HOUSTON – Astros starter Framber Valdez started Game 1 of the World Series with his bread and butter: his sinker. It’s his most used pitch, and it’s also the one that allows him to generate a remarkable number of grounders, more than any other pitcher in baseball. Here’s how the southpaw works when he’s at his best: He thrives in the lower half of the zone, pairing the sinker with a nasty curve, a combination that typically leaves hitters scrambling to lift the ball off the ground.
So how else would Valdez have started the World Series? He pitched the sinker one, two, three times to Braves leadoff hitter Jorge Soler. But there was a problem with that third: the plumb line did not sink. Valdez left him unusually high in the zone, and Soler made him pay, taking him deep to center field for a home run.
This was historic. (Soler became the first player in history to homer in the first at-bat of the World Series.) It also heralded a bad night for Valdez. After a spectacular performance in his last start, Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, he simply couldn’t follow his typical formula for success on Tuesday. The Braves consistently managed to make hard contact on their pitches and put them in the air: they hit more flyovers and line pitches (six) than ground balls (five). Valdez was retired in the third inning after allowing five runs and eight hits; Houston never came out of that hole and lost 6-2.
“I left the ball in the zone tonight, so they were able to get a lot of flys, a lot of line drives,” Valdez said through a translator. “That’s not the type of pitcher I am.”
Astros starter Framber Valdez reacts during the second inning against the Braves in Game 1.
Troy Taormina / USA Today Sports
A Valdez-Braves showdown was always going to result in one side going out of its typical focus: While Valdez kept the ball on the ground this season more than any other pitcher, Atlanta hit fewer ground balls than almost any other team, second only to by San Francisco. In other words? Valdez’s groundout rate this season was slightly over 70%, Atlanta’s was around 40%, and those two numbers just don’t fit together. One would have to give in. And on Tuesday, from the first hitter, it was Valdez.
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So how was Atlanta planning to approach him? Perhaps there was no one better to ask than the two Braves who lifted the ball to hit home runs from the pitcher: Soler and outfielder Adam Duvall.
“Our game plan was to try to make good shots. Obviously, he’s not going to give you too many, but just try to shrink our zone, see him up and try to hit a fly ball, ”Duvall said. “Because his plumb bobs are so good, and his curve ball is going down too.”
Soler expressed it in a similar way.
“Obviously he’s a thrower that induces a lot of grooves, but I think our approach was the same, just trying to pick him up in the air and hit a fly ball,” he said through a translator. “Especially for right-handed hitters. If it goes to the middle or the middle, we are trying to take it to the opposite side. “
The Braves were able to make all of that happen on Tuesday. But his eye for Valdez’s mistakes was, of course, just one piece of the puzzle. The pitcher also fell behind on the count frequently. At times, he struggled to locate his curve. And perhaps most damning of all, when it came to his plumb bob, he consistently threw it harder than he normally does, making it difficult for him to get it where he needed to.
“He probably threw a little too hard, and it ends up being a fastball,” Houston manager Dusty Baker said. “So we had to go find him.”
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Valdez averaged 92 mph on his plumb bob all season. On Tuesday, throwing the pitch more than two dozen times, he averaged 95 mph.
“Maybe he was trying to do too much, throwing too hard,” he said. “He was in the zone, but not exactly where he wanted to be, and not exactly where the receiver wanted him.”
It was a demoralizing start. However, Valdez has already rebounded from one of those in October: In Game 1 of the American League Championship Series, he was similarly retired early on after struggling to execute his pitches, but he followed that tough night with eight. Flawless one-run ball tackles in Game 5. And in this case, the adjustment you will have to make next time is obvious: you will have to keep the ball in the zone.
“If I do that, I can get my ground balls, get my outs, get my strikeouts,” he said. “It’s just a matter of not leaving the ball in the zone so much.”
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.