The Verlander Game: Astros' New Ace Delivers Dominance While Embracing Team's Analytical Approach
Designated hitter Carlos Beltran, the team’s wise elder, cranked the pitching machine up to its maximum velocity, then took his place not 60 feet six inches from its missiles but more like 45 to 50 feet. All he could do to get the barrel of his bat on the speeding ball was to keep his lower half quiet and swing compactly and abruptly.
“You’re not training your swing,” he explained before the session. “You’re training your eyes. You want your eyes to get used to tracking velocity, so that when you get out there in the game, with the greater distance, it slows down the ball to your eye.”
Beltran first learned about the drill from Barry Bonds, after Beltran was traded from the Mets to the Giants in 2011. Bonds, out of baseball then, showed Beltran the drill as a way to hit high velocity.
Following Beltran into the cage Saturday was Houston shortstop Carlos Correa. The Astros signed Beltran last December as much for his wisdom as for his bat. Correa has been one of the many young Astros under his counsel. In spring training, Beltran showed Correa the drill. Correa has been using the drill all year.
“It’s made a big difference,” Correa said before Game 2, when he was about to face the game’s hardest throwing starting pitcher, Luis Severino. “I know against his velocity all I have to do is get the barrel to the ball. I don’t need to supply any power myself.”
Bonds to Beltran to Correa—an unbroken line of shared wisdom, the way baseball and its intricacies have been shared generation after generation.
Hitting elite velocity would just so happen to be the key to beating the Yankees, who have pushed people around this year with the hardest throwing staff in recorded history (average heater: 94.5 mph). This is how the Astros beat New York in Game 2 from the offensive side:
* Correa, with his abbreviated swing, punched a 99.3 mph fourth-inning fastball from Severino over the wall in rightfield for a home run. It was the fastest pitch ever hit for a postseason home run since StatCast technology began in 2015.
* Jose Altuve stepped in against Aroldis Chapman, the hardest-throwing dude on the planet, in the ninth inning of a 1-1 game, and promptly smacked the very first pitch, a 100 mph fastball, into centerfield for a single—an impossibility for anyone but this hitting savant who bats .438 against pitches 95 and above.
* Six pitches later, Correa whacked a 99.3 mph fastball from Chapman into the gap in rightcenter, scoring Altuve with the winning run.
“See,” Correa said with a sly grin. “I told you it works.”
who bats .438 against pitches 95 and above.