Connelly Early has tricks up his sleeve

As a writer, Connelly Early has an annoying name. There isn’t a great substitute for the word early, and it makes for some awkward sentences. Fortunately for Early, his pitching makes for some awkward swings and is incredibly fun to watch, which makes up for his syntactically frustrating name.

Early was faced with a challenge in his second career start. He faced the Athletics in his debut and had to run it back exactly a week later. Facing the same hitters typically gives an edge to the hitters, knowing how the pitcher will approach them.

In his first start, Early used his sinker against lefties to get ahead, turning to sweepers and curveballs to put them away. Against righties, he kept everything down in the zone and “pitched backwards”. He used his breaking stuff early in at-bats, turning to more four-seam fastballs and changeups later in counts. He executed his plan, striking out 11 Athletics over five shutout innings. By all accounts, it was a great start, but I couldn’t help but wonder how repeatable the approach was against the same opponent, especially against righties. Let’s look at an at-bat from that first start.

Here’s Colby Thomas in the fourth. In his first at-bat, he took two fastballs for strikes before whiffing on a curveball.

Early starts him off with a slider, and Thomas is looking for another first-pitch fastball. He’s out in front and whiffs for strike one.

He follows it up with a really good changeup, and Thomas is again out in front to make it 0-2.

And at 0-2, Early dots a fastball for called strike three. This pitch worked for a few reasons. The first is that it starts in a very similar location to the first pitch slider, but it stays straight instead of continuing to run in on him. The second reason is that Early threw so much spin to this point in the game, he could slip fastballs by for called strikes. He threw 23 fastballs to righties and only got eight swings. That isn’t a bad thing, because he was in the zone and got 30% called strikes with his four-seam. The thing is, his fastballs were hittable. Here’s the heatmap.

Early deserves credit for setting up his fastball so that he could slip it by hitters, but they’re in very hittable locations, and the shape isn’t so incredible to compensate. Don’t get me wrong, it worked great. This is major league baseball, though, and hitters make adjustments, especially when they get another chance at it one week later. For that reason, I was interested to see if Early could adjust.

Would you just get to the point already? Relax. That stuff was important to set up this next part. It’s called exposition or foreshadowing or something.

On Tuesday, Early took the mound against the Athletics again, with mostly the same lineup. My expectation was that the A’s would be more aggressive and wouldn’t allow Early to spin them to death, especially the righties. First-pitch breaking balls are great when hitters aren’t expecting them. When they start in the zone and finish out, hitters hunting fastballs are get in front and whiff. When they start out and land in, those same hitters take them for called strikes. If someone is looking for a first-pitch curveball, they get sent to the seats.

The Red Sox coaching staff must have had a similar expectation, because Early totally changed his approach and stayed one step ahead of the A’s. In his debut, he didn’t throw a single sinker to righties. In the rematch, it was featured heavily. He used it in all counts, in the zone to get strikes. Rather than trying to sneak his four-seam by, he made an effort to elevate the pitch for whiffs. He also featured more changeups, the pitch that got rave reviews in the minor leagues, and it came through for him. Let’s get to the action.

Here’s Brent Rooker in the first inning. Rooker was 0-3 with three strikeouts against Early in the first meeting. He saw four fastballs on 14 pitches.

Early begins with a sinker that starts on the outside edge and runs off the plate. Rooker is looking for something coming towards him and comes up empty.

Early tries to play the changeup off of it. It looks the same out of his hand, but the changeup is slower and shows significantly more drop. This one is too far outside, but it’s a good idea, and it’s a miss that can’t be punished.

Early goes back to the sinker and dots the bottom corner. With two strikes, Rooker is more ready for it and hits it well, but it’s a difficult pitch to drive in the air, and Trevor Story is positioned perfectly to field the ball and end the inning. Let’s look at one more.

Here’s Darell Hernaiz. He was 0-2 with a strikeout against Early in the first meeting, seeing only one fastball.

Early starts him with a fastball, but misses just inside. Good spot, just a little too far in.

He goes with the changeup, and it’s a really good one. Hernaiz is out in front and barely gets his bat on it to foul it off. That’s as good as a whiff with no strikes.

In an even count, Early goes back to the changeup but leaves this one a little low. Early should avoid tripling up on the changeup at 2-1.

This is great. Ahead in the count, Hernaiz wants something to drive, and Early places his sinker perfectly on the corner to even the count. With two strikes, Early can throw pretty much anything, but this is where I’d like to see the elevated fastball after several pitches down in the zone. I’d avoid another sinker with the hitter protecting the plate, unless he wants to front hip it, but even that’s probably not in his bag right now.

Yuck. Early spikes the curveball to run the count full. You don’t want to walk a runner over to second, so he should throw whatever he feels confident getting in the zone.

So much for walking a runner over to second, right? I had heard a lot about his pick-off move, but hadn’t actually seen it. Turns out it’s pretty good. You still don’t want to walk a runner, but there’s a little more leeway with nobody on and two outs.

Early goes back to the sinker. It starts on the outside edge and runs out of the zone. Hernaiz is protecting with two strikes and can only tap it back to Early, who makes the easy play. He had the sinker in his debut, but kept it on the shelf against righties. In this outing, it featured more prominently and did an excellent job.

Early’s pitch shapes from his first start to his second were materially the same. His release point was the same. I wasn’t paying close attention, but his haircut appeared unchanged from his previous start. On the surface, the A’s were facing Connelly Early for a second time in a week, but the Early they got the second time around was a wholly different pitcher. That’s really, really impressive for a pitcher with five career innings under his belt.

I feel like I put a nice bow on that. If you want to stop reading there, I’m totally fine with that. If you want to watch one more at-bat with me, please do. Here he is against Lawrence Butler, a lefty, just for fun.

It’s a sinker, in on the hands to start the at-bat. Butler is late and can’t get around it, fouling it off to go down 0-1.

Early follows it with a curveball that starts in and finishes just below the zone. He gets some help from Mr. Umpire, and Butler is down 0-2. At this point, Early can throw whatever he wants. It’s worth noting that in the first game, when Early got Butler to two strikes, he used fastballs to strike him out twice.

Early goes with a sweeper that sweeps all the way across the plate. Butler, probably thinking back to his last at-bat against Early, is thinking he’s going to come with velocity, and nearly falls over flailing at this thing. Gee whiz, is pitching cool or what?

0 Comments