Mike's Mets - Marcus Stroman Was Impressive in His Spring Debut

By Mike Steffanos March 3, 2021

I'm not one to make too much of spring training appearances for pitchers. Often in spring games, pitchers are working on getting ready for the season rather than concentrating strictly on getting outs. For instance, if he's working on sharpening his slider, he's going to throw it a lot, even if the hitters are looking for it. Early on in the spring, batters are still searching for their timing, which may allow a hurler to get away with pitches that will be sent into deep orbit once the season starts. As tempting as it is, when I am watching spring games, I try to get more general impressions of players' performances and stay away from reading too much into stat lines.

Keeping that in mind, I generally had favorable impressions of the Mets pitchers who took the mound against the Astros yesterday.

I have to admit I was puzzled when it was reported that Marcus Stroman talked manager Luis Rojas into starting him against the Astros. Starting pitchers who are considered locks in the rotation don't pitch in these early games. I thought it kind of a douchey move on his part. He could have got his work in an intrasquad game and allowed kids who were competing for jobs to pitch those 2 innings. It made more sense once I learned that Stroman had been working on a split change and wanted to see it against live batters on another team.

The results were impressive. That changeup looked good, as did the rest of his pitches. I've been thinking about Stroman a lot this spring. The Mets will need Jacob deGrom, Carlos Carrasco, and Stroman pitching effectively early to help them get off to a solid start. The division is going to be really tough. They can't afford to bury themselves early on. Of the big three, I'm most worried about Stroman.

I wasn't all that impressed with the man when he came over in 2019. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt for that short 11-game stretch because it's been reported that he was trying to do too much to strike out batters rather than pitching as he normally does to contact. If the changeup continues to be effective, he'll have a weapon that he's never had before in the majors, and that's great.

Still, if he's to be an effective starter for the Mets this season, it would help to have some confidence in the defense behind him, particularly the infield defense. It might behoove manager Luis Rojas to try to field his best defensive lineup when Stroman pitches. There have been reports that Stroman is trying to throw his 4-seam fastball up in the zone more often, and he's been getting a higher spin rate on it. High-spin 4-seamers up in the zone are the pitch de jour, an answer to the "launch-angle" approach of most of today's Major League hitters. All well and good, but Stroman's bread and butter is his hard sinker, and he shouldn't get too infatuated with his 4-seamer at the expense of that strength. Having confidence in his infield defense should help there.

The Mets are talking a good game about making defense the priority this year that it has failed to be in recent seasons. Confidence in his defense surely will help Stroman pitch at his most effective. Assuming improved defense becomes a reality, the whole staff will benefit, not just Stroman, and that's going to help the Mets actualize the promise of their greatly improved roster into wins on the field.

Further reading: Michael Ajeto had a really detailed piece on Stroman at PitcherList.com. Well worth checking out if you enjoy getting into the weeds of what makes Stroman effective. Of particular interest to me is why it's so difficult for pitchers who feature heavy sinkers to develop an effective changeup, and why the split change may be a difference-maker for Stroman:

For Stroman, his changeup has struggled to separate from his sinker both in velocity gap and by vertical or horizontal movement. In fact, when not including the forces of gravity, his sinker actually gets more vertical movement than his changeup. Split-changes are low-spin pitches, and so, since Stroman hasn’t been able to kill lift on his changeup, his split-change may be able to help him get there.

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