Patience is a virtue. Aaron Judge was walked four times Tuesday night in his quest for home run No. 61.
During his days as a Dodger, Zack Greinke puzzled over the tendencies of his most venerated teammate. Clayton Kershaw, Greinke thought, was entirely too predictable.
The curveball had made Kershaw famous. In spring training, Kershaw tinkered endlessly with a changeup. In between starts, he toiled to land pitches in each quadrant of the strike zone. Yet during games, once the season began, Kershaw trusted a straightforward formula. Nearly nine times out of 10, he threw a fastball or a slider. More often that not, he aimed the baseball toward his glove side — inside to right-handed hitters and away from left-handed batters — and low in the zone.
“To me, like, how do guys not hit that?” Greinke said one day this past summer. “He’s telling you what he’s going to do. I would think that people would be able to hit it.” It was only later, after Greinke left for Arizona and stepped into the batter’s box against his former teammate, that he understood the clinical potency of Kershaw’s approach. Greinke geared up for fastballs on the inner half and sliders aimed at his back foot. He learned that it did not matter that he knew what was coming. Nor did it matter if Kershaw’s fastball no longer lit up the radar gun.
“When I got to face him more consistently, you would see that a good pitch is a good pitch,” Greinke said. “If someone has a really good pitch, even if you’re looking for it, it’s not easy to hit.”
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