GDT 5/3/17: Braves vs. Mets

Is Wisler still not getting a great deal of swings and misses? Something about pitching to contact would get him lit up. Ho hum.
 
Is Wisler still not getting a great deal of swings and misses? Something about pitching to contact would get him lit up. Ho hum.

Pitching to contact isn't really a bad thing but offering batters the chance to put belt high middle of the plate pitches in play is a disaster waiting to happen.
 
Well good news is that you won't see many 2-0 or 3-2 games when the Braves play, especially at home.

Bring on the late 1970's staff and the early 2000's bats.
 
Wisler's fastball is plenty good, 93-94, and he's hit his spots in the past. He's got to develop something that gets them off his fastball, probably the change, and then have the guts to throw it in fastball counts. Not a curveball/slider, he's got an excellent slider. But a straight change, or maybe a splitter.

Lil Guv is at the age now where he needs something else, but he has never gotten the deception of the change, at least not consistently. He was screwing around with a splitter in a bullpen and threw five in a row that sunk like a stone 20 feet from the plate. He's using that as a change of sorts, and it's working. Makes his very-good-but-not-Scherzerian fastball look explosive.

Then Wisler can throw the fastball with a little more confidence, and I think the whole thing would come together for him. I still like him. It's hard to spin a ball the way he does that slider. That's a pitch you build around. And I think his fastball's good, too.

The guy needs a change or a change substitute. You might as well send him down and let him work with your best pitching coach, whether that's in Florida, Gwinnett or Rome. He's useless until he figures this out. But if he does, he can still be really good.
 
Pitching to contact isn't really a bad thing but offering batters the chance to put belt high middle of the plate pitches in play is a disaster waiting to happen.

Agree. If one is going to be a pitch-to-contact guy, the ball has to be kept on the ground. Wisler is a fly ball pitcher and the results of not having a solid "out" pitch or a plus-plus fastball are pretty evident.
 
His fastball is straight as an arrow. He sits low to mid 90s and a fastball with little to no movement at speed isn't any good at all.
 
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