Facing the KIA Tigers for the second time in three starts, Mike Wright rebounded from a rough outing against the LG Twins to hold the Tigers offense to just one unearned run in six innings. While he took a no-hitter into the fifth inning, the problems that have been plaguing Wright all season long reared their head again. He managed to keep things under control, but his start almost spiraled out of control in the fourth inning.
Wright has been solid all season for the NC Dinos, posting a 4.23 ERA in 93.2 IP. He’s been a decent strikeout guy at 7.59 K/9 with a swinging strike rate of 11.8%, the fifth-best mark among pitchers with 300+ pitches charted on the KBO Wizard. But the problem is the walks that he allows (also the same problem that his counterpart in this game, Drew Gagnon, struggles with).
Wright’s BB/9 of 3.75 is the 10th-worst in the KBO among qualified pitchers and his K/BB ratio is just 2.03, in the bottom half of the KBO. That’s fairly interesting as Wright has a 67% strike rate overall (again, fifth-best among pitchers with 300+ pitches) and posted a 62% strike rate against Kia which, while not fantastic, is normally fine for one game, but in this instance resulted in five walks for the Tigers.
What I’ve noticed with Wright is that these kinds of walks come in binges. He’ll be rolling along and then run into trouble for an inning or two then work out of it. And surprise, that’s exactly what happened against Kia.
Wright entered the fourth inning having thrown just 37 pitches and allowing zero hits. He finished the fourth inning having thrown 80 total pitches, issuing three walks, and allowing one unearned run on a bases-loaded balk, all while still holding onto a no-hitter.
He wasn’t helped by his defense, with third baseman Ji Suk-hoon committing an error that loaded the bases with two outs, leading to the subsequent balk and run scoring. But after those two things went wrong, Wright was visibly frustrated and it showed in his pitching.
Kia is a very left-handed heavy lineup and Wright primarily attacks lefties with his sinker around 90 mph, Slider inside at 85 mph and Changeup breaking away or down around 80 mph. When he’s working well, Wright is getting those called strikes at the top of the zone and inside against LHH. That’s what happened in the first three and last two innings of his outing, but in the fourth, he slipped just a little bit and missed his spots just enough to not get those calls.
Here’s a two-pitch combo that Wright used early in the game to net a strikeout, throwing a changeup inside and then speeding up on the outside edge with a 4-seam fastball for the whiff. As you can from the location of Wright’s changeups, he threw most of them inside or down to LHH. I want to see him utilize his changeup down and away from lefties as well, maximizing that vertical and horizontal break out of the zone. Pair that with a backfoot slider as Wright does here and that’s a tough combo to hit.
However, he should not abandon throwing his changeup inside against LHH; it was a big driver of the weak pop-ups that he continually induced from Kia. That’s been another theme for Wright; his 42% fly out rate on balls in play is the third highest in the KBO (with 300+ pitches tracked), but Wright was excellent at limiting weak contact against Kia, allowing a 63% soft contact rate and just a 13% hard contact rate.
A lot of that weak contact is due to his changeup that jams hitters and forces them into awkward hitting positions. I don’t think that he should go away from that, but if he’s struggling to throw strikes, he could consider throwing more changeups down and away from LHH, making a whiff more likely. He’s only thrown three changeups down and away from lefties out of the 52 I’ve seen him thrown and I’d like to see it used more as an attack.
Wright’s start was a good step in the right direction following his poor outing against LG, but he still has some problems to work out, notably limiting his walks. He tends to hunt called strikes on the edge of the zone which has worked for him, but it also a tough line to walk and can quickly spiral out of control as it nearly did against the Kia Tigers.
*Stats from the KBO Wizard, myKBO.com, and FanGraphs.com*