Maybe it’s better for James Paxton that first place isn’t on the line Tuesday night in the first Yankees-Red Sox game of the season, the first of his career. It seems that he has a few things on his plate right now.
“Just dealing with my own expectations of myself and being here,” Paxton said in analyzing his 1-2 record with a 6.00 ERA in three starts. “I think I’ve been trying to do too much.”
Getting used to the New York spotlight is a rite of passage. Tino Martinez, Roger Clemens, Mark Teixeira, Giancarlo Stanton -- there is a never-ending list of elite players who needed a little time to get themselves going in this town. And Paxton won’t be the last.
Erik Williams/USA TODAY Images That alone doesn’t explain away Paxton’s bad outing in which he gave up five runs in four-plus innings. Paxton gave up eight hits that night, including two doubles, a triple and two home runs (both to Jose Altuve), and none of the hits came with a runner at second base. Those were mostly the result of bad pitches. And that’s on Paxton.
But back to that pitch tipping. A question I’ve heard a lot lately is why it took Beltran to spot it rather than pitching coach Larry Rothschild. Some fans still can’t figure out why he couldn’t find Luis Severino’s tell before the Red Sox did last October.
Well, actually he did.
“We’ve noticed it throughout his major league career off and on,” Rothschild told me about Severino back in February. “We adjust it, and then it creeps in again a little bit.”
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I was told that Rothschild mentioned it to Paxton during the game last Wednesday also, but the in-game fix is a difficult one to make. Even mechanical fixes are ones that are easier to make between starts rather than between innings.
Also, while pitching coaches are focused on mechanics and execution of the game plan, it’s the hitters and hitting coaches who are more likely to see a pitcher tip his pitches -- because they are always looking for it.
I asked a number of different pitchers and pitching coaches via text messages where they were most likely to hear about tipping pitches.
My first assumption -- that every pitcher does it at one time or another -- was not disproven. And every one of them responded that hitters generally have a better feel for spotting the tip in a pitcher’s delivery than pitching coaches. The pitching coaches can and do spot it, I was told, but they are focused on so many other parts of the delivery and game plan.
“Hitters tend to always look for it so they are more naturally inclined to find it,” a former major league pitcher and current minor league pitching coach told me.
Phil Hughes told me that after a bad start in Houston a few years ago, one of his teammates told him that an Astros player had confided in him that Hughes was tipping his pitches.
Last year’s Red Sox team that picked up on Severino’s pitch tipping were managed by Alex Cora, whose previous job was bench coach for the Houston Astros.
Sensing a pattern here?
The Astros are known to be very good at this kind of activity. And Beltran, who helped show Paxton what he was doing wrong, was a member of the 2017 Astros, who on their way to winning the World Series knocked Dodgers starter Yu Darvish out in the second inning twice and saddled him with a 21.60 World Series ERA because they reportedly had his pitches.
Two former major league pitchers told me independently of each other that the best player they ever saw at detecting a pitcher’s tell was Eduardo Perez, the 13-year MLB veteran who is now a broadcaster for ESPN and MLB Network Radio.
Perez told me he could read pitchers since he was 13 years old, a benefit of hanging around the ballpark with his Hall of Fame father, Tony Perez. Eduardo once jokingly autographed a bat for Brett Tomko, a one-time teammate he would later hit two home runs off in three at-bats. The inscription after Perez’s signature read, “P.S. keep tipping.”
In between stints at ESPN, Perez was a hitting coach with the Marlins in 2012 -- and the Astros in 2013.
Here’s my tip for Paxton on Tuesday night as he faces the Red Sox: Never mind that both teams are a combined 12-20 heading into this one. While it might be too early for outright panic, it’s never too early to author a big performance in this rivalry.