By Brandon Warne
The Minnesota Twins believe Kyle Gibson is a big part of their future plans of success, and if he pitches like he did Wednesday night against the Royals, the odds are on his side. Gibson moved his sinker, slider and changeup in and out of the zone masterfully to keep the Royals off balance over 6.2 innings of one-run ball. Gibson scattered nine hits to the effect that someone can do such a thing, and struck out three while not issuing a free pass in his first win of the young season.
The 27-year-old righty is known as a sinker-slider guy, and to those unaware, that basically means he uses two pitches with completely opposite planes to try keep batters honest on both sides of the plate.
“(Former Twins pitcher) Kevin Slowey mentioned (executing each corner) to me a few years ago,” Gibson noted of his basic pitching philosophy. “You want to ‘x’ that outside corner and that inside corner as much as possible. You want to have pitches going both ways on each side of the plate, basically.”
It’s pretty easy to see that theory in practice. For instance, if a left-handed hitter starts to lean out over the plate on sinkers away, a slider in — or even a backdoor sinker — can shuffle his feet and keep him honest on the inside corner. More on this concept later. Gibson said he doesn’t throw too many sliders to arm side — righty on righty — but if the situation calls for it, he won’t rule it out, either.
From an outcomes standpoint, it would seem like Gibson’s slider was considerably better in 2014 than 2013. Fangraphs’ PITCHf/x data pegged the slider as inducing an opponent’s batting line (batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage) of .210/.241/.275 in 2014, quite the difference from the collective .303/.361/.485 mark it gathered the year before. But the tall righty suggests it wasn’t such a drastic change in the pitch in his eyes.
“I don’t think so,” he said regarding potential added sharpness or tilt on the pitch. “Really, between here and Triple-A I don’t know that I threw it too much different. I think it was just that hitters are different, and the hitters have a better plan in the big leagues and are more consistent.” But what does that have to do with the slider? Well in Gibson’s eyes, falling behind in the count meant he wasn’t able to set it up the same, and as he saw teams more than once and became more comfortable in the major leagues, he became better at setting it up, thus the improved outcomes from year to year.
“I think I got ahead of guys a lot better,” Gibson added. “My slider is only as good as my fastball allows it to be. It goes the same for my other pitches. If you look at 2013 and the two or maybe three games that I threw OK, I got ahead of guys, and my fastball was a lot better. That allows my slider to be better. If I’m getting ahead of guys that means my fastball is in the strike zone, and it forces hitters to be more active with their swings, and maybe take swings that they really didn’t want to take.”
None of this should suggest that Gibson hasn’t been tweaking the slider, however. “One thing last year that I tried to do was shorten up the break a little bit,” Gibson confessed. “That allowed it to be more firm — like my fastball — and come in at 85-86 mph with less but later break rather than 82-83 with more obvious break.” To the writer, and maybe to you the reader, that at least sounds like something that might have led to improved outcomes as well, and certainly bears monitoring as the 2015 season wears on.
With Moustakas’ strikeout in the top of the fifth — a 1-2, back-foot slider — it basically boiled down to Gibson wanting to keep the third baseman honest inside while also meticulously keeping track of previous encounters as well as some help from his veteran catcher.
“I think kind of the whole day and past outings set that up,” Gibson said. “The whole day on Moustakas I would pound him in and then go away. Because I was able to command that side of the plate well enough, I threw that slider off a bit and it looks like a fastball until it gets to the plate. And at that time, for him to hit the pitch — as a lefty or as a righty — he has to get his hands and barrel of the bat out quick or he’ll be jammed or miss altogether. That was set up by the fastball in, and (Kurt) Suzuki knowing how to plan.”