In and of itself, Orion Kerkering striking out three Mets hitters on Thursday night wasn’t anything terribly out of the ordinary. The noteworthy part was how.
All of Kerkering’s strikeouts in the series-finale loss came on fastballs. The 23-year-old set down Francisco Lindor on a 98.7-mph heater up, J.D. Martinez on another four-seamer up and a tenth of a mile an hour slower, then Starling Marte for a called strike three with a 95-mph sinker (probably actually a two-seamer) on the outside corner.
Kerkering threw 27 pitches on Thursday and 15 of them were fastballs — 13 four-seamers, two sinkers.
Kerkering’s increased fastball usage this season has been plenty dissected. He threw his sweeper 85% of the time last season and has thrown it “just” 65% of the time this year. Alex Coffey of The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote a great piece last week about the Phillies trying to get Kerkering to throw specifically his two-seam fastball more often.
But it was interesting, on Thursday, to see Kerkering use his fastballs not just as a “show-me” offering to set up the sweeper — the pitch that helped him rise from High-A to the NLCS last season — but as a putaway one, too. Even in two-strike counts, Kerkering threw three more fastballs than he did sweepers. For what it’s worth, the only hit he allowed, a DJ Stewart single, came on a sweeper.
The fastball-heavier approach this year is working for Kerkering. He has a 1.42 ERA and has struck out 12 batters in 12 2/3 innings.
Before Thursday, of his nine strikeouts, seven had come on the sweeper — leaving, of course, just two on fastballs. That number more than doubled in the sixth inning on Thursday. Maybe it was just matchups, or maybe J.T. Realmuto just felt like it. Something to file away.
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