Kazmir Helps Lineup in Need of None

In Advanced Scouting, MLB FanHouse's professional talent evaluator breaks down the playoffs from a scouting perspective.

The contrast between Tuesday night's starting pitchers could not have been more stark. CC Sabathia was efficient, mixed his pitches and threw nothing but strikes. Scott Kazmir, on the other side, never seemed to find any kind of rhythm and essentially played right into the strengths of the Yankee lineup.

New York's lineup is difficult enough to navigate without giving them any assistance, and assistance is exactly what Kazmir gave them. If you intend to have success against them, you must establish a secondary pitch in the early innings. Especially given the issues their lineup has had against the breaking ball in the early part of the ALCS, Kazmir's ability to locate his slider was going to be crucial to his outing.

There's one thing about beating the Yankees that just can not be said enough. You stop their hitters by using their patient approach against them. They feast on pitchers that get behind in the count and can't throw anything but the fastball consistently for strikes. If you can put them in an immediate hole in the count, their approach can quickly be neutralized. Kazmir was unable to do that. Although he wasn't hammered, by the time the fourth inning rolled around he was completely worn down.

Out of the 89 pitches he threw in his four innings of work, Kazmir threw 23 sliders. The result of those 23 sliders may have doomed his outing. Just ten of them were thrown for strikes (43 percent). What's even more disturbing is that the slider induced just two swings and misses. When you have such little feel for your top secondary pitch, the Yankees will simply wait back, work the count, and hunt the fastball. Despite all this, Kazmir took good stuff to the mound on this night. The location was not there, but the bite on the slider was, and he worked comfortably at 92-95 mph with the fastball.

There were a couple points in his outing where it appeared that the feel and confidence with the slider was coming around for Kazmir. And it gave us a glimpse of just how tough he could have been on this lineup and why he's given them trouble in the past. Some of his best pitches of the day were thrown to Mark Teixeira, who he struck out in his first two plate appearances. In his first at-bat, Teixeira went down swinging on an 80-mph changeup. In his second at-bat, Kazmir finished him with what appeared to be his best slider of the day, diving down and in. A little more of this and things could have been far different. Unfortunately for Kazmir, he continued to fall behind in counts and never forced the Yankee hitters to keep the breaking ball in the back of their minds.

Spotlight Moment

Sometimes one at-bat can can make or break a pitcher's outing. Scott Kazmir, despite all his problems in the early innings, had an opportunity to slow a New York rally in the fourth inning with a big strikeout. But with Melky Cabrera at the plate, that big strikeout did not come and instead Cabrera delivered a two-RBI single to left field. Although the end result was obviously unfavorable for the Angels' left-hander, he actually did make some of his better pitches of the day in this six-pitch battle with Cabrera.

After jumping ahead 0-2 with two good fastballs, Kazmir wasted a slider in the dirt. Then, to the Yankee center fielder's credit, he fought off a tough breaking ball, and then another. When Kazmir came back with a fastball over the heart of the plate at 94 mph, Cabrera didn't miss it. These are the type of at-bats that typically define good teams. It's one thing to beat up on a pitcher who is struggling, but this was a good pitcher making some good pitches and being forced into an eventual mistake by a feisty hitter. Kazmir may have brought many of his problems on himself on Tuesday, but this big hit was a credit to Cabrera.

Quick Hits

• Sabathia continued to roll on Tuesday night, proving once again he has no problem pitching on short rest. Once again, Sabathia saved some of his best velocity for the latter part of his outing, sitting at 94-96 mph in the eighth inning. Endurance is difficult to teach. Sabathia is able to cruise through his outings expending so little energy that, if anything, he gets stronger around that 100-pitch mark. With all due respect to Cliff Lee, Sabathia is the most dominant presence on the mound right now in this postseason.

• Howie Kendrick saw 10 pitches in Tuesday's nights game. How many fastballs did the notorious Yankee-killer see? One. That's right, one lone fastball. CC Sabathia, who has had problems retiring Kendrick, fed him a steady diet of sliders and changeups all night along and had success doing so and the result was an 0-for-3 for the second baseman. This provides even more insight into Joe Girardi's decision to have Alfredo Aceves face Kendrick in the 11th inning of Game 3. It's becoming clearer that the strategy is to attack him with the soft stuff whenever possible.

Frankie Piliere spent the last three seasons working as a scout, most recently in the professional scouting department for the Texas Rangers in 2009. He now serves as the National Baseball Analyst here at FanHouse.