BSN Exclusive: How Jon Gray is excelling where everyone else in baseball is failing

 

Anyone who has been watching baseball this year, especially baseball at Coors Field, knows that the ball is flying off the bat and out of the park at an extraordinary rate.

Colorado’s altitude and expansive outfield have always given up a lot of runs and the worst kept secret in the game is that something is clearly different with the baseballs.

But the notion that it has become an impossible place to pitch appears to be entirely lost on Jon Gray.

Over 50 innings pitched at home, Gray has posted a 3.24 ERA which is, perhaps surprisingly and perhaps not, significantly lower than his 4.29 ERA out on the road. Somehow, in an environment that has chewed up and spit out players like Walker Buehler and Hyung-Jin Ryu – in addition to it’s own Kyle Freeland, German Márquez, and every reliever not named Scott Oberg – The Wolf of Blake Street has excelled.

On the season, Coors Field has surrendered 642 runs, an average of 13.9 runs a game or roughly a 6.98 ERA spread equally across every pitcher who has taken the Mile High Mound.

Over his last 10 starts, five at home, Gray has posted a 3.06 ERA while striking out 9.05 batters per nine and walking 2.92. Maybe the most impressive part is that he has gone at least five innings each time out and gone at least 6 IP in seven of the 10 starts.

He has averaged 6.1 IP over nine home starts this year.

And the secret formula isn’t that complicated.

“Keep the ball low and don’t walk people,” he says. “And if you can, keep the ball in the yard.”

There has always been a push and pull between hunting for weak contact and trying to avoid it altogether. On the one hand, any amount of bat-on-ball can be dangerous in this time and place, but on the other hand, nibbling on the edges and running up the pitch count is a recipe for disaster.

It has taken time and a lot of hard work, but Gray has found a balance.

“You have to miss bats here to have the best chance possible but then again, if you’re not attacking, you’re gonna walk people and find danger somewhere,” he says. “Your best chance is to just attack people and go right after them. If you give up a solo home run, so what. You just gotta go at ’em.”

This exact thing happened in Gray’s most recent outing, a strong seven-inning performance that saw him give up just two tough-luck runs. The first came on a ground ball right at the normal third base spot, but because of the shift, it went for an RBI triple. And the second was a literal wall-scraping home run for Eugenio Suarez on a well-located 97 MPH fastball.

But those were two of only four hits he gave up and he did not walk a batter during the contest.

“It seems like all of the softer stuff is landing,” he admitted, but otherwise doesn’t feel like the ball is flying much further than it has before. Maybe that’s because too much is being made about the strange circumstances this season or maybe that’s because when you are pitching as well as he has, that stuff just doesn’t matter nearly as much.

Gray has talked to us before about having different approaches for road and home games, specifically when it comes to where he sets his sights on breaking pitches. Now, in his fourth year of MLB work, he has settled into a routine that works well for him.

“I feel like I’ve gotten better at making that transition,” he says. “When we’re playing multiple series on the road and then you come back here, it’s gonna feel a bit different, especially that first day. But I feel like I’m making that adjustment pretty quick.”

A lot of that has to do with mindset and work done between starts, but it continues all the way out to those first several offerings from the mound.

“I usually feel good after the first two fastballs I throw,” Gray says of finding a rhythm at home. “If I throw a really good one, I feel ready. That’s what I’m really trying to do early in games is make sure my fastball is in my tunnel. Then I’m good. I feel locked in.”

Whatever is working for Gray, the rest of the rotation and most of the bullpen are searching for their own version of it.

They cannot afford to hang their heads and throw in the towel regardless of how unreasonable the run totals feel. If anything, Gray points out, the craziness should be something the team that plays here most often can turn in their favor.

“I think it’s an advantage,” Gray says. “Every guy we have can pitch here. We should have an advantage every time we take the field. We have this experience. We’re used to it. If we give up two or three runs, we have to know our guys are going to respond. We have to be tough.”

A year ago, when the sweeping narrative surrounding Jon Gray was that he was mentally weak, it may have been hard to imagine he would currently stand as the toughest and steadiest arm in the organization.

There are a lot of questions left to be answered for this club in the remainder of the season. The pitching needs a complete turnaround or Colorado will be home early in October.

And if they find themselves inclined to make excuses because of the baseballs or the ballpark, they’d do well to instead take a look at Jon Gray’s numbers and game film and figure out a way to try to emulate it.