Royals’ hitters to fight Mets’ fireballers with fire

When Kelvin Herrera was 16 years old, he attended a tryout camp for the Kansas City Royals. After a handful of pitchers toed the rubber, Herrera stepped onto the mound and unleashed a plethora of fastballs — almost exclusively fastballs, actually — before glancing toward a man holding a radar gun.

The reading: 91 miles per hour.

Herrera claims his fastball first cracked 90 before he learned to drive a car. It was a natural, effortless movement, he says.

Nine years later, he is the hardest-throwing pitcher in the American League in terms of average fastball velocity — and he represents a steady trend in Major League Baseball.

Flame throwers.

“It’s not just me,” Herrera said. “Everybody is throwing hard now.”

Over the past decade, the average fastball velocity in MLB has increased exactly 2 mph — from 90.1 in 2005 to 92.1 in 2015.

The Royals lineup has caught up to the trend — literally. According to an advanced metric, they produced the third-best lineup in baseball against fastballs this season, while they were below average against curveballs, cutters and changeups.

“At this point, pretty much (everyone) in the league features some hard stuff,” Royals first baseman Eric Hosmer said. “I think it’s an adjustment throughout the league that everyone is having to make. ... You see younger guys coming up just throwing hard. Before you know it, I think everyone in the league is going to be throwing 95-96 miles per hour.”

The Royals are about to face three of them in the World Series.

The New York Mets will open with Matt Harvey in Game 1 on Tuesday night, followed by Jacob deGrom in Game 2 and Noah Syndergaard in Game 3. All three starters averaged at least 95 mph on their fastballs during the 2015 season, all ranking among the top 20 starters in baseball.

They’ve been effective with it, too. The Mets had the fourth-best rotation earned run average this season.

But over the next four-plus games, they’re facing a team that likes to hit the hard stuff.

“I feel like we hit hard throwers well. It’s not that it’s easier to hit. We just hit fastballs well,” Royals center fielder Lorenzo Cain said. “But what we did during the season, it doesn’t matter. Right now, it’s go out there and hit these guys. They’re a very solid staff. We understand that. We know what we’re getting ourselves into. We know what they feature. Once we get between the lines, it’s about applying what you’ve seen.”

Hosmer offered a potential explanation for the Royals’ success against hard throwers. The meat of their lineup is young enough that many of them saw a lot of similar styles in the minor leagues.

Perhaps that fits.

But few starters, he acknowledged, had the quality secondary pitches the Mets’ rotation possesses. And that’s been a prominent reason for the Mets’ success — more than simply velocity. They swept a Cubs team in the National League Championship Series that was the eighth most successful lineup in baseball against the fastball this season. The Cubs hit .164 in the NLCS.

“I think the biggest thing that I’ve learned, especially this year, is pitching and mixing different pitches and different locations,” Harvey said. “Whereas before, I’ve gotten away with just blowing it out — throwing 97, 98.”

At least a portion of the Royals’ success against the fastball must be credited to their aggression early in counts — when they’re more likely to see the two- or four-seamers. They struck out once every 6.29 plate appearances, the lowest rate in the majors, and yet they were last in the American League with 383 walks.

“We feel like the best pitch you’re going to get is the first couple pitches within the at-bat, so you might as well go up there and try and be aggressive — because with the stuff these guys are featuring nowadays, you can’t afford to put yourself in a hole,” Hosmer said.

Those first couple of pitches can often be the most predictable ones — a factor that matters to most.

But not to everyone. Asked if his pitch selection changes against a lineup that shows a preference for hitting fastballs, Herrera grinned.

“No,” he said. “I attack.”

This story was originally published October 26, 2015 at 6:03 PM with the headline "Royals’ hitters to fight Mets’ fireballers with fire."