Daniel Palencia's 'Gasolina' is Awesome—But He Has to Trust His Other Stuff More

Just in time, Daniel Palencia figured it out. He entered Wednesday night's game against the Brewers with a two-run lead to protect and just three outs to get, but because he was facing baseball's best team and most dangerous lineup, that was destined not to be an easy assignment. He struck out the scrappy but overmatched Anthony Seigler using (mostly) his triple-digit fastball, but when he tried to do the same to Brice Turang, the Milwaukee second baseman cracked a line-drive single to center field.

In a 1-2 count against one of baseball's best contact hitters (Caleb Durbin), we got a glimpse of Palencia's way through the threat posed by the Crew. He struck Durbin out with a vicious slider, low and away.

He tried a similar approach with pinch-hitter Danny Jansen, but missed with the first and left the second too much in the zone; Jansen pulled a single that scored Turang. Pinch-runner Brandon Lockridge would then steal second, and suddenly, the Brewers had the tying run in scoring position.

This is where, quite often, Palencia gets himself into trouble. He has a terrific fastball, capable of getting to 102 miles per hour and with good two-plane movement. The problem is that he overuses it. More than two-thirds of the pitches he throws are heaters, which both allows hitters to anticipate it and passes up some of the swing-and-miss potential so evident in that slider—and even his splitter, on the rare occasions when he can command that offering.

Retreating to that approach in the face of mounting pressure, Palencia walked Sal Frelick. The Milwaukee outfielder goes into a defensive shell against top-end velocity, so he was safe from giving up a go-ahead homer as long as he stuck to the heat, but the right thing to do was to mix in a slider somewhere in the sequence and go for the punchout. He never did.

Palencia did trust the slider enough to go to it three times against Isaac Collins, a switch-hitter batting left-handed, and it was the only thing that worked in the sequence. Collins whiffed on each of the first two sliders he saw. Alas, on 3-2, Palencia missed non-competitively with the pitch, loading the bases.

That meant that everything came down to Palencia against Brewers slugger William Contreras. He was nearing 30 pitches, and his adrenaline had him a bit uneven, but Palencia did find the high side of 100 miles per hour again with Contreras in the box. He got two quick, called strikes on balls in the lower, outside quadrant, to go ahead 0-2. Then, he threw one 101.4 miles per hour at the letters.

Contreras was extremely ready for it, though. He hit a sharp line drive to the right side. Nico Hoerner speared it, saving the game and allowing Chicagoans a huge sigh of relief—but that was very nearly a score-flipping single. Palencia did have Contreras set up for that location, given where the two previous heaters had been, but the right way to execute that sequence is to go even higher—eye-high, rather than chest-high, to either get an easy whiff or put that new sightline in his head. Then, he needed to throw him the slider low and away, just as he did to Durbin.

If Palencia can start to trust and develop sequences like that, he'll become a truly dominant big-league closer. Four of the six whiffs he induced Wednesday were on his slider; it's a very good pitch. Right now, however, he only fully believes in his 'gasolina'. That conviction is important, but so is mixing things up, so great hitters can't sit on and time your triple-digit fastball. Come October, the Cubs need Palencia to have taken the next step as a pitcher.