in the zone.”
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The Braves put 15 of Valdez’s sinkers in play and averaged a 99.6 mph exit velocity against them. Valdez is prone to loud contact, but most of it arrives on the ground and toward one of the sport’s best defensive infields. The risk Valdez ran on Saturday: more hard contact in the air or on a line.
Including the playoffs, Valdez threw 15 total sinkers 97 mph or harder across the past two 162-game seasons. The southpaw threw six two-seamers at 97 mph or harder on Saturday. Three others arrived at 96.9 mph. Valdez fired a 97.6 mph called strike to Atlanta catcher Sean Murphy in the sixth inning, which matched the hardest pitch of his six-year major-league career.
After allowing one home run in his first 25 innings, Valdez surrendered two in six innings on Saturday: Murphy crushed a flat changeup for a solo shot in the fourth and before Ozzie Albies mashed a middle-middle sinker — at 97.1 mph — 421 feet away into the left field seats. Of the eight hits Valdez surrendered, four were against sinkers thrown 95.8 mph or harder.
“That’s a tough lineup that put some good swings on his stuff,” Miller said. “It’s something we’ll monitor, but we’re not going to tell him to throw slow, we’re not going to tell him to back off. We want him to throw with full intent, whatever that is on any given day. Just work on commanding the ball.”
Running on Javier
Luis Garcia ditching his rock-the-baby delivery drew most of the attention, but Major League Baseball’s new pitch clock is perhaps more problematic for rotation-mate Cristian Javier, whose notoriously slow delivery time to home plate makes him susceptible to stolen bases.
Atlanta’s Ronald Acuña Jr. took advantage Sunday, stealing second base after banging a leadoff single in the first inning. Javier’s now allowed eight stolen bases this season — more than any major league pitcher and one shy of his total last season. The pitch clock prevents Javier from holding the baseball or varying his delivery, which is how he negated the running game in the pre-clock era.
“He was really good when he could hold the ball, changing his looks, all that stuff,” catcher Martín Maldonado said Monday. “Sunday, it was better than the outings before. In Pittsburgh (against the Pirates on April 11), it was better, too. I feel like after the first two starts, as a team, we got better at it.”
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Maldonado, who has one of the sport’s strongest throwing arms, has caught four of Javier’s five starts. In theory, it is a wise pairing, but Javier often doesn’t even give his catcher a chance to catch base stealers.
Opponents are 8-for-8 stealing against Javier this season. Six of those came during Javier’s first two starts of the season. The team does not want to disturb Javier’s consistency or routine by asking him to quicken his delivery, but he understands it’s an area he must improve.
The Astros can take solace in one fact: Javier finished last season with a 0.948 WHIP and, after a 10-strikeout performance on Sunday, has a 1.071 mark after five starts of this one. Runners can’t steal against him if they don’t reach base.
A sign of growth
The Astros had a handful of heroes during their three-game sweep of the Braves. Yordan Alvarez twice terrorized A.J. Minter with huge hits to catalyze comebacks. Corey Julks added one of his own to put the Astros ahead in Sunday’s game. Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman and Mauricio Dubón all delivered hits against Atlanta’s bullpen.
Perhaps no Astro deserves more credit than rookie starter Hunter Brown, who bounced back from a brutal first inning during Friday’s series opener to stabilize the game and save the team’s bullpen for the entire series.
Brown yielded four runs, four hits and walked a batter during a 29-pitch first inning.
Rookies can be volatile and crack after such a catastrophic frame. Brown did not. He got the Astros into the fifth inning and finished one out away from escaping it. After the first, Brown struck out six batters, stranded three Braves in scoring position and kept the deficit at three.
“I think as a starter, you’re definitely not trying to get bounced in the first or second inning,” Brown said. “Time to lock it in and just get back out there and give them what you got.”
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His 4 2/3 innings matched the shortest start of his brief major league career. That he even got there is an encouraging sign for his development.
Alvarez absent
Alvarez flew back to Houston before the Astros’ loss against the Rays on Monday with what Baker described as “neck discomfort.”
It is unclear if Alvarez will require a stint on the injured list or if he will return for the final two games of the Astros’ series against the Rays. Much of it depends on what the Astros’ doctors say, Baker said.
Alvarez had dealt with neck pain for most of the week, Baker said, but still managed to hit two home runs and drive in six during the team’s three-game sweep of the Braves at Truist Park.
(Top photo of Urquidy against Tampa: Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)
