How Cristian Javier’s fastball became the best pitch this postseason
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Jeff PassanESPN
PHILADELPHIA — Late last week, before Cristian Javier etched his name into baseball history, his Houston Astros teammates attempted to describe his fastball. By velocity alone, it is a milquetoast effort, flung from his right arm at 94 mph. And yet one teammate called the pitch “obscene” and another said “it looks 100” and a third deemed it “invisible.” On Wednesday night, after Javier started Game 4 of the World Series, one more teammate chimed in with the most apt descriptor of all.
“Clearly unhittable,” Astros closer Ryan Pressly said.
Certain pitches in baseball are so good they anger hitters, aggravate and frustrate and confound. Javier’s fastball tops the list. He threw invisiball after invisiball Wednesday, carving through a Philadelphia Phillies lineup with six no-hit innings that set the stage for Pressly to close out the first ever combined no-hitter in the World Series; the Fall Classic’s first hitless effort since Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956. Houston’s 5-0 victory evened the World Series at two games apiece and continued the 25-year-old Javier’s meteoric rise from sometimes-starter, sometimes-reliever to the most dominant pitcher this postseason.
It’s a reputation that Javier solidified over 11⅓ innings in the playoffs’ last two rounds, with Javier allowing one hit and no runs and racking up 14 strikeouts against the potent offenses of the New York Yankees and Phillies. In a World Series that has featured starts by Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, Javier has twirled the best game of the bunch.
Javier finds himself here because of that fastball, a pitch that combines a number of important attributes to make it a wholly unique pitch — “a unicorn,” said one scout, who called Javier’s fastball the best in all of baseball, an assessment with which others concur.
The secret sauce for Javier’s fastball starts with something called vertical approach angle (VAA). It is essentially the pitcher’s equivalent of launch angle, measuring the angle at which a fastball goes toward the plate. Pitchers with extremely high arm slots have high VAAs, and ones like Javier, with lower arm angles, come with low VAAs.
What’s exceptional about Javier isn’t just a VAA that is third lowest among starters, behind Freddy Peralta and Joe Ryan, two other pitchers whose fastballs play way above their velocities. His high front side adds some funk and deception to the delivery. His spin rate and spin efficiency are well above average. VAA is an important factor — “a big component of it [with Javier] is the approach angle, we think,” Astros pitching coach Josh Miller said — but the other elements help give the pitch what looks like a rising effect.
Physics, of course, prevent a fastball from actually rising. With Javier’s VAA and spin characteristics, his fastball simply drops less than the average one. And because nobody else throws like him, hitters trying to track the pitch struggle because of how it carries through the strike zone and looks as if it’s hopping as it crosses the plate.
“That’s just an absolute kangaroo of a fastball coming from his hip,” Astros reliever Ryne Stanek said. “And he’s got some of the longest arms I’ve ever seen. His fastball is obscene.”
“Doesn’t matter what the radar gun’s saying,” fellow reliever Hector Neris said. “It may say he’s 94, but the heater looks 100. It’s gas.”
That deception explains why, one day after hitting five home runs off Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. amid concerns that he might have tipped his pitches, the Phillies couldn’t see anything against Javier — or the three relievers that followed him, Bryan Abreu, Rafael Montero and Pressly. Ten days after his last start, against the Yankees, Javier threw 97 pitches, 70 of which were fastballs. He struck out nine, including a five-batter stretch in which he got J.T. Realmuto, Bryce Harper and Nick Castellanos swinging before catching Alec Bohm and Bryson Stott looking, all on fastballs.
“His nickname is El Reptil because he’s just cold-blooded,” Stanek said. “Nothing fazes him. He could give up a pump, same face. Punch the side three innings in a row, same face. He’s just that guy. What he does is special.”
The Astros knew that already. They’d seen Javier sashay into Yankee Stadium on June 25 and throw seven no-hit innings with 13 strikeouts, paving the way for Neris and Pressly to finish what wound up as only their first combined no-hitter of the season. This one was bigger, better, far more important in ensuring the Astros would return home for a Game 6 and have a chance to clinch a championship at Minute Maid Park.
Pitching in Game 4 in front of his father, Cecilio, who had never seen Javier pitch in the big leagues before, only added to the majesty of the night. Javier was already an unlikely success story: A failed outfielder who converted to pitcher, signed at 18 years old out of the Dominican Republic for $10,000, figured out how to harness his unicorn and rode it not just to the big leagues but to the sort of praise that hitters lavish infrequently.
“It’s electric,” said Christian Vazquez, who caught the no-hitter. “It’s like playing PlayStation with him. You don’t care if it’s going down and away. It’s going to finish up.”
Astros players brave enough to step into the batter’s box against Javier understand how he finished this season with a 2.54 ERA and remains unscored upon as a starter since Sept. 7. In his final four starts of the regular season, Javier threw 23 scoreless innings, allowed six hits and struck out 29.
“I did play catch with him a couple spring trainings ago, and it just really gets on you,” said Hunter Brown, another member of the Astros’ dynamic bullpen. “It’s just kind of invisible. I remember the first couple — you always wanna catch it in the seat. First couple hit me kind of in the pink area. I’m like, OK, I better figure that one out.”
In 2020, Javier’s rookie season, third baseman Alex Bregman faced Javier in a live at-bat on a shadowy day at Minute Maid Park during MLB’s accelerated spring camp. Bregman stared at strike one, strike two, strike three, not even lifting the bat off his shoulder. He walked back to the dugout, put his lumber in the bat rack and said: “I’m glad he’s on our team.”
Opponents wish the same. They’ll say so to Bregman at third base — if they can get there — and wonder how a pitch sitting 94 can look triple digits or how from his low slot he can generate such true spin or how they keep swinging over that stupid fastball.
“A lot of people are like, ‘Wow, it’s just insane stuff,'” Bregman said. “And they’ll say it’s insane how the ball looks coming out of his hand.”
So, OK, this magic pitch, this miracle fastball, this World Series no-hitter-causing bit of sorcery: What does it look like coming out of his hand?
“I don’t know,” Bregman said. “I didn’t see it.”
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David Schoenfield
PHILADELPHIA — Welcome to October chaos.
With a dominant effort from Blake Snell, one perfectly executed wheel play and one fortuitous scoop from Freddie Freeman for the game’s final out, the Los Angeles Dodgers escaped with a tense, thrilling 4-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night to take a 2-0 lead in their National League Division Series.
“I’ll take off my Dodgers hat and just put on a fan hat,” shortstop Mookie Betts said. “I think that was a really, really dope baseball game. I think both of these games were really, really dope baseball games, fun to be a part of. Obviously, it’s a lot better when you’re on the winning side, but you can’t ask for better postseason baseball. It’s just fun. This is why we play.”
The first six innings were a classic pitcher’s duel between Snell and Phillies starter Jesus Luzardo as the game was scoreless through six innings. The final three innings were a wild affair of hits, walks, tag plays at home plate and on the bases, second-guessing of managers and a nearly costly throw in the dirt from Tommy Edman that Freeman scooped with the tying run on third base to close it out.
The key play of the game, however, occurred earlier in the bottom of the ninth. Nick Castellanos‘ bloop two-run double to shallow left field made it 4-3 with nobody out. With Alex Vesia entering to face Bryson Stott and Los Angeles expecting a bunt, the Dodgers huddled up and called for the wheel play, which entails having the third baseman charge toward the plate and the shortstop cover third base. It’s a play third baseman Max Muncy said the Dodgers don’t practice in spring training.
“Immediately, Mookie was like, ‘Hey, we need to be doing this,'” Muncy said. “It speaks to his baseball IQ and his intuition in that situation. We were all thinking it, but Mookie was definitely the one that brought it up and said we need to do this.”
Betts, who just finished his first full season at shortstop, explained his thinking.
“It’s just another learned behavior,” he said. “I’ve got to give that credit to [Miguel] Rojas. I think we did it earlier in the year in Anaheim, and I remember asking him, ‘When’s a good time to do it?’ He said, ‘In a do-or-die situation,’ and he and Woody [Dodgers coach Chris Woodward] have really helped me a lot just learning situations.”
Manager Dave Roberts gave the go-ahead. If the Dodgers failed, it would put runners on first and third with nobody out.
“I think it just speaks to the experience that a lot of us have been in a lot of these big games before, and we have a lot of experience doing these types of things,” Muncy said. “Doc trusts us as much as we trust Doc, and it’s not an easy thing to gain, and so that’s why in that moment, Doc heard us talking and right away he was on board with it.”
The first pitch to Stott was a slider out of the zone. With Muncy charging and Betts hustling to third, they were worried they might have given away their strategy.
“When it comes to the wheel play as a third baseman, your first job is obviously to field the ball, and then you’ve got to make a good throw,” Muncy said. “But the one thing no one talks about is you got to make sure the guy’s there to catch the throw.”
Betts got there.
“God blessed me with some athleticism, so I was able to just kind of put it on display there,” Betts said.
“It’s tag play, too,” Woodward said. “Running the wheel on a force out is a lot easier because the third baseman just has to catch it. But if you have to tag him, it presents a more difficult play. For Muncy to field it, know right away, make a good throw. Mookie hung in there. That was the play of the game.”
The Dodgers didn’t have a 5-6 putout in the regular season, the only team in the majors without one, according to ESPN Research.
In an era with few sacrifice bunts, the attempt was debatable. The Phillies had just 16 sacrifice bunts all season. Manager Rob Thomson explained the decision: “Just left-on-left,” he said, referring to Stott against Vesia. “Trying to tie the score. I liked where our bullpen was at, compared to theirs. We play for the tie at home.”
He praised the Dodgers’ execution.
“Mookie did a great job of disguising the wheel play,” Thomson said. “We teach our guys that if you see wheel, just pull it back and slash because you’ve got all kinds of room in the middle. But Mookie broke so late that it was tough for Stotty to pick it up.”
The Phillies eventually put runners on second and third with two outs in the ninth. Roberts went to Roki Sasaki, whom Roberts hoped to avoid using for the second time in three days after Sasaki missed most of the regular season because of a shoulder injury. Sasaki got Trea Turner to hit a routine grounder to second — which Edman fielded but nearly threw away.
For the first two-thirds of the game, Snell and Luzardo were dominant. Luzardo allowed just one hit through six innings and fired 20 fastballs at 97-plus mph. Snell didn’t allow a hit until the fifth inning. He got his biggest outs in the sixth. After walking Turner and Kyle Schwarber with one out, he struck out Bryce Harper on a 2-2 slider.
“I needed weak contact,” Snell said. “I knew I was going to have to attack him somewhere where he could hit, but I felt confident with the slider. Like today, I felt really confident with that pitch. Just kind of rode it out against him in that at-bat and ended up winning.”
Snell then got Alec Bohm to ground out to third base. Rojas fielded it and dove to tag the base just ahead of the speedy Turner.
Snell, a two-time Cy Young winner whom the Dodgers signed for $182 million in the offseason, had made 10 postseason starts before this season and never made it through six innings. He has now done it twice this year after pitching seven innings in the Dodgers’ wild-card opener against the Reds.
The Dodgers are one win from advancing to the NLCS as the series shifts to Dodger Stadium. The Phillies’ top three hitters — Turner, Schwarber and Harper — are a combined 2-for-21.
“Huge, huge momentum maintainers,” Roberts said. “Great ballgame, great plays, huge win.”
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