When right-hander Mike Foltynewicz makes his second start for the Braves on Wednesday he’ll be trying to fine-tune his delivery so he’s not so quick as to rush his pitches but not so slow as to allow opponents easy steals.
The Reds had five stolen bases in five attempts against Foltynewicz and catcher A.J. Pierzynski in the pitcher’s first career start on Friday. Since spring training Foltynewicz added a turn of his left leg away from the plate at the top of his delivery from the stretch, and Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said the extra fraction of a second allowed the Reds to run on Foltynewicz.
Gonzalez said Foltynewicz was taking as long as 1.8 seconds to deliver his pitches with runners on base.
“We need to clean that up a little bit because we don’t want it to be a track meet,” Gonzalez said.
Foltynewicz made an adjustment during the game but then was “almost too fast going to the plate,” Gonzalez said. The manager said the sweet spot is about 1.3 or 1.4 seconds.
“The Billy Hamiltons of the world, they are going to run,” Gonzalez said of the Reds’ speedster. “You just want to keep the below average runners or the average runners from not stealing a base or even thinking about it. But if you are 1.7, 1.8 (seconds) everybody in the ballpark is going to run and that’s what they did (Friday).”
Foltynewicz said he added the rotation because he’d been too quick to the plate.
“That’s a work in progress, really,” Foltynewicz said. “The turn at the top of the rotation is kind of helping me to stay back, really, and don’t rush. Sometimes during the game things get amped up and I rush a little bit.”
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