Raising Aces: Postmortem: Chris Sale vs. the Minnesota Twins

The stage was set. The scoreboard operator had a pile of zeroes at the ready. Gunslinger Chris Sale was in town, and he had established a reputation for blanking opponents.

The Condor had allowed two earned runs or fewer in each of his first three starts of the season, and he surrendered more than three earnies just thrice in 26 starts in 2014—compare that number to the eight times that he registered double-digit strikeouts last season. His worst start of the '14 season saw him cough up five earned runs in five full innings, a rather tame line when cherry-picking a pitcher's worst outing of the year.

Entering this season, Sale's highest ERA for a single campaign was a miniscule 3.07, and his past two seasons featured a composite K-to-walk ratio of 434-to-85 across 388.3 innings. He was facing a Twins club that struggled badly out of the gate and whose lineup was stacked with lefties who are vulnerable to same-side pitchers. Yet the baseball gods intervened and flip-turned Target Field upside-down, and when the smoke had cleared on the battlefield, Sale had watched nine Twins cross the plate through three innings of work, in what was the worst start of the funky-winged southpaw's career.

Welcome to the first entry in a new series for Raising Aces, “Postmortem,” in which we dive into a recent disaster start to better understand the process that led to a pitcher's horrific outcome. When a pitcher breaks bad on the stat sheet, it doesn't necessarily mean that something was wrong on the mound—then again, sometimes it means exactly that. Mechanics and stuff provide the context to better understand the spectrum of luck and skill that underlies pitcher performance. A pitcher's delivery might be off-kilter, his arsenal might be compromised, or perhaps Murphy's Law has just been declared at the stadium. Like an autopsy in the aftermath of a murder, our job is to ascertain a reasonable cause of death. Sale is our first victim.

Let's take a closer look at what happened in Minnesota last Friday.

May 1, 2015

The trouble started early, with Sale giving up consecutive hits to the second and third batters of the ballgame. It started with Torii Hunter, who yanked a 90-mph fastball down the left-field line for an easy double off the track, followed by an opposite-field bloop by Joe Mauer that fell for a base hit and gave the Twins the quick lead. The hit by Hunter was on a pitch that was poorly executed, a sinker that lacked sink and that drifted up to the arm side of its intended target, and the veteran outfielder took advantage.

He also walked a batter, but Sale was able to steer back on course with a couple of backwards Ks to end the inning, finishing off Kurt Suzuki and Kennys Vargas with 98-mph laser beams that painted targets and froze both hitters. The first frame had a bit more intrigue than is typical, but Sale's stuff and delivery looked just fine.

The second inning should have been a quick 1-2-3, but a two-out error by Alexei Ramirez setup a run-scoring single by Brian Dozier. Sale had given up a pair of runs in the first two innings, one of which was earned, but he was hitting 98 mph on the gun with solid command and little indication that the volcano was about to blow.

When a pitcher gives up a quantity as high as nine runs, it's often an indication that things unraveled quickly, before the bullpen could come in and stop the bleeding. Such was the case with Sale, who had a front-row seat as his worst nightmare came to reality in the third inning of Friday's ballgame.

Mauer led off the inning with a deep drive to right-centerfield, setting up Adam Eaton with the do-or-dive play following a 50-yard sprint; it would have taken an outstanding grab, but Eaton watched the ball clang off his glove to give Mauer a double.

Plouffe followed with his second walk of the game, but this time around Sale barely missed his target on ball four. With two on and nobody out the Twins were threatening to break the game open; and what ensued was an elaborate demonstration of the perils of balls in play. Four of the next five batters scratched out base hits, most of which came on weakly hit groundballs, and Sale watched in horror as the scoreboard lit up like a pinball machine.

Sale was showing his frustration on the mound, as everything he threw seemed to come right back in his general direction and there was nothing that he could do besides watch the runs continue to pile. It was 6-2 Twins when Dozier stepped to the dish in the third, with his career line of .286/.349/.506 against left-handers, and Sale made the mistake of throwing two pitches with nearly identical velocity in essentially the exact same location. The second fastball clocked at 92.6 mph at the bottom of the number eight on the strike zone keypad, painting the lower shelf right at the midpoint of the zone. Dozier unloaded on the pitch, yanking it down the left-field line for a three-run homer and a 9-2 Twins lead.

Sale stayed in to finish the frame, but the final tally included nine runs (eight earned), nine hits, two walks, and four strikeouts in just three innings of work. He was killed by the order of operations, as very few balls were hit hard against him yet the few that did some damage occurred with runners on base. His command was not at peak level but it was well above average, and he was coaxing plenty of suspect swings from Twins batters—they just kept finding pasture past diving infielders. Even the big blast by Dozier was on a decent pitch in terms of limiting the long ball, being low in the zone, but he scooped the pitch out of the yard.

Mechanics Report Cards

For an explanation on the grading system for pitching mechanics, please consult this pair of articles.

As off as it may sound, the mechanical profile for Sale has remained largely unchanged over the last couple of years. His lateral balance appears to be improving, and he'll always generate injury concerns due to the high frequency of elbow drag and the wiry frame, but there was little evidence in Friday's game to suggest that something was out of whack. His repetition was a bit out of synch and he had a tendency to trigger trunk rotation a bit late, missing up and to the arm side, but it was a relatively minor issue when compared to the typical pitcher. Sale just got dinked to death with a line of seeing-eye singles through the infield, and then he gave up the big fly at the most inopportune time. He was near his targets all day long, but by the time that the Twins made contact the ball was already out of Sale's hands.