There’s a good story on how Royals pitcher Alec Marsh struck out Aaron Judge 3 times
A four-seam fastball tucked into the inside corner, and it appeared to catch the batter by surprise.
Strike one.
The next fastball grabbed a little more of the plate, and it was fouled straight backward. The pitcher probably got away with one, if we’re being honest.
Strike two.
The next fastball carefully dotted the outside corner at 96.5 miles per hour, prompting a swing a miss and then prompting the batter to turn toward the home plate umpire and asked if the pitch caught the plate. (It did. Barely.)
Strike three.
The pitcher in this sequence: Alec Marsh, the 26-year-old Royals right-hander who made his MLB debut less than a year ago.
The hitter: Aaron Judge, the Yankees superstar and former MVP winner who leads the American League in home runs, doubles, RBIs, slugging percentage, OPS and total bases.
To be clear, though, this isn’t about a relatively young starting pitcher getting the best of one of the game’s top hitters. That’s how baseball tends to work. Pitchers win most of these.
It’s how Marsh got the best of him.
Once.
Twice.
And then three times.
Marsh threw seven innings Thursday, and even if he didn’t receive credit for the win because the bullpen behind him couldn’t hold a lead, he remains most responsible for the Royals’ 4-3 walk-off win to avoid a sweep.
Maikel Garcia ripped a double along the left-field line to score two in the ninth, including Kyle Isbel from first base, before Bobby Witt Jr. greeted him on the field with the splash of a water cooler.
A great finish.
A better start. Marsh’s start.
He didn’t allow a hit over the initial six of his seven innings, matching the longest start of his career while striking out seven Yankees. Three of those came against Judge.
So, the how.
Before the game, Marsh, along with catcher Salvador Perez and pitching coach Brian Sweeney, outlined how he planned to pitch to Judge in the first plate appearance. Just mix it up. The five-pitch at-bat would eventually include four different pitches. And a lot of spin.
The next time Judge came to the plate, though, Marsh flipped it. He’s acutely aware not only of the scouting report on Judge — which might as well read “avoid this hitter” — but even more so of his own. He tends to rely on certain pitches in certain counts.
Against Judge? He flipped it. He pitched backwards.
For the past couple of months, Marsh and teammate Seth Lugo have talked about the former’s arsenal. Good fastball. Good breaking ball.
Lugo’s advice? Use them. Any count. Any hitter.
So, in the fourth inning, Judge walked into the box, having struck out against breaking balls three innings earlier.
Marsh threw him five straight fastballs.
Judge, keep in mind, is hitting .331 and slugging .714 against fastballs this season.
“When you throw that much spin, he starts to see it. And if he starts to see it and expect it, he’s starting to lean out a little bit in the next at-bat. He’s waiting for some spin,” Marsh said. “You could see that when he’s not moving, he’s looking soft, so let’s go back with hard fastballs. And by the time we got to two strikes, I could give him my best bullet away and have the belief that he’s not going to touch it.”
That kind of game plan — that mesh of thought, observation and confidence — is indicative of one player’s rapid growth and equally indicative of one organization’s evolution over the past 15 months. This kind of anecdote, perhaps absent 20-year veteran Zack Greinke, doesn’t fit into the Royals’ story.
Until recently.
It’s pitching with a purpose. With a plan. And on Thursday, the most significant part of that plan was to constantly change the plan.
The first time he struck out Judge, Marsh got to two strikes with a sinker. The next time, he got there with the four-seamer. The third time, it was a slider.
Oh, and he struck him out twice with a sweeper.
It helps when you’re working with your best stuff. But that was part, not all, of the package Thursday.
“We talk about it almost every single day,” Lugo said. “I think the biggest thing is don’t eliminate a pitch for a hitter. Make them recognize what it is, and make them make decisions. If they’re having to think and make decisions, it’s harder for them.”
The Royals needed a win Thursday. They deserved it on the back of Marsh’s seven innings. Then they blew it. And they snatched it on the life of their final out. The ninth-inning plate appearances were a standout.
But for seven innings, Marsh was the the standout. It’s notable that he wanted the ball Thursday, against the team that leads MLB in scoring because he was “sick and tired” of the way the series had unfolded.
Look, it was a testing and trying series this week with the Yankees, and those adjectives don’t change with this weekend’s trip to face the Dodgers in Los Angeles. It’s the most difficult stretch of the year.
The Royals’ surprising start is being tested, though losing three of four to a team that has won 69% of its games this season isn’t the indictment it’s made out to be — particularly when the Royals will face few other teams like that this season.
But the hope is they will later. So, sure, it’s a test for where they want to be. As Bobby Witt Jr. told me this week, “They’re the teams you want to play against. These are the guys we want to match up against.”
One of them finally did.
This story was originally published June 14, 2024 at 10:48 AM.