I talked a lot of shit about Ben Brown this time last week and owe him an apology after 6 scoreless innings on Saturday in Los Angeles.
I’ve never wanted to be more wrong in my life.
The genesis of my dislike is that Ben only throws two pitches, neither of which with particular confidence, gusto or command.
And more specifically, that his lack of changeup is the most telling sign that he shouldn’t be a starting pitcher. If you can’t feel a changeup much less throw one for a strike, you shouldn’t be starting in Major League Baseball. I still kinda stand by that but it’s more the timing of Ben’s 6 scoreless that render this apology necessary.
So let me apologize.
I’m sorry I wrote off Ben Brown’s career as a starter in early April of his first full season starting. I should know better to just shut the fuck up and let him play baseball.
With that – a little problem is he still needs to make 26+ starts and my hesitations are still very much true. He still can’t command a fastball, lacks confidence to his glove side on lefties and needs a 3rd pitch to make a career out of this whole thing. But for now, 6 scoreless against the Dodgers is 6 scoreless against the Dodgers. And if you listened to anything I’ve had to say about him, you’d expect him to die in the 1st or 2nd inning. So combined together, I absolutely owe him an apology for riding him into the ground for being soft and unpolished.
I’m sorry.
Here’s the reality.
If Ben Brown can consistently throw his breaking ball like he did against the Dodgers this weekend, then he should be one of the better right handed starting pitchers in the national league.
Sounds easy, but the problem is that his breaking ball has such a high ceiling.
Like when you go to Vegas and you stay out til 5am because you’re in Vegas. You wouldn’t expect that same effort on a casual Thursday back home.
But that’s kinda how Ben Brown’s breaking ball works. It’s a guys trip for a blowout weekend in Las Vegas. It’s that much bigger and special and different than your average night out for a couple beers.
With that comes a tremendous amount of responsibility. If you can’t find that pitch or it’s not as sharp, then it’s going to be a tough start because everything works off the breaking ball. If it’s flat or out of control, then the fastball becomes so much easier to hit.
But if the breaking ball is sharp and is a true swing and miss pitch, then the opposing hitters are going to be thinking about that pitch first. Especially because he only throws fastball and breaking ball. So if the breaking ball is extra sharp early, the other team is on high alert and makes them more defensive.
And when they’re more defensive, you can use more of the strike zone without getting punished. That’s because the other team will take more pitches and be less aggressive.
All of which goes back to Ben Brown trying to throw 6+ good innings each start. If he’s sharp with the breaking ball early, he can feast with his 98mph fastball throughout the day. It’s got a lot of movement and is difficult to see because he’s very tall and leverages his height for extension. That makes the distance between homeplate and the mound shorter, and thus the ball seems to be moving faster than your traditional 4 seamer.
But it becomes much easier to hit if the breaking ball isn’t a threat. If the hitter can write that off then he can sit on the fastball and tee it off.
That’s why it’s so important to have 3 pitches. The mere existence of choice means the hitter has more to think about, which is part of why I hate Ben not having a changeup in the first place. Just throwing it 8 times a start is enough to get a hitter thinking about it.
Unfortunately that’s a long term project.
For now we just have fastball/breaking ball and it’s plenty good if the breaking ball is sharp enough for the swing and miss. And the earlier he can demonstrate that to the opposition, the easier his life will be throughout that start. It’s all about showing the other team that you have something to worry about.
Good examples of this from the weekend are later in the game when he was laying cupcake fastballs over the heart of the plate. You have such a bigger leash to get away with bad pitches when you’ve already made good ones. So while that’s extremely simple, it’s much more complicated to execute and that’s why they call it the Big Leagues.
For now, I just want to apologize to Ben for writing him off in early April. The easiest way for me to explain it is that I just didn’t know the breaking ball could be so consistently filthy. So maybe just do that more often and I’ll continue to shut the fuck up.