Article: Threading the Needle at 99 Miles Per Hour, With Ben Brown

[Matthew Trueblood]

A very good start went suddenly and (eventually) fatally bad for Ben Brown Thursday. It's a pattern we've seen from his before, and a reminder that he's still more clay than sculpture.

Image courtesy of © John Jones-USA TODAY Sports

About two-thirds of the way through his second pass through the Mets batting order, Ben Brown hit a speed bump. The fireballing Cubs starter had looked excellent through the first two innings, without fine control but with plenty of sheer stuff to make up for it. He was cruising, until he reached the fifth frame. When the wheels came off, though, all four came off at once, and he couldn't even finish the inning. His inability to do so led directly to the team giving up the lead and (eventually) losing the game, though that's a different thing than saying that he's at fault for the loss itself.

Brown's flashes of brilliance have been less flashes than sustained but interrupted periods of sunlight between sliding ships of cloud. He doesn't just look good for an inning; he looks good for 12 or 13 batters at a time. Unfortunately, the talent to shut a lineup down for three or four innings at a time hasn't yet matured into the skill of pitching well enough to maximize the team's chances to win over a full-length start. There's an obvious reason for this, and a couple of more subtle ones. Let's discuss them all, and then tackle the interesting aspect of this discussion that sets Brown apart from most pitchers in similar (but importantly distinct) circumstances.

Having only two pitches one trusts enough to throw against a big-league hitter is a major hindrance, if one intends to face that hitter more than once in a game. If one hopes to face the best hitters on an opposing team three times, it verges on crippling. Brown has tinkered with as many as five or six pitches, as recently as last season and this spring, but once games start, he's effectively limited to his fastball and his curveball.

I've already written about the unique power of each of those pitches and the way they interact with one another. His fastball combines raw velocity, movement, and extension impressively. His curveball is unique and vicious. As two-pitch mixes go, his is special. It can flummox hitters more than one time through the order, which immediately distinguishes him from any number of pure relievers whose stuff doesn't hold up that way.

Still, having two pitches is a limitation within which Brown is always working, and it's no easy problem to work around. It gets difficult to be unpredictable when your opponent is playing true-or-false baseball, instead of taking a full-bodied multiple-choice test. For just that reason, Brown tends to start finding trouble about 15 batters into outings. It doesn't even quite take two trips through the order, because although he holds his stuff well, he hasn't yet shown the ability to rein in command when he's not hitting spots with one of his pitches to one of his desired locations. That lets opponents learn more quickly, and they can communicate some things to one another, rather than just waiting for their own turn to come around again after their at-bat ends.

On Thursday, Brown was very fastball-heavy through the first four innings. He was trying to hold the curveball in reserve, to some extent, and to keep his pitch count under control. As far as those goals went, he was having success. Unfortunately, he didn't have good command of his fastball to the glove side, and it cost him--if only in small, seemingly inconsequential ways, at first. Brown walked Brett Baty in one inning, because his curveballs were all coming inside on him and his fastballs were all out over the plate. Baty was able to distinguish them easily, and waited out 2-2 and 3-2 curves that weren't especially close. The next frame, Brown walked Brandon Nimmo, throwing him seven fastballs out of eight pitches. The one after that, he walked DJ Stewart on five pitches, with four of those being heaters, too. By trying unsuccessfully to beat those hitters with his fastball, he ensured that he would end up having to face the top of their lineup a third time just to get through five innings.

Times Through Order	Fastballs	Curveballs	Total
1	23	11	34
2	30	14	44
3	7	4	11

If his execution had been a bit better, the strategy might still have worked, but Brown wasn't able to hit the inside corner to lefties with the fastball--at least not to the satisfaction of home-plate umpire Chad Fairchild. He went in there repeatedly, often clearly trying to get a called third strike, and missed his spot by a little too much to manage it.

Commanding the fastball to the glove side from an arm slot like Brown's is a rare and invaluable skill. That, as much as his velocity, is what makes ex-Mets ace Jacob deGrom so good. Since Brown hasn't yet found the feel to do it, though, he has to work around that shortcoming. It means extra pitches, and fewer strikeouts than the quality of his stuff might imply. It's a problem.

In this case, though, the problem was exacerbated by another. Having only those two offerings, and throwing so many pitches the second time through the order, Brown was out of ways to fool them when he had to face New York hitters a third time. They didn't start obliterating everything he threw, at that point. Brown isn't like Kyle Hendricks, or even Justin Steele or Jameson Taillon, where it starts to feel like batting practice once hitters figure out what to sit on. Still sitting 97-98 80 pitches into his outing, Brown kept the Mets from swatting it out of the park. He just couldn't stop them from outguessing him, spitting on non-strikes, and poking singles. Here's the result (color) of every pitch he threw to a batter he was seeing the third time, plus the pitch type (shape) of those pitches. He might as well have thrown the top of New York's order squares and circles that third time, in real life. They knew what to look for, and where, too well.

As evidenced by the fact that his trouble really began the second time through the lineup, what Brown needs is a third pitch. In the absence of it, he's not going to be a great, traditional starter, capable of frequently going six or more innings. It's fair, too, to wonder whether (after one more start, perhaps, to help the team weather a schedule short on days off until the end of this month) Brown could be ticketed for the bullpen, where this deficiency is much less important.

For the moment, though, let's not assume that's the plan. It might end up being the right choice, but Brown can pitch more innings and have more value to the team if he can stick in their rotation, even with his two-pitch mix. Let's further assume that, while he's surely not done looking for a third pitch that will work, he's going to need to make do with the two he has for the balance of this year. How can he avoid things like what happened Thursday? How can he better finish his outings and give his team an easier path to wins on his days?

FIrstly, he has to show opponents the curveball more, sooner. The key shift in mindset ought to be from having even a theoretical goal of facing 27 batters to knowing he's only going to be asked for 21 or so. Once he makes that adjustment in intent, adjustments in approach can follow.

Being less predictable--going something more like 55-45 with his fastball and curve, rather than 67-33, as he was Thursday--will net more whiffs and get him through the lower half of the order cleaner each time. It will reveal the curve to the other team more and sooner, and make it harder for him to get outs with it later in the contest, but in theory, he should be able to pitch five innings of clean baseball on his good days and five innings with a couple of earned runs on his more ordinary ones.

Then, it's up to Counsell to get him out of there before the other team can do a lot of damage. The manager has a needle to thread, but so does Brown. Such is the nature of pitching with just two offerings in a starting role. You have to understand that you'll be out sooner than a four-pitch guy might be, but you can't transition into a pure relief mindset. You have to sequence and set up hitters, rather than reserve the curve for later, but you don't want to overexpose yourself or end up at 85 pitches in the fourth inning, either. There's a trust transaction that has to happen, between Brown, his catchers, his coaches, and Counsell. It's not easy, but it's essential, given Brown's current skill set and the Cubs' current needs.

More curves and fewer fastballs will slow the opponents' learning curve. It will make it less costly when Brown does come up against good hitters a third time, after they've drawn a bead on him, because the bases will be empty and they might have just one or two outs to play with, rather than three. Then, it all comes down to execution. Can he begin to hold the fastball on that gloveside edge of the plate? If so, the whole mix works better, and he can be a dominant (if not deep-working) starter. If not, he'll still be viable, but he might help the team more in the bullpen, where the second and third looks at him don't exist and the opponents' learning curve doesn't matter.

Thursday's loss was disappointing, but not devastating. It was a missed opportunity for another step forward for Brown, but it might also have given him a learning roadmap for the next phase of his season and his career. If he did learn something actionable from it, then it was ultimately a good start. Even on a day he couldn't finish the way he needs to, he showed a lot of what makes him the most exciting pitcher on the active roster.

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