DENVER -- Current pitching strategies of heavy breaking ball usage play right into the bat of the Rockies’ Troy Johnston.
Johnston entered Tuesday night’s game against the Rangers ranked eighth in the National League with a .321 batting average, while batting .341 in his first 15 May games.
Digging deeper, Johnston has done damage against breaking pitches – a .340 batting average and a .656 slugging percentage, with both of his home runs and eight of his 13 doubles. His effectiveness is not limited to breakers – he's hitting .323 on fastballs and .310 on offspeed offerings. But his best swings are against the breaking ball.
Johnston displayed his knack for hitting different pitches on Tuesday night, when he tallied two singles among the Rockies’ three hits in their 10-0 loss to the Rangers at Coors Field. Against righty Kumar Rocker (7 2/3 innings, seven strikeouts), Johnston pulled a changeup into left field in the second inning, and did the same with a slider in the seventh.
Johnston, 28, debuted with the Marlins last season after putting up strong Minor League numbers, but is making the most of his first true chance in the Majors.
It turns out Johnston is falling back on his education at Gonzaga, where he played before the Marlins drafted him in the 17th round in 2019. Pitchers he faced in the West Coast Conference, and others on the schedule, pitched in a way that is en vogue in the Majors today.
“We actually worked on hitting breaking balls,” Johnston said. “A lot of times you'd get a Friday [starting pitcher] and he's throwing 92 mph but he really only throws off speed. Then you get, you know, a Saturday guy, and it's a lefty that throws 84 mph, and he’s pretty much only going to flip in offspeed and changeups. So it was adapt or die.”
The adjustment to pro-level fastballs can be tough for players at the start of their Minor League careers, but Johnston noted that he still faced some of the same breaking and offspeed strategies when his career with the Marlins began.
“A lot of it had to do with where managers would put me in the lineup,” Johnston said. “If hitting 3-4-5-6-7 with guys on base, there are not a lot of times that you're just going to pump four fastballs to a guy. So they're going to flip in a slider, first pitch, or they're going to, you know, go to changeups.
“The way that baseball is going is, offspeeds are dominating what pitchers are throwing now. Because all of a sudden it makes the fastball look that much faster. If you lead it with three fastballs and you throw an offspeed, you know guys are gonna be on it even though they’re not very good at hitting it. But you throw four offspeeds, and then 99 at the top [of the zone], it's gonna look 107.”
Johnston said he can look for a breaking pitch, but still use what he calls his “emergency off-ramp swing” when a fastball shows. He will also sit fastball on occasion.
Manager Warren Schaeffer has been impressed with Johnston’s thought process.
“He battles the fastball, but I think he hits the breaking ball better,” Schaeffer said. “He studies a lot. He knows what he’s doing up there, so he has an idea of how they’re going to pitch him. There are some educated guesses in there. But you see a good breaking ball hitter.”