Baz getting in gear for Rays
Before the Tampa Bay Rays found pitching phenom Shane Baz in a trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates back when he was a minor league prospect who had been drafted in the first round, they had another phenom named Blake Snell.
Like Baz now, Snell was entering his sophomore season in the big leagues back in 2017 when he had a couple rough games in Spring Training. Snell shrugged off one of the bad starts, telling reporters after the game he was just working on his changeup. Snell would go on to win two Cy Young Awards.
Enter Baz this week in Spring Training, heading into his sophomore season in the big leagues off a brilliant rookie campaign and he too had a rough couple outings in Spring Training. First against the Twins last Friday and then on Thursday he gave up two homers and four runs on five hits over four innings while striking out two against the Washington Nationals at the Rays’ Spring Training home in Port Charlotte. There is still plenty of time for Baz to win his Cy Young Award even if his stat line Thursday didn’t show it.
Baz saw the positive signs from his outing on Thursday. He felt healthy and said he didn’t feel any fatigue. His fastball was live and his offspeed pitches resulted in awkward swings and takes from the Nationals batters.
“That was the best four-run game I’ve ever pitched,” Baz said afterwards. “Execution could have been a lot better the first three batters,” he said. “That’s the best I have felt this year so far. Happy that I attacked the whole time.”
Despite the two home runs he gave up on a windy afternoon during a 14-4 victory over the Nationals, his velocity on his fastball was rocking between 95 and 97 mph. He gave up no walks.
The Nationals jumped on him early when James Wood hit his third homer of the spring on a three-run shot off a first-pitch fastball over the plate from Baz.
But Baz would settle in after that, throwing a lot of curveballs and sliders – two pitches that he throws with above-average velocity and movement and which have helped make him one of the hardest pitchers in baseball to hit. His curveball was registering up to 85 mph Thursday while his slider hit between 86-87 mph.
He sent Paul DeJong down swinging on an 85 mph curve after the homer by Wood. When Wood came back up to the plate in the third inning, Baz sent him back to the dugout looking at an 84 mph curveball. Baz said having his curveball this sharp in the spring and seeing how he can freeze a batter on the pitch has him thinking about how he can set batters up more. “It gives you a little more confidence in it,” he said. Baz said his curve and slider felt “as good as ever” Thursday.
CJ Abrams hit the second homer off Baz on an 88 mph changeup on a 1-2 pitch that hung over the plate. After the Abrams homer, Baz retired seven of the next eight batters before being taken out of the game in the fifth inning after reaching his pitch limit. The changeup is usually the toughest pitch for batters to connect on against Baz or any other pitcher in the majors. Last year, major league hitters posted an anemic .115 batting average against his changeup, which Baz throws at 88 mph – about the same speed as the fastball his opposing pitcher DJ Herz was throwing Thursday.
Baz said he is focused on executing more now in Spring Training like a regular season game rather than tinkering with his pitches. “Staying in my throwing lane, kind of finishing everything, just trusting it,” he said.
Baz said his start Thursday was something he could build off on. After pitching three scoreless innings in his Spring Training debut against the Twins in Fort Myers March 2, Baz gave up his six hits, six earned runs and walked four while striking out none in his follow-up outing in Port Charlotte against the Twins five days later.
“The delivery was a little out of sync,” Baz said. “Definitely cleaned that up in my mid-week bullpen a lot. Today just felt way different. I was kind of putting the ball where I wanted a lot more.”
Baz said he was tunneling his pitches off his fastball more Thursday. “Makes life a lot easier. Just gives you more weapons to use,” he said.
“It’s been a good buildup. I haven’t had any fatigue in the games. I haven’t felt any soreness,” he said. Baz credits his strength this spring to spending three months in the offseason weightlifting, working on injury prevention and conditioning. “It’s nice to go to the gym and just enjoy my program,” he said. He called the program “priceless.”
While his 9.64 ERA over three starts in Spring Training might not look shiny, it’s what Baz does during the regular season that counts. Most importantly for Baz is staying healthy as his talent has spoken for itself as evidenced by his 3.09 ERA during his rookie season last year.
Armed with a slingshot of an arm and built with the legs of a thoroughbred, Baz limited Major League Baseball hitters last year to just a .200 batting average. He posted a 1.06 WHIP and 6.5 hits per nine inings, which didn’t qualify for the statistical leaders since he only threw 79 innings but if it had – Baz would have finished in the top 10 in the majors for all of those categories.
To give more definition of just how good his curveball and slider was last year, batters hit just .164 against his slider and hit .169 against his curve. Baz posted a 31% whiff percentage with his curveball.
Taken with the 12th pick in the 2017 MLB Draft out of Concordia Lutheran High School in Texas, Baz is still just 25. He possesses the poise and assassin spirit on the mound that gives him a chance to be a great pitcher. Off the field after the game, he is down to earth and shows a lighthearted side but also the mental toughness and awareness that separates pitchers in the big leagues.
After throwing out in the sun for four and one-third innings, a group of reporters offered to have him meet them in the shade to stay cool outside the clubhouse. Instead, Baz said that this was his kind of weather. That’s exactly what Tampa Bay Rays fans will like to hear for a team that will play through the toughest parts of the Florida spring and summer without the benefit of the fiberglass roof of Tropicana Field after it was blown off last fall by Hurricane Milton. They will instead play at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, which is the Spring Training home of the Yankees. The field has less capacity than Tropicana Field and news broke today the Rays are pulling out of a deal for a new stadium in St. Petersburg which put the team’s long-term future in Florida in question.
Baz seems to have that inner fortitude that won’t shake or rattle him no matter the circumstances. His go-to song is the Alice in Chains grunge classic “Rooster” which he said gets him “in the zone” and he grew up looking up to some of the toughest Texas fireballers around in Nolan Ryan, who he said was his “number one” favorite pitcher, as well as looking up to Roger Clemens, Houston Astros pitcher Roy Oswalt and the action-packed delivery of Dontrelle Willis. Baseball gripped Baz at a young age. His favorite position player was Astros third baseman Morgan Ensberg, who was having his best years when Baz was five and six-years-old. His maturity as a young pitcher is also part of having come up at the end of 2021 as a 22-year-old and pitching in the playoffs after just three games as a major leaguer. After six games pitching in 2022, his season was short-circuited due to an elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery. His return last year was delayed by an oblique injury which he categorized as a “freak injury.”
When he returned, Baz was nothing short of being masterful at the mound leaving fans to only wonder what his ceiling could be.
Rays offense explodes
The story on Thursday wasn’t all about Baz though.
The defense behind Baz was spectacular. On play after play, Rays fielders made exceptional plays almost look routine from a sliding catch in left field from their offseason acquisition Eloy Jimenez to a brilliant dive and throw from shortstop Taylor Walls. Second baseman Brandon Lowe and third baseman Coco Montes also made great defensive plays.
Undeterred by a 4-0 deficit heading into in the bottom of the third inning, the Rays’ bats came alive with a solo homer off the red-hot bat of Brandon Lowe off Nationals southpaw DJ Herz.
The Rays put up five runs in the fourth inning led by a bases-loaded double by Walls that cleared the bases and then a grand slam in the fifth inning by Montes off Nationals reliever Evan Reifert that blew the game open as part of a seven-run inning.
The Rays improved to 8-8 in Spring Training while the Nationals fell to 9-9.
Fort Myers Beach Observer Editor Nathan Mayberg can be reached at NMayberg@breezenewspapers.com