Nate Eaton Needs to Ditch His Four-Seamer

We’re not supposed to seek out this charming anymore. I do know that. The Era of Position Players Pitching was established all the best way again in 2017, when Jordan Walker was a scant 15 years previous. The shine has formally worn off watching non-pitchers huck batting follow fastballs towards the final neighborhood of house plate throughout rubbish time. However may we perhaps get pleasure from this one, simply as soon as extra, for a deal with? I promise I’ll be further grouchy as soon as we’re completed.

There are some things that make this occasion of place participant pitching notably enjoyable. The primary is that the participant who took the hill is completely essentially the most thrilling alternative doable. When the Baseball Savant arm strength leaderboard debuted in October, Nate Eaton ranked on the very high, with a 98.1 mph common throw that made Esteban Rivera weak within the knees. At the start of the 2022 season, Eric Longenhagen hung an 80 on Eaton’s arm, writing “Eaton has below-average offensive skill, however he can play quite a lot of positions and he has the most effective throwing arms in skilled baseball, a rocket launcher which may benefit a glance on the mound if/when Eaton and the trade declare him to have plateaued as a place participant.”

Fortunately, we didn’t have to attend that lengthy. On Monday, the Kansas Metropolis utilityman performed the fifth totally different defensive place of his younger profession, pitching a scoreless backside of the eighth in an 11-2 loss to the Rangers. He threw 22 pitches, hanging out one and permitting two singles. Eaton threw 5 pitches upwards of 94 mph, whereas Kansas Metropolis’s starter, one Zack Greinke, topped out at 91.3 mph. It’s two days later, and Greinke’s last curveball is simply now about to cross house plate.

Eaton touched 94.9 mph and his fastball averaged 93.2. Amongst all pitchers who’ve thrown at the very least 10 pitches this 12 months, that places him within the fortieth percentile, proper between Taijuan Walker and Max Scherzer.

It’s not nearly the truth that Eaton was throwing fuel. He threw three totally different pitches: a sinker, a four-seamer, and a slider. He additionally threw three of the usual 70 mph place participant pitching meatballs. Statcast labeled them as changeups, however they have been simply get-me-over tosses with a four-seam grip:

Eaton threw 45 innings in faculty, posting a 6.60 ERA and a 1.91 WHIP. He’s not precisely Shohei Ohtani (although I assume that, like everybody else who isn’t Shohei Ohtani, he needs he have been). Nonetheless, in the event you surf over to our model new Pitch Modeling leaderboard, you’ll see that his stuff graded out as delightfully stable:

PitchingBot was much less impressed, nevertheless it appeared to have a more durable time classifying Eaton’s pitches (which is comprehensible contemplating how few he threw). All the identical, a plus sinker and a plus slider in accordance with Stuff+ is nothing to sneeze at. Location+ didn’t love his command, however he nonetheless caught the black of the plate a couple of instances. He began leadoff batter Travis Jankowski off with a 94 mph four-seamer on the surface nook and ended up retiring him on a weak chopper to second base. Take a look at his first pitch to Ezequiel Duran:

That’s a 93.3 mph sinker with 17 inches of arm-side run. Eaton adopted it with one other sinker, this time at 94.3 mph. Duran managed to foul it off, however he appeared suitably impressed with Eaton’s stuff, mouthing one thing that appeared like, “Wow,” and glancing towards the third base coach as in the event you to say, “I assumed you stated this man wasn’t a pitcher!”:

After two sinkers that ran in below Duran’s arms, Salvador Perez arrange proper on the surface nook. Eaton missed his spot excessive, however Duran had had sufficient. He can not have been anticipating to see league-average velocity, not to mention a mixture of two-seamers and four-seamers on either side of the plate. It’s secure to say that Ezequiel Duran not discovered the scenario amusing:

Eaton’s slider averaged 82.4 mph, with 4.5 inches of horizontal break and 45.4 inches of vertical break. That makes Tylor Megill’s slider a reasonably respectable comp for our functions. Enjoyable reality: In line with Baseball Savant, that slider has been value -1.4 runs per 100 pitches over the course of Megill’s profession, making it his greatest pitch. Right here’s a slider Eaton threw to Duran, juxtaposed with a current slider from Megill to Bryan De La Cruz:

Duran ended up sending a slider that spun greater than it broke by way of the 5.5 gap for a single. That dropped at the plate essentially the most enjoyable doable matchup for Eaton: Corey Seager. You see, Seager was dead-set on revenge. Through the offseason, Mike Petriello calculated that Seager was the batter with essentially the most to realize from an infield shift ban. Mike additionally famous that groups may nonetheless shift an outfielder over towards the Seagers and the Joey Gallos of the world. The Royals have been doing just that, and within the fifth inning, Seager bought robbed but once more, grounding out to the brief proper fielder, some turkey named Nate Eaton:

Minimize to the eighth inning, and it’s a must to think about that Seager was out for blood. Eaton threw a juicy meatball and Seager extracted his vengeance from Eaton by way of essentially the most poetic means conceivable: a reasonably hard-hit groundball that simply barely made it by way of the suitable aspect of the infield:

With the Rangers threatening, Eaton retired Brad Miller by way of a lineout and fell behind 3-1 to Adolis García, who had already hit a grand slam earlier that night time. Eaton battled again with a four-seamer for a referred to as strike, after which threw one other proper by García for the third out:

That was the tip of Eaton’s night time. By far essentially the most pleasurable a part of the inning was the truth that Eaton appeared decided to not get pleasure from it even a bit bit. This was the least jovial occasion of place participant pitching in baseball historical past. Check out the 4 screenshots beneath. So as, they’re Eaton on the brink of pitch for the primary time within the massive leagues, Eaton after retiring his first massive league batter, Eaton in a pitching jam, and Eaton after hanging out his first batter and shutting out a scoreless inning. Simply watch all these feelings wash over his face:

Eaton’s grim dedication rubbed off on completely all people. You know the way when there’s a place participant pitching, the TV broadcast is often stuffed with pictures of teammates falling throughout themselves with laughter, or perhaps the batter and the pitcher sharing a sheepish grin after a very wild pitch? There was none of that. And I imply none. The one time cameras caught anybody smiling was after the strikeout to finish the inning. Eaton’s teammates smiled; Eaton didn’t.

Even when he spoke to reporters after the sport, Eaton by no means got here remotely near saying he’d had enjoyable whereas pitching. “I need to say it felt good,” he head-faked, “nevertheless it’s clearly not a superb scenario to be in if I’ve to come back in and pitch. Yeah, that’s about all I bought proper there.” For a man with a 0.00 profession ERA, he appeared downright despondent:

That’s not somebody who simply recorded his first massive league strikeout. That’s somebody who simply discovered how Previous Yeller ends. However that’s okay. We’re imagined to be completed having fun with ourselves anyway. I stated that I’d get again to being grouchy once we have been completed right here. Eaton simply beat me to it.