The Royals lost 5-4 to the Yankees in their first game in the Bronx on Friday, which gave Kansas City their 71st loss of the season.
While the losses continue to pile up, there were some positives to be gleaned from the one-run loss against one of the biggest clubs in baseball.
First off, it was nice to see Michael Massey take advantage of Yankee Stadium’s short porch on Friday night. Massey hit two home runs in his first game in Yankee Stadium, which included this upper-deck shot that gave the Royals an early lead.
In addition, Alec Marsh had a promising outing in New York, even though it wasn’t quite as impressive at the surface level as his 11-strikeout outing against Tampa Bay last Saturday.
Marsh went 5.1 IP and allowed five hits, five runs, walked two, and struck out three on 97 pitches. His three home runs hampered his overall line, but as manager Matt Quatraro mentioned in the postgame conference, there were plenty of positives to be taken away from Marsh’s second road start of the season.
For the season, Marsh is posting a 6.20 ERA and 1.43 WHIP in 20.1 IP. This includes a 26.4 percent K rate, an 11 percent BB rate, and 5.03 xERA. Those numbers aren’t eye-popping by any means. Considering Marsh struggled immensely in 2022 in Northwest Arkansas (7.32 ERA in 114.1 IP) though, seeing him hold his own for the most part at the Major League level has been an encouraging sign for a Royals pitching staff that has failed to make much progress overall in Quatraro’s first season as manager.
Let’s break down Marsh’s most recent start, what his overall metrics look like for the year (especially on a PLV end), and what will be important for Royals fans to pay attention to as Marsh closes out the 2023 season.
Despite Fewer K’s, Marsh Shows Progress With Pitches in Fourth Start
It’s easy for Royals fans to look at the five runs and only three strikeouts and think that his performance was considerably worse than his July 15th outing against the Rays at Kauffman.
On the other hand, a lot of the data from his July 21st outing was actually more positive than the metrics from his July 15th performance, even if the surface-level numbers are considerably different.
Much like his July 15th outing, Marsh made a lot of mistakes in the middle-middle of the zone on Friday against the Yankees. That can be seen in his pitch-type illustrator chart from Savant.
Marsh left a lot of different pitches up and in the middle of the zone. He had similar issues against the Rays, but they did not make him pay for it (though the Rays did hit two home runs in that contest).
Granted, as I said in the previous post about Marsh’s performance, his sequencing should be credited for his ability to get away with those poorly commanded pitches.
It’s one thing for pitches to be in the middle-middle of the strike zone. That said, if a hitter is looking fastball and gets a breaking offering or vice versa, it can throw off a hitter, producing either a called strike, whiff, or poor contact.
What’s interesting about the Yankees’ performance against Marsh was that they did “technically” take advantage of Marsh’s mistakes on Friday, as evidenced by their five runs and three home runs against Marsh. On the other hand, his pitch-results illustrator chart does paint a peculiar story.
I would say there are probably 10 pitches that Marsh didn’t command “well”. While three of those were hit for home runs, one was single, and the remaining six produced fielded outs. So it wasn’t as bad as it could’ve been for Marsh, and he did it against a good Yankees lineup (or at least good on paper).
A big reason why Marsh was able to get away with his mistakes is that the pitch quality of his mix on Friday was much better than what we saw on Friday, especially on a PLV end.
Here’s a look at his PLV data from Friday’s performance.
The four-seamer PLV numbers aren’t great, as evidenced by the 3.74 PLV, 8.42 PLA, and -22.0 percent Q-BP%. On the other hand, his slider was pretty good (5.54 PLV, 11.8 Q-BP%) and his changeup ended up being a surprising pitch, even though he didn’t throw it a tremendous amount (5.54 PLV; 37.5 Q-BP%).
Now, let’s take a look at his PLV metrics from July 15th.
With the exception of the four-seamer, all of Marsh’s pitches improved on a quality end on Friday from his July 15th start. That’s a promising development, especially since Marsh has shown that he can be solid with his four-seamer both in the Majors and Minors. He simply needs to improve the pitch quality of his secondary offerings, and Friday night was a step in the right direction.
His CSW and hard-contact numbers also demonstrated positive progress, which can be seen in the table comparison via Pitcher List.
(Scroll right for July 21st; left for July 15th).
The CSW% regressed from 28.8 to 19.5 percent on the four-seamer. However, his CSW% was over 40 percent on his slider and curve, and while his 25 percent CSW on the changeup wasn’t great, it was 16.7 percent higher than his CSW on July 15th.
Here’s a look at Marsh getting whiffs on his slider and curve against Giancarlo Stanton and Kyle Higashioka last night, respectively.
The fact that his breaking offerings were nearly 10 percent higher than his previous outing is a good sign that he’s getting a better feel for his secondary pitches.
Even though his four-seamer was less effective overall on a CSW end against the Yankees, Marsh was able to generate a couple of whiffs on it when located properly, like this four-seamer that punched out Oswaldo Peraza.
While the CSW gains on his three non-fastball pitches were nice, the improvement in limiting hard contact was also a promising development for Marsh against the Yankees.
Despite a low CSW with the four-seamer, his four-seamer had the lowest hard-contact rate of his four pitches on Friday night at 9.1 percent. The slider, curve, and changeup also featured low hard-contact percentages as well at 14.3, 20, and 0 percent, respectively. Those were all improvements on those pitches in those categories from his July 15th start.
That regression in hard-contact percentage further illustrates the pitch quality improvement on his mix, and it makes one wonder what Marsh’s outing would’ve looked like in a more pitcher-friendly yard.
Furthermore, Marsh’s hard-hit rate chart by game (via Savant) has been trending in the right direction with each start, which should make Royals fans hopeful that better outings are on the horizon for Marsh in 2023 and perhaps beyond.
Will Marsh continue this hard-hit trend? Or will this be a blip on the radar and he’ll see those high rates again like in his previous outings?
That could be a huge factor in Marsh’s long-term development as a starting pitcher in Kansas City.
Pitch Quality and Movement Going Forward Will Be Key
When looking at Marsh’s overall PLV metrics, he still has a long way to go in terms of sporting pitch quality on his pitch mix that Royals fans can be confident about going forward, as one can see in the chart below.
According to Pitcher List, Marsh’s overall PLV of 4.64 ranks in the bottom 2nd percentile of the league, and is one of the worst marks for Royals starting pitchers, including Brady Singer (4.84 PLV), Daniel Lynch (5.04 PLV), and even Jordan Lyles (5.01 PLV).
The four-seamer and curve have potential on a PLV end, and the slider isn’t far off from the league average of 5.00 either. That said, it will be interesting to see how he handles the change, for at 3.86, it’s a pretty terrible pitch on a PLV end, and it’s hard to foresee it improving that much to be a reasonable offering in his repertoire.
Looking at the past movement on his pitches from his PLV movement chart gives Royals fans an idea of how Marsh could improve his pitch quality on the mound and thus, be a more reliable starting pitcher for the Royals in the long term.
The four-seamer and slider pair well together, based on the chart. Even though the slider lacks horizontal movement, it does feature a sharp drop, which pairs well with his harder, flatter four-seam offering. His changeup does feature a similar shape to his four-seamer, but on a movement end, it still doesn’t feature anything remarkable, which makes it a dangerous pitch when not located well.
Here’s an example of Marsh leaving his changeup up and in the middle to Minnesota’s Edouard Julien and he crushes it for a bomb.
Considering Marsh’s command issues, one has to wonder if it would be better in the long term for him to start throwing his changeup less, just to avoid mistakes like the one to Julien above.
Nonetheless, there is some potential with Marsh’s three other pitches, and his curve also works well with the slider, as it is a harder-breaking offering that can throw hitters off, especially when they are sitting on the faster, more vertically-focused slider. That complementary nature of the two breaking pitches is a big reason why the curve is Marsh’s best pitch on a CSW end (42.3 percent) and his slider ranks second in CSW (32.3 percent).
Marsh still has a ways to go to prove that he can be a part of this rotation in 2024 and beyond. That said, this season is the perfect chance for Marsh to showcase what he can do as a starter, especially since it’s clearly an evaluation season. Furthermore, it’ll be worth watching pitching coaches Brian Sweeney and Zach Bove and how they help Marsh continue to develop his pitch quality with each and every start this year.
It’d be nice to see Marsh emerge as Sweeney and Bove’s major Royals starting pitcher success story by the conclusion of 2023.
Photo Credit: Kyle Rivas/Getty Images