Five Things We Learned from Mets Sweeping Phillies
By John Town
Vince Velasquez Knows He Has to Get Better
Vince Velasquez struggled again with his efficiency Wednesday night, throwing 100 pitches in just five innings. He did strike out seven batters, but that is small compensation for the five runs he gave up.
Velasquez knows he is struggling. When reporters asked him how to describe his outing, he had just one word for it: “Terrible.”
Velasquez went on to say: [quote via Matt Breen of Philly.com]
"“The first two starts is not the way to go. I’m not even giving my team a chance to win. This is horrible. “I’m not even doing my part,” he said. “It’s just horrible.”"
I’m sure Velasquez realized well before now that his pitch economy is a definite issue, but to hear him say how much it is negatively impacting him is striking. Hopefully, Velasquez is able to channel that into improvement down the line.
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Manager Pete Mackanin expressed his confidence in Velasquez as he tries to improve moving forward: [quote via Breen]
"“Hopefully during the course of this season he’s going to show improvement. I have a lot of confidence in him making progress during the course of the year. He knows what he has to do. Sometimes he maybe just tries to do too much instead with that powerful fastball just go right after them. I think he’ll progress during the course of the season.”"
As Mackanin pointed out, Velasquez is using his fastball heavily.
He has used it 70.2% of the time according to Fangraphs. That number has to come down, but for that to happen, Velasquez will need to develop confidence in his secondary pitches. He is using his changeup more often (12.8% in 2015 vs 15.7% in 2016) but he has dropped the usage of his slider (12.9% to 4.7%). While Velasquez has recognized he needs to improve, whether or not he will is a matter of time.