4/28/24 - Game 28 - Guardians Versus Bryce Elder
Bryce Elder makes his second start of 2024 after blanking the Marlins on Tuesday evening.
Repertoire
Lots of sinkers and sliders. These two pitches make up 91 percent of his mix against righties and 53 percent against lefties. With left-handed hitters in the box, Elder is liable to throw anything at any time, which is a desperate plea in hopes of doing anything against them.
Matchup Grades
The only negative matchup is … Jose Ramirez? A couple neutral outlooks for Brayan Rocchio and Andres Gimenez. Every other Guardians hitter is programmed to mash against Bryce Elder. It did not play out quite that way last summer, with only Steven Kwan doing real damage against him. Gimenez faltered that game. Ramirez walked and flied out a pair of times.
Steven Kwan’s day against Elder last summer was a diverse attack of all of his pitches, as is indicated by the above matchup grades. Kwan attacked a slider for line drive single in the first inning.
In the 5th inning is was sitting back on a sinker and shooting it for a single the other way. Kwan is an expert at doing so with that pitch type.
And in the 7th inning it was jumping on a get me over 4-seam fastball that only registered 90 miles per hour for a double.
The Elder Sinker
Bryce Elder’s sinker returns the most similarity scores with pitchers like Karl Kauffman, Dane Dunning, Drew Rucinski, Dakota Hudson, and Brady Singer.
Gabriel Arias has demonstrated a pure love for hitting this pitch, in a lot of cases driving it the other way. One of his best swings of his big league career came on a Brady Singer sinker that shares a lot of velocity and movement characteristics with the Bryce Elder sinker.
The Elder Slider
The Singer slider is also very similar to that of Bryce Elder. As is the Kenta Maeda slider.
The Naylor brothers like sliders.
Josh Naylor once encountered a nice spinning disc from Brady Singer.
Bo Naylor once encountered a nice spinning disc from Kenta Maeda.
The Elder 4-Seam
Mike Mayers, formerly of the Angels, shares one of the most similar 4-seam fastballs to that of Bryce Elder.
Ramon Laureano enjoys the lower velocity right-handed 4-seam, and might find his name on the lineup card this afternoon.
Guardians Lineup (Updated 10:36am)
Kwan - LF
Gimenez - 2B
Ramirez - 3B
Naylor, J - 1B
Fry - DH
Brennan - RF
Freeman - CF
Naylor, B - C
Rocchio - SS
No Arias. Matchups aside, it is refreshing to see a true rotation of reps and the young Brayan Rocchio deserves a good amount of opportunities.
No Florial. But David Fry should match up well against the Elder fastballs, as well. Otherwise