The Astros had a plan of attack for Patrick Corbin in Game 4, and they executed it with precision - The Washington Post

The filthy sliders from Corbin that right-handed hitters routinely chase even as they’re about to clip their back foot, the Astros’ hitters routinely took for balls. And it was out there on the edges of the strike zone that the Astros won Game 4 of the World Series, whipping the Nationals, 8-1, to even the series at two games apiece.

“Our approach was right,” Astros shortstop Carlos Correa said. “There’s some pitchers out there who are legit, and he’s one of them. His slider is one of best pitches we’ve seen. You have to have the right approach against him. And I feel like as a team we had the right approach against Corbin.”

This series is tied, and pointed toward a Max Scherzer/Gerrit Cole rematch on Sunday night and a climax in Houston next week, because the home team has yet to win a game. It’s tied because, in Saturday night’s Game 4, the same Nationals lineup that had strafed Cy Young candidates Cole and Justin Verlander in a pair of wins in Houston was shut down by a 24-year-old rookie pitcher, Jose Urquidy, making his eighth major league start.

It’s tied because, in an Astros lineup stacked with five current or former all-stars with a total of 16 all-star appearances between them, a 35-year-old catcher with a career .234 batting average, Robinson Chirinos, took the game’s biggest swing — a two-run homer off Corbin in the fourth inning to push the Astros’ lead to 4-0 and start the Nationals down the path of using their lesser relievers, with predictably disastrous results.

And it’s tied because the real 2019 Astros — the ones who won 107 games over the regular season and careened into the playoffs as the overwhelming favorites — finally showed up. In surviving the Tampa Bay Rays in the Division Series and the New York Yankees in the ALCS, then dropping a pair at home to the Nationals — and amassing a run-differential of minus-eight along the way — the Astros had only hinted at their might.

“This is the team we’ve been all year, and were finally back,” Correa said. “You can keep us down for a couple of games, but not a whole series.”

But mostly, it’s tied because of what the Astros’ collection of polished and professional hitters, masters of the quick study and the smart adjustment, did to Corbin, back when the game was still up for grabs. They made him throw it over the plate, and punished him when he did. They ambushed him for four straight singles during a two-run first inning, rarely allowing him to get into the types of two-strike counts where he could unleash his lethal slider.

“They came out swinging,” Corbin said. “They got on me quick, off my fastball.”

Corbin was so surprised at the Astros’ tactics, he went to a different mix of pitches than usual, sprinkling in more curveballs and change-ups, pitches that he used in only 3.6 percent and 5.8 percent, respectively, of his overall pitches this season. In Game 4, he threw five curves and 10 change-ups — 5.2 percent and 10.4 percent of his 96 pitches on the night.

“I thought we did a great job of hitting his fastball to make him kind of go … away from his slider and make him throw change-ups and even the slow curveball,” said veteran outfielder Josh Reddick. “I don’t think we’ve seen that many change-ups and curveballs thrown by Corbin all postseason. I think it made us feel like we got in his head a little bit, and made him switch up his game plan.”

Because Corbin has spent the entirety of his big league career in the National League, the Astros had seen him only sparingly before this season. And when Corbin faced Correa during a one-inning relief appearance in the sixth inning of the Nationals’ Game 1 win, he fooled him badly, getting him to chase a 3-2 back-foot slider out of the zone for strike three.

Corbin, in fact, excels at this. Out of 76 pitchers who threw at least 2,500 pitches in 2019, Corbin’s “chase” rate — the percentage of a pitcher’s out-of-the-strike-zone pitches that hitters swing at — of 19.9 percent ranked second only to Minnesota’s Kyle Gibson in the major leagues. This skill, coaxing ugly swings with pitches that look like strikes until they’re not, earned him a $140 million contract from the Nationals last winter.

But as good as Corbin is at getting batters to chase, the Astros’ hitters are nearly as good at laying off those pitches. They ranked sixth in MLB in 2019 in lowest chase rate — 13.8 percent — which goes a long way toward explaining how a team that led the majors in slugging percentage (.495) could also make the most contact (80.7 percent of all swings) and strike out the fewest times (7.2 times per game). If it’s a ball, the Astros, for the most part, don’t swing.

Alex Bregman, the Astros’ brash third baseman, best personifies this ability; his chase rate of 8.5 percent this year was the second-best in the majors in 2019, behind Tommy Pham of the Rays. Bregman would single off Corbin during that first-inning ambush, ripping a first-pitch fastball to left-center, but would save his biggest damage for reliever Fernando Rodney, off whom he crushed a grand slam in the seventh.

But on Saturday night, Exhibit A was Correa.

When Correa, in Saturday night’s first inning, faced Corbin again for the first time since the strikeout in Game 1, he was ready. He worked a seven-pitch walk during the Astros’ two-run inning, laying off a pair of tough sliders along the way. He drew another walk off Corbin leading off the pivotal fourth inning, spitting at another off-the-plate slider. The next batter was Chirinos, who took a first-pitch slider just off the plate, then unloaded on a 1-0 change-up down the middle of the plate.

“He gets the most swings-and-misses and chases on the slider in the league,” said Correa. “We worked really hard on laying off those sliders. It’s his best pitch. When you don’t see a pitcher throw a whole year, you don’t have an idea what he’s going to do. But then you face him and you know his patterns and what he likes to do. Every time [Corbin] was in trouble, he wants to go his slider. We did a good job laying off so we could get the fastball.”

Before the series began, when Nationals pitching coach Paul Menhart was asked if he thought his starters, especially Corbin, could get the disciplined Astros lineup to chase out of the zone, he answered, “Without a doubt, absolutely, if they’re properly set up. They’re human beings. We have guys who have the ability to make a pitch look like a strike for a very long time and then not be a strike.”

The more the Astros see a pitcher, the more likely they are to crush him. This is true both over the course of a single game — they put up a .907 OPS (on-base plus slugging) against opposing starters the third time through the order, second in the majors and exactly 100 points above the league average — and a postseason series.

Already this postseason, they have pounced on Tampa Bay Rays flamethrower Tyler Glasnow and New York Yankees standout Masahiro Tanaka in each pitcher’s second start against them in their respective series. The Yankees’ grand plan of bullpenning their way to victory over the Astros exploded on them when Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel, facing Yankees reliever Chad Green for the fourth time in the series, bashed a three-run homer off him in the decisive Game 6.

Figuring out opposing pitchers: it’s what the Astros do — and what they have done better than perhaps any other team in the game the past few years.

Along the way, the Astros, especially in their home park, have been accused of everything from stealing signs to detecting when a pitcher is tipping his pitches to illegally using cameras in the pursuit of one or both. The flip-side of the argument is that these dark arts have long traditions in the game, and if the Astros are better than everyone else at using high-tech video-study to see what “tells” a pitcher might have for each, good for them.

And Max Scherzer, be forewarned: you’re up next on their hit list.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2019/10/27/astros-had-plan-attack-patrick-corbin-game-they-executed-it-with-precision/

2019-10-27 11:00:00Z
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