Welcome back to another edition of The Anatomy of An Inning. My name is Jacob Roy, and I pretend to know pitching better than the pitchers themselves. If you’re new here or need a reminder of what this is all about, I take an inning from the previous week or so and break it down, one pitch at a time. Each pitch should have a purpose, I’m looking at each of them individually to try to go beyond the box score and tell the full story.
Although Slaten is in his first Major League season, it’s actually his second time seeing O’Hoppe. The first time, he struck him out on three pitches, including two incredibly ugly swings on sweepers in the dirt. O’Hoppe is a fairly aggressive hitter, but he does struggle with pitches down in the zone, so I’d expect more sweepers from Slaten.
Alright, this works. After Adell takes two pitches below the zone, Slaten tries to execute what we saw Kutter Crawford do a few weeks ago. He’s expecting Adell to continue to take any pitch down in the zone as he reads sweeper, so he wants to throw his four-seamer down and away for called strike three. He doesn’t hit his spot, but the pitch ties up Adell who grounds out to third for the first out.
