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Q.  What were we looking for?

A.  As far as Zych's TEMPLATE goes ... no, as far as RUMORED template goes, Dr. D had organized his pre-game thinking rat cheer.  We were on our toes ready to go left or right, but the "Way Draft" expectation was --- >

--- > Tanner Scheppers.  A guy with a hot, heavy fastball (and little else) that batters tend to blonk on two hops to the third baseman.  As opposed to striking out at an 11+ rate, like Carson Smith does them.  There's such a thing as a fastball that controls lineups without K's.  See Colon, Bartolo.  This was the template we had in mind first off.

....

It didn't work out that way.  Zych's fastball is not heavy, though it is hot.  And his slider is not at all useless; he throws it on the first pitch and poaches 0-1 counts with it.  Zych pitched more like a wannabe Carson Smith than a wannabe Tanner Scheppers.

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Q.  Is this slider Carson Smith-quality?

A.  It is not, not by a long shot.  (But that's not exactly a damning observation.)  Here is the movement on it, the little clump to your (and the catcher's) right:

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movement

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The ball stays way UP in the strike zone, up about as much as you'll ever see a slider.  This is known in the vernacular as a "one plane" breaking ball:  it breaks on the plane of the hitter's bat.  Mortals have served 20 years in the minors for lesser offenses.

Even worse, it's on the same plane as the fastball, which sinks some.  So batters can use a "Don Mattingly" approach:  they can begin their attack by simply putting the hands on the same plane as the incoming energy.  Wayyyy simplifies the problemo.

As a completely separate issue, this really is a slider that left hand batters want to hit against.  Just pull the hands in a little bit and you're right there.

That's not the end of the discussion, but it's one thing to be aware of, if you're plumping Zych for the 2016 bullpen.

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Q.  What's the good news?

A.  The arm action on the slider is a huge plus.  Even better, Tony Zych's weird, violent motion makes it just about unpossible to guess his intention until the ball's way out of his hand.  This 0.1 seconds delay in the batters' perception is rather important, when you consider he's got 0.25 seconds to read the pitch and decide.  Batters make their money reading the ball as it comes off the pitcher's fingertips.

So the slider's movement is a tragedy, but it does serve as a parachute changeup and it is -13 MPH to a (dominating) fastball.  With the weird delivery also, that's an unpleasant deal-io to have to face.

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Q.  What about his mechanics?

A.  We slo-mo'ed it ... the motion LOOKS much weirder than it is in reality.  Zych's motion is conventional but for 2, actually 2.5 things.  Here, cue up the MLB.com video and sing along with Dr. D:

(1) He has a pointless rip of his head back to CF and then back to home plate, just as he accelerates the ball.  On the pitch in the vid, he did it less than on any other pitch, but you can still see it.  He winds up normally, and then to start his shoulders around (at 20 revs per second!) he jerks his jaw back to the CF and WHALES it back at the catcher to start his left shoulder harder.  It's annoying and it's weird, but it confuses the batter.

(2) He pulls back his upper arm at a weird angle, with the forearm pointing at the sky.  That's not such a big deal.

(2.5) He short-arms the ball, as many pitchers do, but Zych takes it to another level.  He barely unhinges his elbow the whole way through.  How do you get 96 MPH with no centrifugal leverage to start the ball?  Wow.

Other than those things, Zych is fine -- good CG, good accel down the center line, good everything.  Really the main effect of the weirdness is deception.

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Q.  Why did he (all of a sudden) whuff 55 men and walk only 9 this year?

A.  Friday night's Zych strike zone provided the answer, courtesy Brooks Baseball:

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Zone

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You remember Michael Pineda in his first couple of spring training starts here.  Throwing 22 consecutive strikes to start the game.  When you do that, it's like you are throwing every pitch when behind 2-0 in the count.  You can't tip off, ahead of time, whether the ball is going to be there for the batter.

Even worse, Zych threw 10-of-12 sliders right into the strike zone; I bet the two that weren't were those two balls that broke juuuussssst off the black, outside.

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Q.  Leaving us where?

A.  Carson Smith arrived in the majors, already with a good feel for when to (1) go onto the plate and then (2) go OFF the plate.  Smith enjoys starting that slider on the black, to break way off the plate.

If Tony Zych were to take his current arsenal, and add the idea of sucker pitches, it would likely "unlock" the dynamism in his two pitches.  That said, the shape of his slider suits him to innings where 2-3 of the first 3 hitters are righty.  That's okay; Jeff Nelson needed a healthy platoon advantage also.

Eyes slideways.  Zych's got potential to stick in the bigs.

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Q.  What else is going on with the M's?

A.  Yet 11 more runs yestidday.  As Bat571 pointed out in the Shout Box, used to be that a 5-1 deficit, it was time to turn to NFL network.  The M's had that back inside a' two innings.  In desperation, the A's even tried to use a man with a 4' butterfly net on his hand, and the guy alternated arms every pitch.  Didn't work.  All Venditte proved was that he could get roasted alive from either side.  BAM!  ZOK!  BIFF!  And Venditte was tied telephone pole with 8 coils of rope around his chest and his hands free.

Mark Trumbo skipped the party and his OPS+ slipped to 99.  This reduced the number of above-average M's from 8 to 7.  Dr. D's pretty bummed out about it.  But he would like some real ideas from the Think Tank as to whether it would go with this essential lineup for 2016.

Edgar Olmos and Vidal Nuno:  Dr. D, as you know, is not the type to say I told you so.  But Olmos served the purpose of giving the M's a cool 5-1 deficit against which to score their 11 runs.  Like Madonna's parents gave her a traditional background against which to levy her moral revolution.  The whole A's game was a sort of microcosm for American culture, if you ignore the trifling detail that Truth, Justice, and Apple Pie won last night rather than being run out of town on a rail.

Maybe the M's should keep everybody except LoMo?  That doesn't apply to Jesus Sucre, of course.  His OPS+ is a negative number.  Sucre's minors numbers, now that we look at them ... he hit a very empty .254 down in the bushes, over 2000 AB's.  He might or might not be a backup catcher.  Operative phrase being "might not."  Dr. D, as GM, has made his call on Jesus Sucre and it is set in stone.  The M's gotta fix Zunino or they gotta do something quick, like trade for Wellington Castillo.

That Castillo-for-Trumbo deal, that one you can hang around Jack's neck.  The emotional pitch of it reminds you of the Fister deal.

BABVA,

Dr D