Hancock gets weak contact, Crawford makes loud contact, Arozarena eschews contact as Mariners win 6-0 to complete sweep of Guardians

How Tony Soprano explains Emerson Hancock

It being Father’s Day and all, I’m going to lean into Boy Content and make the central point of today’s recap through a scene from The Sopranos. One of my favorite scenes is an early one, from Season 1, Episode 9, where Tony and Artie are dining in a fancy restaurant and notice a younger man at another table wearing a baseball cap. After they briefly complain to each other about it, they try to move back to their actual conversation. But they can’t. Upon realizing how offended they are by the hat, Tony gets up from his table, lumbers across the restaurant, and demands that the guy take the cap off. Through some menacing silence, Tony gets him to acquiesce, and goes back to his table.

The scene’s irony, what makes it great, is that Tony is a mass murderer, having committed so many heinous crimes you couldn’t count them all (with many more to come). He’s a mafia boss who will literally kill a person if it makes his life just a little easier. But he’s eaten up by a transgression as superficial as wearing a ballcap in a nice restaurant. He cares not about actually being respectable, but about the external markers of respectability. To drive the contrast home, the first thing he says after moving on from the ballcap issue is to ask his waiter to get the license plate of a couple other diners who “look like cops.” This is really one of the primary things The Sopranos is about—the mob boss who thinks he wants to be a suburban dad—and I’m not sure they ever top this first season scene in demonstrating the point.

[Content warning: language]

This is the environment faced by a certain kind of pitcher in 2020s baseball. The world prizes nasty breaking balls, premium velo, and strikeouts, strikeouts, above all else, strikeouts. The strikeout artists, especially the power pitchers, are the guys who win the awards, get the big contracts, and have their names on the backs of fans’ jerseys. But it’s not the only way to succeed. Managing contact, keeping the fat part of the bat off the ball, gets none of the glamour. It has none of the markers of respectability. But the truly important thing, the key to actually being respectable, is keeping runs off the board. Too many are obsessed with the marker and give short shrift to the actual thing.

Emerson Hancock is one of those pitchers, particularly the version of him we’ve been treated to since he was recalled from Tacoma in mid-April. While he flashed a little extra velocity in some of his early outings this year, he’s really rounded into form lately as a contact manager. Contact manager. It’s an ugly term to so many. As John is fond of pointing out, it’s often just used as a synonym for “not good.” But it describes some real skill. It makes particular sense as a descriptor for Hancock and his sinker that gets so much run on it that it misses barrels but not enough depth to miss bats entirely.

That sinker was on display today as he dominated the Guardians over seven innings of work, tying a career high. Facing just one over the minimum, those seven innings took him a mere 85 pitches. And here’s the key stat of the game: despite just four strikeouts, he held opposing hitters to an expected batting average of just .205. His exit velocities weren’t spectacular, but he was able to consistently avoid the sweet spot. The Guardians’ launch angles today tell the whole story. The color scheme is hardly scientific—just an approximation I added to help the visual with blue representing a bad launch angle for a hitter, red, a good one.

After the game, he noted that this is how he’s trying to pitch, especially with a lead. “Just keep throwing strikes. Go right after him. Don’t get cute, get ahead of guys. Just do everything you can to try to get the ball in play.”

At this point we’re almost used to outings like this from Hancock, who’s quickly moving past “encouraging signs,” but today’s performance was nevertheless an important step forward because he did it (1) without that extra velo, averaging just 94.1 today, and (2) against a lineup full of left-handed hitters.

Certainly, when you induce a lot of balls in play, even weak contact, you need your defense to be reliable, and the Mariners did come through with a couple double plays. But the single out that required anything flashy was really due to a misread by Mitch Garver (compounding, it has to be noted, a couple of brutal strikeouts at the plate). Other than that, nobody really broke a sweat.

To be sure, Hancock isn’t just trying to get weak contact. He’s going after guys too, and he did pick up those four punchouts today and got swinging strikes from no lesser talents that Steven Kwan and José Ramírez. Asked about not being afraid to give up contact, he said, “I think it’s all balance, you know? I think you can go all in on one side and all in on the other. Sometimes, you’ve just got to take what the game gives you. . . . For me, some games you might not have as many strikeouts, and it’s kind of going to take what [the game] gives you.”

Now, before anyone gets too excited, it’s important to caveat this paean to Hancock. I noticed that on both the radio and TV feeds, the broadcasters discussed how good Hancock’s season looks if you take out this inning or that game or whatever. But you can’t do that. As positive as I’m being here about Hancock’s profile, it’s still a profile that will come with some blowups. That’s bound to happen when you leave balls in play, and it’s why the folks who prioritize the strikeout marker do have a point. I’d like it if more fans were able to take the good with the bad when it comes to pitchers like Hancock, but it’s equally true that you have to take the bad with the good. Balance in all things.

But today was a good day.

Backed up by solid outings from Casey Legumina and Eduard Bazardo, the Mariners blanked the Guardians, and the win felt certain as early as the second inning, after J.P. Crawford hit a grand slam on his first Father’s Day since becoming a dad. After the game, he noted how special it was to do that today, adding, “I always look at [my wife and daughter] when I’m on deck, and just gets me such a peace of mind, just seeing them.”

The Mariners’ other two runs were both scored by Randy Arozarena, who worked his way on base for free four times today thanks to three walks and a hit by pitch. He also stole two bases, making him a perfect 14 for 14 on the year. That’s pretty atypical for Arozarena, who has always run a lot, but has usually gotten caught on one out of three attempts, which more or less cancels out the value of the bases he gets. It’s a significant improvement in his game that stands out against a stat line that otherwise looks a lot like every other Randy Arozarena season. I’m not sure if it’s Eric Young, Jr.’s coaching or just the natural learning process, but he seems to have really gained a skill here. Lookout Landing will be investigating further. Whatever it is, his four free bases, two steals, and two runs scored is just about as much damage as you can possibly do without a hit, and it gets him today’s Sun Hat Award for a notable individual achievement. Yes, today’s recap began by criticizing crime but ends with praise for stealing. Not every recap can be perfectly symmetrical.