July 19, 2014

Nemesis

The Angels beat the Mariners 3-2 in sixteen innings Friday night. Mike Trout doubled and scored the winning run to finish the night 3 for 7. Only one of those hits came off Seattle starter Hisashi Iwakuma, however. Iwakuma, pitching in the same division, is one of the few pitchers who faced Trout at least 20 times. If you take down to 15 plate appearances, Iwakuma has done the best job of keeping Trout off base, and limiting his slugging percentage. Note that Iwakuma’s Seattle teammate, Felix Hernandez, faced Trout the most, and Michael just hammered the King, as he hammered most of the good pitchers on the list. Iwakuma does throw the split-fingered fastball, a pitch that has fallen out of use. Trout may not have seen enough of that pitch to learn how to tattoo it yet.

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