4/3/24 - Game 7 - Guardians Hitters Versus George Kirby
How do the Guardians stack up against the talented Seattle righty? Which players are best positioned for success based on their history?
George Kirby time. After showing competence against Luis Castillo, the Guardians will run into another tough Seattle Mariner right-hander. Kirby is quite different from Castillo, though. Primarily, Kirby has a barrage of offerings that he is comfortable leaning on from time to time. He can pump it up to the upper 90s and is very dependent on his very good 4-seam fastball. Kirby avoids walks like they are the plague, in part due to pinpoint command with some help from his ability to get hitters to chase pitchers out of the zone. A disciplined approach is difficult but key in trying to chase Kirby off the mound.
Repertoire
It is easy to see the variety of offerings, but it is important to notice that Kirby leans on the fastball near 60 percent of the time. Against lefties, his fastball is predominantly of the 4-seam variety, but against righties he will approach a more even distribution between 4-seam and sinker. Kirby will incorporate the cutter mostly against righties, while leaning on his changeup more when lefties are in the box.
The most hittable options from Kirby tend to be the curve and changeup, which are rarely utilized. He features a lot of plus pitches with xwOBAs against below the 0.300 level. Each one of his fastballs nears elite company with those expected results.
Matchup Grades
Hard throwing righty again, heavily dependent on 4-seam fastball. As the sample builds further for Gabriel Arias, I expect he would regress more towards the mean in this regard, but it is a perfect day to play him from both an opposing pitcher perspective and based on a short turnaround after he had the previous night off. It is still surprising that he matches up well against the upper velocity heat from the right hander given his lengthy yet powerful swing, so we should be hopeful to see it in action.
It would be easy to slide Gabriel Arias into the shortstop role to give Brayan Rocchio another breather, especially considering Rocchio’s struggles against the 4-seam that should amount to near half of Kirby’s offerings to opposite handed hitters. One could also keep Rocchio in the lineup and get Jose Ramirez a day as designated hitter.
Despite David Fry grading out poorly relative to his personal output, it would not be a terrible decision to play him as he still projects to be a little better than several other Guardians hitters against this pitch mix and type. Bo Naylor grades poorly but better than his catching counterpart.
Steven Kwan will look to do heavy damage to the Kirby 4-seam fastball and slider, so the Mariners righty should look to attack heavily with his curve and sinker. He would even do well to mix in more of the split-fingers and changeups to the Guardians leadoff hitter.
Unsurprisingly, Josh Naylor is again in a good spot against Kirby, as he was against Luis Castillo last night. It did not pan out in his two plate appearances against the latter, but Naylor’s ironically powerful and accurate swing plays well against the high velocity. Kirby’s elite chase rate generation, however, could be Naylor’s worst nightmare. Every plate appearance between these two will be a fascinating battle of style. If I were deciding how to attack Naylor with Kirby’s arsenal, it would center around pitching backwards with the knuckle curve as the lead plan of attack. Naylor enjoys his occasional fishing trip out of the strike zone early in the count, which would allow Kirby to steer far clear of the Naylor nitro zones.
Although his matchup grade is neutral, Estevan Florial is another Guardian I will keep a close eye on if in the lineup. His ability to track and hammer upper velocity 4-seams could find a Kirby mistake in his crosshairs.