April 23, Wrigley Field, the ninth inning: Inside a blown save

I'm as die-hard of a Cardinals fan as you'll find, but there are some things I just don't like as much as I should about this team. Fredbird is one. In terms of baseball mascots, Fredbird's pretty good, much better than noted water gun assassin Billy the Marlin or the Cleveland's Slider, an anthropomorphic pink blob that seems to have emerged from a particularly dirty part of Lake Erie. But one time, when I was at a Cards game (can't remember which Busch it was), Fredbird was walking around and throwing t-shirts into the stands. He looked directly at me and motioned like he was about to throw (even through those dead mascot eyes, I could tell), but then tossed the t-shirt to some other kid further down. So yeah, young, impressionable me didn't take that so well.

Then there's Jason Motte. He's good, there's no arguing that. With his trusty companion Sir Glovington A. Wilson in tow, Motte was HUGE in the 2011 postseason. 2.19 ERA, five saves in five opportunities, a BABIP of .121...his more complex stats, like SIERA and FIP, skewed a bit high because he didn't strike out as many people in the postseason, but he was still pretty damn good. And he's been great in 2012, with 10.80 K/9, a .214 BABIP and 3.09 xFIP. But again, I don't like him as much as he as earned due to one bad experience. I live near Washington, D.C. and for my birthday gift last year, I got tickets to a Nats-Cards game. It was a pretty cool game and my dad and I had great seats, and the Cards were leading 6-2 going into the seventh. But then Miguel Batista and Trever Miller decide to screw up and eventually leave the bases loaded for Motte with the score tied. And THEN, Motte walks Laynce Nix to give the Nats the lead. I tell ya, nothing rustles my jimmies like bases-loaded walks. Motte then proceeded to give up an RBI single to Jayson Werth to put the lead at 8-6. Motte wasn't actually responsible for any of the runs and ended up getting the Cards out of the inning, but yeah, that's why I've never really liked him that much. I dunno, irrational grudges and such, what can you do. I mean, he did help ruin my birthday present.

And Monday night's loss to the Cubs did nothing to help my impression of Motte. I hate blown saves/leads, especially against the Cubs and especially when they result in a walk-off. Lets's take a look inside the inning, batter by batter. And I'm listening to Belle and Sebastian while I'm writing this and re-watching the ninth inning, so it's like a really weird music video.

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Alfonso Soriano - 0 outs, bases empty

Motte misses high and inside on the first pitch. Can't fault what he was trying to do with that, just the location. The next three pitches are what we have come to know and love from Motte - three fastballs with which he comes right at Soriano, catching a big chunk of the plate and daring him to hit them. He fouls them off. Motte misses low and outside with a cutter, but then fans Soriano with a 98 mph fastball on the outside corner which probably looked even faster after the 92 mph cutter.  

Bryan LaHair - 1 out, bases empty

LaHair established himself as an unpopular guy in St. Louis, as he hit a grand slam in the Cardinals' home opener to help the Cubs play spoiler. Motte blows a low 97 mph fastball past LaHair on the first pitch. The next two pitches are balls, first a miss inside then out. LaHair whiffs on the fourth pitch and suddenly he's in the same situation as Soriano. Motte runs the count full when a 99 mph fastball misses wide. LaHair then proceeds to foul off SIX pitches, none of them slower than 95 mph. He walks on the 12th, a high and outside fastball. That was a hell of an at-bat, one that can rattle a pitcher and make him lose confidence in his stuff. 

Geovany Soto - 1 out, runner on first

Perhaps rattled by the previous at-bat, Motte walks Soto on four pitches, two cutters followed by two fastballs. The first three come close to the corners, but the fourth misses well low and in. 

Steve Clevenger - 1 out, runners on first and second

Matheny bring the whole infield together for a quick chat beforehand, most like to try to calm down his closer and communicate the defensive shift. Clevenger came in hitting .556 over 19 plate appearances, including 10 for 17 against RHPs. He gets the count to 1-2, the chops an inside cutter to Descalso at first, advancing the runners with a great piece of situational hitting. 

Joe Mather - 2 outs, runners on second and third

Mather has spent the majority of his career in the Cards' organization and he and Motte were teammates as recently as 2010. I was impressed with Mather's physical tools when he was in St. Louis, but he just never hit well or exhibited very good plate discipline. He seemed to be the typical AAAA player. But I digress, the at-bat. First pitch, low cutter for a strike. Motte goes back to the low heater (97 mph) to get the count to 0-2. It looks like his nerves get the best of him as he overthrows the third pitch and misses badly outside. Same with the fourth, a cutter which misses badly low. The count is now 2-2, and Motte is as desperate as ever to put the game away for good, wanting badly to avoid a duel like he had against LaHair. Motte's slider can be described as a tertiary pitch at best: Fangraphs indicates that he stopped throwing it in 2009 and PITCHf/x says he threw it 0.3% of the time in 2011. But he hasn't thrown it yet in this inning. So on the fifth pitch, he throws it, hangs it and Mather bangs it. His shot up the middle scores both runners. Ballgame.

The numbers

Simply put, Motte didn't throw enough strikes. The velocity on all his pitches was just fine, even a bit higher than his season average on the fastball of 96.6. But he threw 18 strikes to 13 balls. He threw 18 4-seamers and only half of them were strikes. If you're facing batters consistently fouling balls off and showing a good defensive hitting approach like the Cubs were in the ninth, you've got to at least pound the strike zone and force them to put the ball in play eventually. Motte wasn't able to do that, and the Cubs didn't let him off the hook. The majority of Motte's 4-seamers this season have been strikes, and he needs to keep it that way unless we want to see performances like last night become a recurring theme. And the slider: if you crunch the numbers based on the PITCHf/x data, it was the first one he's thrown this season. There really was no need to use it, as the previous batters didn't even hit any of his other pitches hard. It was just a bad decision made at a very inopportune time.