Nate Eaton Must Ditch His 4-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 way in which again in 2017, when Jordan Walker was a scant 15 years previous. The shine has formally worn off watching non-pitchers huck batting observe fastballs towards the overall neighborhood of dwelling plate throughout rubbish time. But might we perhaps take pleasure in this one, simply as soon as extra, for a deal with? I promise I’ll be additional grouchy as soon as we’re achieved.

There are some things that make this occasion of place participant pitching significantly enjoyable. The first is that the participant who took the hill is totally essentially the most thrilling alternative doable. When the Baseball Savant arm power leaderboard debuted in October, Nate Eaton ranked on the very prime, 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 ability, but he can play a variety of positions and he has one of the best throwing arms in professional baseball, a rocket launcher that might merit a look on the mound if/when Eaton and the industry declare him to have plateaued as a position player.”

Luckily, we didn’t have to attend that lengthy. On Monday, the Kansas City utilityman performed the fifth completely 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, putting out one and permitting two singles. Eaton threw 5 pitches upwards of 94 mph, whereas Kansas City’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 dwelling plate.

Eaton touched 94.9 mph and his fastball averaged 93.2. Among all pitchers who’ve thrown a minimum of 10 pitches this yr, 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 completely 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). Still, in the event you surf over to our model new Pitch Modeling leaderboard, you’ll see that his stuff graded out as delightfully strong:

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 occasions. He began leadoff batter Travis Jankowski off with a 94 mph four-seamer on the skin nook and ended up retiring him on a weak chopper to second base. Check out 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 seemed suitably impressed with Eaton’s stuff, mouthing one thing that seemed like, “Wow,” and glancing towards the third base coach as in the event you to say, “I thought you said this guy wasn’t a pitcher!”:

After two sinkers that ran in below Duran’s arms, Salvador Perez arrange proper on the skin nook. Eaton missed his spot excessive, however Duran had had sufficient. He can’t have been anticipating to see league-average velocity, not to mention a mixture of two-seamers and four-seamers on each side of the plate. It’s secure to say that Ezequiel Duran now not discovered the state of affairs 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 first rate comp for our functions. Fun truth: According to Baseball Savant, that slider has been price -1.4 runs per 100 pitches over the course of Megill’s profession, making it his greatest pitch. Here’s a slider Eaton threw to Duran, juxtaposed with a latest slider from Megill to Bryan De La Cruz:

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

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

With the Rangers threatening, Eaton retired Brad Miller through a lineout and fell behind 3-1 to Adolis García, who had already hit a grand slam earlier that evening. 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 evening. By far essentially the most satisfying a part of the inning was the truth that Eaton appeared decided to not take pleasure in it even slightly bit. This was the least jovial occasion of place participant pitching in baseball historical past. Take a take a look at the 4 screenshots beneath. In order, they’re Eaton on the point 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 putting out his first batter and shutting out a scoreless inning. Just watch all these feelings wash over his face:

Eaton’s grim dedication rubbed off on completely everyone. You know the way when there’s a place participant pitching, the TV broadcast is normally stuffed with photographs 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 solely 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 want to say it felt good,” he head-faked, “but it’s obviously not a good situation to be in if I have to come in and pitch. Yeah, that’s about all I got right there.” For a man with a 0.00 profession ERA, he seemed downright despondent:

That’s not somebody who simply recorded his first massive league strikeout. That’s somebody who simply came upon how Old Yeller ends. But that’s okay. We’re alleged to be achieved having fun with ourselves anyway. I mentioned that I’d get again to being grouchy after we have been completed right here. Eaton simply beat me to it.