Phillies take advantage of bad pitches, a breakdown
What Happened
The Philadelphia Phillies take advantage of some poorly located pitches from San Diego Padres pitcher Mike Clevinger in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series. In the bottom of the first inning, Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber steps up to the plate and crushes Clevinger's first-pitch fastball, which was left over the middle of the plate, for a towering solo home run. Schwarber, who is having a standout postseason, admires his blast before rounding the bases as his teammates celebrate. The very next batter, Bryce Harper, also jumps on Clevinger's first pitch, a 93 mph fastball that caught too much of the plate and launches it over the fence for another solo shot. The back-to-back homers give the Phillies an early 2-0 lead. Harper, who is celebrating his 30th birthday, acknowledges the milestone with a playful finger-counting celebration as his teammates congratulate him. In the second inning, Nick Castellanos continues the Phillies' onslaught, opening the frame with another solo home run off Clevinger. Castellanos sits on a first-pitch fastball from Clevinger that catches too much of the plate and drives it the other way for the third Phillies long ball of the game. Analyst breaks down the sequence, noting that Clevinger is struggling to locate his fastball and is paying the price against the hot-hitting Phillies lineup. He points out that Clevinger needs to establish his fastball command to set up his offspeed pitches, but the Phillies are not giving him that chance by pouncing on the first-pitch fastballs. overlays the locations of the home run pitches, showing how Clevinger left them in the heart of the strike zone, making them easy targets for the powerful Phillies hitters. He remarks that the Phillies cannot be given such "juicy" pitches in the current state of their offense. The early outburst from the Phillies' bats puts the Padres in a deep hole, as they trail 3-0 heading into the middle innings of this pivotal Game 1 matchup in the NLCS.
Full Transcript
Click timestamps to jump to that momentThis breakdown is brought to you by DraftKings, and I'm going to show you first what makes Gallin
a good pitcher. I did a video when he struck out Freddie Freeman showing you how much he plays off
that high fastball. Also, the low fastball. His fastball doesn't have a ton of movement. It's a
four-seam fastball. It's also not incredibly fast. It's under 95 miles per hour, so what he has to
do is hit his location, and he does in this pitch. I'm going out of order, but I'm showing you what
works for Gallin. It's a low fastball. Maybe you get a swing there, and you put it in play,
but then you get another one, and the ump doesn't call it a strike, and he's like,
ah, I wanted it, does another one, boom, swings through it. 3-2, now he goes high fastball,
high and in. It's a really nice location there. That's a really nice location on the righty.
Up and in fastball when you've been working down in the count. 3-2 again, and now he's going to
throw the slider off of the fastball, and he gets an unbalanced swing and a pop out.
Okay, now here's the thing. I'm going to show you how Gallin does it. I'm going to show you how Gallin
here's another at-bat where he got the out. He opens him up with a curveball or a slider. I don't
know what he calls that, but it's a big breaker and then a changeup, kind of dead center, but
it's got movement, and it's got, you know, the batter off balance, and so these are the three
pitches, and you can see everything plays off that high fastball or low fastball, but you need
to establish the fastball to make the secondary pitches work, and you need to hit your spots with
the fastball. Now, unfortunately, in this game against the Phillies, the first game,
of the NLCS, his first pitch is a fastball, middle, middle, 92 miles per hour, and Schwarber
is going to crush that and ride the wave, ride the horse, ride something, ride everything.
Yeah, you got to be up in the zone. You got to be down, especially the first fastball he's seen.
You can't make that 92 dead center. Schwarber almost looks like, really, dude? I wanted a
challenge. Like, don't be giving me BP first pitch. You can see the four-seam grip.
And you can see it just spinning, spinning right into the sweet spot for Schwarber, who's been
insane. You cannot make mistakes to the Phillies right now. Harper comes up, 93-mile-per-hour
fastball. They wanted that a little higher. It's also the first pitch of the at-bat.
You got to really place that well. You can't go this fastball and misplace it. He's 31 years old.
It's his birthday. It's his fourth home run of the postseason. He's counting on his fingers.
He's blowing out the candles. He's the coolest kid around.
His teammate's going to dap him up. Oh, super bad. Yeah, he's a bad man. Look at that pitch
again. Right there. Thank you very much. Gallin's not even getting the chance to work in his off
speed because his first pitch fastballs aren't great. Now, to Nick Castellanos in the second
inning. He opens him up, slider away. Doesn't get a chase. So then he's going to go, it's probably
a curve, and gets a big old swing from Castellanos. Big old swing. So he's probably thinking, okay,
now I've set him up.
To throw the fastball, but I don't know why he didn't just throw that pitch again because he goes
fastball and it's middle of the plate outside. Castellanos goes the other way with it. Another
home run. What'd I say? What did Trey say? What'd he say? His son's going nuts in the crowd. Let's
go. And yeah, you cannot throw pitches that juicy in the zone to the Phillies right now. Here's a
fun overlay of both pitches to Schwarber and Castellanos. And yeah, they're both just sitting
right there for him.
Whitefield. And then here's another overlay where I made the balls overlay just for my fun. And
visually, I thought it looked very pretty. I was like, that's cool. Took me like an hour to do that.
So I hope you guys, you think, wow, good use of your time, Jimmy. Really good use of your time. I
enjoyed it. It's pretty. If you could comment that below, it would do wonders for me. Thank you very
much for tuning in. This one was brought to you by DraftKings. And I thank DraftKings for sponsoring
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