Jon Gray on pitching at Coors, "It's almost backwards now"

DENVER — 24-year-old prized right-handed pitching prospect Jon Gray has started to hit his stride at the big league level. Early concerns were raised about the Colorado Rockies rookie and his ability to pitch at Coors Field but those have been answered. Self admittingly, however, Gray pitches differently at his home park than he does elsewhere.

Quickly looking at Gray’s splits, he has a 3-0 record at home and a 2-4 record on the road with a lower ERA on the road but a minutely higher WHIP when away. None of these statistics tell the full story. But it’s evident what the difference is for the young flame-thrower; Control. On the road, his stuff might be slightly nastier with a 10.1 K/9 rate compared to a 9.4 K/9 rate at home, but his walk rate on the road has him surrendering almost two walks more per nine innings pitched.

That’s right, Gray is most likely a better pitcher, certainly a more controlled one, at Coors Field. In fact, he’s currently even giving up more hard contact on the road than at home, a complete inversion of a year ago.

“I think it’s trial and error,” Gray told BSN Denver about his first 12 career starts at Coors Field. “I think I found out what works, what slider moves, the way to beat batters here, you have to be aggressive in the zone with everything. You can’t really throw one pitch in the zone here, it has to be a mix, but as long as you’re attacking with and using every pitch in the zone, I think you have a good chance at getting a lot of weak contact and swing and misses and that’s what works.”

One pitch that Gray has really touted in his arsenal this year is his curveball. The breaker went from a pitch the Oklahoma native was instructed not to throw, to his best out pitch while in the road grays.

“I really notice it with the curveball,” Gray explained how altitude affects his uncle charlie. “Sunday the curveball was nasty and I feel like I can throw it in any count. Here at Coors I gotta be careful can’t hang it with two strikes, but on the road, I can grip it and rip it whenever.”

Indeed, below are vertical and horizontal movements on Gray’s pitches. His curveball shows how altitude hampers how the righty attacks hitters. The orange dots representing curveballs can be broken up into two groups, games where it is breaking less than five inches vertically and horizontally and games where the breaker is moving more than five inches vertically and horizontally. Group one where there is less break are all games Gray has pitched at Coors Field while group two represents his road starts.

Although his curveball is not the same weapon it is at home as it is on the road, it’s still not Gray’s best out pitch. His out pitch is his slider.

“I think my slider works better here (at Coors Field),” Gray described. “Because I know what it’s going to do, when I go away sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s short. It’s almost like backward now, I’m adjusting to what regular is, here it’s working perfectly.”

That same graph where there were obvious differences in his curveball’s splits does not show anything similar happening with his slider. As Gray correctly outlined in his self-assessment, his slider works better at Coors Field because he has a better feel for it. And that feel has led to fewer walks, which is the true recipe for success in pitching in Denver, limiting baserunners.

“It means a lot more when you have success here,” Gray said. “It’s that much sweeter when you have a good one here.”

Look for Gray to keep having good ones at 20th and Blake. He seems to think he has found a recipe for success, and the numbers back him up.

Be sure to check out Jon Gray’s appearance on the BSN Rockies Podcast — where we talk more about these topics and also PokemonGO and Dragon Ball Z — by clicking on the link above.