Two nights ago, the Miami Marlins beat the New York Mets 2-1 despite a struggle of a start for Jose Fernandez and a strong outing by opposing starter Noah Syndergaard. A lot of things went against the Marlins, and the Fish still pulled out a victory. Amid that victory was one of many interesting things that happened. In a night with interesting baserunning choices, the Marlins' most notable baserunner had a strange night. Dee Gordon's four other plate appearances in this game ended in strikeouts, the first time in his career in which he has struck out four times in one game. However, the plate appearance that is going to stand out is the one in which not only did he not strike out, but he also withstood a furious test from Mets reliever Jim Henderson en route to a base hit that kicked off the Marlins' win.
That is the plot of pitches that Gordon saw in that plate appearance, next to what is considered the classic strike zone. Note that a left-handed hitter will usually get called strikes further outside the traditional zone. For example, here was the balls to called strike plot for the game that night.
This is pretty consistent with a typical left-handed hitter strike zone. It also seemed to be exactly what Henderson was targeting, as he stayed strictly outside and rarely bothered to venture inwards on Gordon. The pitch closest to Gordon's chest was a fastball down the chute and almost letter high, noted to be around 96.5 mph on release and resulting in jam shot popup that barely traveled out of play. Outside of that pitch and the fifth one of the appearance, Henderson went away from Gordon throughout.
Rarely do we get to see this much of an approach against Gordon, simply because he swings much more often and puts the ball in play before we get to this many pitches. When comparing the pitches thrown to Gordon with the strike zone we saw last night, it seems not unreasonable for Gordon to have to swing at those pitches. Home plate umpire Tim Timmons was making odd calls all night and had called at least one strike on a pitch far to the left of the traditional zone. Pitches six and 15 were maybe the only ones that were borderline calls, and given the two-strike count, Gordon may have been able to pick up a ball on either one of those, likely pitch six.
Other than that, it was essentially required for Gordon to swing at the rest of those, and that he did. Attacking Gordon outside is not an unusual strategy, as that has been going on since 2014.
Venturing inside is not something pitchers do all that often. What is odd is that one would think Gordon is the type of guy to attack on the hands. His bat speed is decent, but he is not going to turn on a pitch in his wheelhouse and punish you badly with power. He swings at each area in the strike zone pretty much evenly, and he hits worse on inside pitches than outside ones.
The only time Henderson really "went inside," he was actually seemingly aiming low and down the middle rather than truly attacking Gordon at the knees. This is the still frame of that 11th pitch.
Henderson elevates this pitch but does not get punished, as Gordon fails to catch up to it.
What makes this and pitch 14 were how close they were to finishing off this plate appearance. You could argue Henderson makes four bad pitches in this plate appearance, including those two, the one in which Gordon gets the eventual hit, and pitch five. In two of those pitches are the ones in which Gordon makes contact that most closely resembles outs. Those two pitches let off pop-ups to the third base side, where they were close enough that David Wright actually wandered over and, in at least one attempt, had close to a chance at the ball.
The square is the ball as it hits probably to the left and maybe a foot in front of Wright's glove, which is circled. That is how close that ball came to being an out on what was probably a mistake pitch, the worst of the plate appearance for Henderson.
Gordon of course received a ton of fastballs to not catch up to on that plate appearance. Out of the 16 pitches, 15 were fastballs, and they were coming in hot at an average of 95.8 mph in terms of release velocity. Henderson was throwing gas to try and get Gordon out, but clearly at some point he decided to attack the lefty with a little finesse. D'Arnaud sets up to catch that breaking ball on the outside corner of the plate, attempting to essentially get Henderson to throw a backdoor slider. It seems like a better idea would have been to attack him low and at the feet if you have a traditionally glove-side and downward breaking slider. However, Henderson entirely missed his spot, throwing Gordon the final mistake pitch and the first breaking ball at Gordon belt-high rather than at the knees.
Of course, this would not be this plate appearance were it not for Gordon himself making the process of the hit a scary one. He did not get a clean swing at this pitch, instead swiping at it. However, he put backspin on the ball and got it to float over the infield and just short of the outfield, which was already playing Gordon short. This was the most Gordon-esque struggle to stay alive at the plate, and it ended in a classic bloop base hit akin to other Marlins low-power greats like Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo. Gordon even got aboard and stole a base afterward, fulfilling his eventual destiny to score on this most lengthy of chances.
Christian Yelich and Giancarlo Stanton also worked long plate appearances en route to walks, leading eventually to the Marlins' bases-loaded chance. Martin Prado hit the sacrifice fly that scored Gordon and won the Marlins the game. While this plate appearance may end being little more than a trivia question and footnote, it was a fun and oddly mystifying thing to watch, and its story deserved to be told.