| If McClanahan is the ace, what is Jeffrey Springs? |
| This is not hyperbole. It’s not exaggeration. This is a fact-based, research-driven, wholly objective analysis of the performance of Jeffrey Springs on Sunday afternoon against the Tigers. Holy #%$#! I feel confident in that evaluation. Springs faced 19 hitters and struck out 12. He did not allow a run, did not allow a hit and only permitted two balls out of the infield. That’s the kind of thing a 12-year-old with a mustache does in a Little League game. Springs threw first-pitch strikes to 18 of the 19 hitters he faced. He got five called strike-threes on fastballs, and not one of those pitches was thrown at more than 93 mph. He got seven strikeouts swinging, and six were on changeups between 80-82 mph. This was an absolute clinic on keeping hitters off-balance, and it was a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon at the ballpark. In an age where it feels like half the pitchers in the league are throwing 97-98 mph, Springs carved up the Tigers by keeping the ball low, and moving horizontally across the plate. Before Springs, do you know how many times a pitcher has faced 19 or fewer batters and struck out 12 or more in Major League history? Seven times. That’s it. Seven times in 120-plus years of big-league ball. And of those seven, do you know how many did not give up a single hit? Yeah, one. A couple of years ago, Jose Berrios of the Twins also faced 19 batters, struck out 12 and didn’t give up a hit. And, like Springs, Berrios was pulled after six innings and more than 80 pitches because it was his first start of the season. “That was just an outstanding performance,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said. “Ton of swing-and-miss, ton of called strikes. His stuff is probably playing at an all-time high and he’s putting it to use about as good as you possibly can.” (By the way, it was absolutely the right decision to pull Springs out of the game. It would have likely taken him 120 or more pitches to complete nine innings, and Springs has never thrown more than 102 pitches in his big-league career. To top 120 in his first start of the season would have been an irresponsible injury risk.) Now, there is a disclaimer. The Tigers are not a very good team. That likely had something to do with Springs’ dominance. But it should also be pointed out that the Rays left-hander has been doing this for a month. He threw 14 shutout innings this spring and struck out half the batters he faced. I brazenly – some might say stupidly – suggested Springs was a Cy Young Award candidate in a column last week. Six innings is a long way from postseason awards, but Springs served notice that he’s not just a run-of-the-mill reclamation project in Tampa Bay. |
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