DUNEDIN, Fla. -- More than once in his career, Casey Mize has gone into the final days of Spring Training needing a strong final outing to help secure a rotation spot. So by comparison, heading into the final days of this camp needing to secure his fastball mechanics feels lower pressure.
Still, as he walked in a run Friday night on a four-pitch pass to Pirates leadoff hitter Jake Mangum – his third walk of the second inning and fourth walk in 10 batters – he had a level of concern.
“My mechanics are off,” he said. “Something's out of whack.”
It’s a rare statement for Mize to make, particularly in the spring. After years of either needing to win a job or come back from injury, or both, Mize entered this Spring Training able to focus purely on pitching for the first time in years. Instead, he has a new reason for urgency.
“I don't talk mechanics a ton. It's not really my thing,” he said. “But I have to right now, because that's the problem. …
“That's never been my issue. This is why it's frustrating that it's happening now. But there's a silver lining: History will probably tell you that it's not going to continue. But I've got to get to work, for sure.”
Mize battled Mangum for 10 pitches to begin the game before giving up a walk that set the tone for his outing. He actually was pounding the zone in that at-bat with fastballs but couldn’t finish Mangum off, finally missing the outside corner with a slider well off the plate.
Mize settled down that inning with a Tyler Callihan double play and retired Endy Rodríguez to begin his second inning before things fell apart. He lost Rafael Flores Jr. from an 0-2 count to a one-out walk, gave up a first-pitch single to Jhostynxon Garcia, struck out Dominic Fletcher on a pitch out of the zone, then surrendered consecutive four-pitch walks. None of those eight pitches were particularly close.
Manager A.J. Hinch used the re-entry rule to get Mize out of the inning and bring him back for the third, but Mize’s woes continued with a Garcia two-run homer on a hanging slider. A pair of one-out ground-ball singles in the fourth finished the outing.
“He looked out of sync really from the beginning and was trying to find his delivery,” Hinch said Saturday morning. “There are very few games where he walks as many guys as he did, especially in a short outing. He got his pitch count up, which was probably the best thing to come out of [the game], but it wasn’t a great night for him and he knows that. But it’s also in perspective, because it’s in a volume portion of spring where we can move on quickly.”
Mize’s fastball is at the heart of the issue. He threw 26 of them over his 67-pitch performance, but drew only one called strike and one whiff out of 15 swings. The average exit velocity off the fastball was 93.7 miles per hour, according to Statcast. The average fastball velocity was 93.6 mph.
“I'm not worried about velocity stuff,” Mize said. “I just feel like when I get my body synced up, it's going to come out good. Some pitches feel good coming out. My split feels good. Breaking balls don't feel great, but that's just a byproduct of me not being on time. When I'm on time it feels good, and when I'm not, it feels bad.
“Gotta get on time more often. That's the thing. Just gotta dig in over this next week and see what we can come up with.”
With two outings to go this spring, including next Wednesday night against the same Pirates in Bradenton, Mize has more walks (seven) than strikeouts (six) across 11 1/3 innings. It’s an odd spot for a pitcher who was in the 87th percentile among MLB pitchers for low walk rate last year, and in the 75th percentile the year before as he came back from Tommy John surgery.
Given his history, he’s confident he’ll figure it out.
“Obviously I want to feel good going into the season,” he said. “I have two more outings. I don't want to say I don't care, because I do care. It's important that I try to feel good trying to go into Arizona. But I'm not going to freak out. It's Spring Training, I'm working through some things and this is something that I wish I wasn't having to do this, but I am.”