‘Wader, advice please’: Royals reliever Davis knows a thing or two about pitching

When James Shields and Wade Davis came to the Royals in 2013, someone told me I’d love James Shields because he liked to talk and wouldn’t get two words out of Wade Davis.

For whatever reason, Shields and I never clicked. But Davis and I hit it off immediately.

That was probably because I wanted to learn everything I could about pitching and Davis didn’t mind talking about it. What follows are a few things he taught me, none of which I would have ever figured out on my own because I never had to stand 60 feet, six inches away from a big-league hitter and try to get him out.

You can’t always go right at a hitter’s weakness

Pitchers have “heat maps” that diagram a hitter’s strike zone, showing where he struggles (in blue) and where he’s strong (in red). A rookie can come up to the big leagues and find early success because pitchers aren’t sure how to attack him yet.

But pretty soon the heat map fills up and pitchers can see where the hitter’s making outs and where he’s making a living.

Davis pointed out that a pitcher can’t just pound the hitter’s weak spot over and over again, because the hitter knows he’s weak there so he isn’t going to swing. Those areas are always on the edge of the strike zone (everybody hits the middle), and if you throw three pitches trying to hit that down-and-away corner, you’ve got a real good chance of being 2-1.

Then you have to attack the heart of the plate. The hitter knows you’re about to do it and probably won’t miss that pitch when you throw it.

But you can go right at a hitter’s strength

So instead of waiting until you have to go to the middle of the zone with a fastball, do it on the first pitch when the hitter doesn’t think you will. That’s when we see a hitter watch a center-cut fastball go by, then get mad at himself because he was looking for something else and got caught flat-footed.

But you better know which guys are willing to swing early. As Royals fans might remember, Alcides Escobar had some good games when pitchers tried to get ahead and Esky wouldn’t let them.

After strike one, some at bats are over

After the Royals faced Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw, Davis pointed out how many guys were swinging early in the count because they didn’t want to get to two strikes and then strike out swinging at a Kershaw slider in the dirt.

Fear of striking out can be used against hitters if you get that first pitch in for a strike (a fastball they don’t expect or a breaking pitch they don’t want). That’s because in order to avoid two strikes some hitters start chasing borderline pitches after one.

Davis felt that if he got strike one in, he might not have to throw another strike for the rest of the at-bat.

From the pitcher’s point of view, some walks are good

When I first started covering big-league pitchers, I had an amateur’s view of the base-on-balls: I thought every walk was good for the offense and every walk was bad for the pitcher.

That’s an unsophisticated view of big-league pitching.

The best pitchers have confidence they can throw strikes when they need to and don’t mind walking a batter if he’s hot and somebody cold is on deck. I once saw Greg Holland strike out the side and walk the bases loaded in the same inning.

When I asked Holland how it was possible to have such good control that he struck out three hitters but such bad control that he also walked three guys, Holland explained it like this: if after the first few pitches he was ahead in the count, he would go right after the hitter; but if after the first few pitches he was behind in the count, he’d work around him.

Holland had three empty bases to work with and wasn’t afraid to use all of them.

One time, Davis did Holland one better when he had the bases loaded and Miguel Cabrera at the plate. Miggy was hot right then and Davis walked Cabrera, which drove in a run.

The Royals had a three-run lead, so the bases-loaded walk only cut it to a two-run game. After the Royals won that game, I asked Davis if he walked Cabrera on purpose. Davis smiled and said: “One run is better than four.”

One bad pitching performance can lead to another

When the game is about to begin, both starting pitchers come in from the bullpens and the hometown pitcher gets to go to the mound immediately. The visiting pitcher has to sit down and wait.

And if the hometown pitcher has a long top of the first, the visiting pitcher’s performance can be affected.

Chris Young — another Royals pitcher who taught me a lot and is now the general manager of the Texas Rangers — was in on the conversation and pointed out that one bad pitching performance can lead to another when the pitcher waiting in the dugout cools off.

Sometimes you have to concede runs

Back when Davis was a starter, he sat down with me and went over every single pitch he threw in an outing against the White Sox. His thought process was enlightening.

In the first few innings, Davis had a runner on third and nobody out. He said he mentally conceded that run because if he decided to reach back and strike out the side, even if it worked he’d burn up a lot of energy doing so and probably wouldn’t make it past the fifth inning.

How many times do we see a pitcher strike out the side in the third inning and think that’s great, then fail to connect that to the same pitcher getting knocked out of the game in the fourth?

Later in that game, Davis again had a runner on third. This time he was near the end of his outing anyway, so he “emptied the tank.”

Before that conversation, I never thought about when a pitcher needs to concede runs and when a pitcher might need to bear down, because once again I had an amateur’s view of pitching and just assumed they tried to stop every run every time.

A pitcher who burns himself up trying to stop a run from scoring in the third inning might not go deep in the game, and that means he can burn up his bullpen, as well.

This stuff gets complicated, doesn’t it?

A larger sample size can be misleading

Most baseball analytics people believe a larger sample size is better, because they have more events to measure and feel that gives them a better chance of predicting the future. And that might be true as long as everything stays on the same arc.

But if something dramatic changes, it takes time for that change to bend the arc of the larger sample size. And in the meantime, you’re doing the wrong thing because you’re still reacting to what happened in the past while something different is happening in the present.

For instance:

Against the Twins, Davis had a runner in scoring position, first base open, two down, Joe Mauer at the plate and a lesser-known ballplayer on deck. I predicted Davis would work around Mauer and go after the kid on deck.

So, of course Davis went right after Mauer and got him out.

After the game I asked Davis why he did it — Mauer’s numbers against Davis seemed to heavily favor the batter. Davis asked when Mauer had put up those good numbers, and I had to confess I had no idea. Davis said Mauer beat him a lot early on, but not so much lately.

Plus — and I’d really never thought about this one — Mauer had beaten Davis so many times early on that Davis eventually learned what not to do and, in comparison, had no idea how to pitch the kid on-deck.

The larger sample size was misleading and a smaller, more recent sample size would have given a more accurate picture of what was happening that night. Which is one of the reasons ballplayers and analytics departments sometimes disagree; ballplayers don’t care what a guy is likely to do over the course of his career — they care what a guy is likely to do in the next at-bat.

Anyway …

It’s nice to have Davis back in the Royals’ system, and I would strongly advise any young pitcher who wants to get smarter about the game to chat with him. My guess is that if he asks him about pitching, Davis will be glad to share some wisdom.