Nate Pearson retired the first 11 batters he faced. Four strikeouts, four ground outs, two popups and a fly ball against the Erie Sea wolves, who boast the best offence in the Double-A Eastern League. Pearson’s fastball sat at 97 mph, touching 100. He was dominant.
He was also liberated. For most of the season, the Blue Jays had cosseted their top pitching prospect, alternating two- and five-inning inning starts and keeping a fastidious watch on his pitch count. Pearson had faced only 10 batters at High-A Dunedin last year, the 10th man drilling a pitch off his forearm. It was broken. His season was over after one short start.
Entering this season, Pearson had pitched only 21 2/3 innings in pro ball. The Blue Jays’ conservative approach to load management was prudent. In their dreams cape, Pearson walks tall, leading the youth movement alongside Vlad Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. The club was taking no chances.
“Yeah, it was frustrating at times, but I just had to remember that the Blue Jays were looking out for my arm and my health,” Pearson said of the metaphorical harness he had to wear for the first four months. “I just had to take it that they know what’s best for me. I had to go through that to get to the full healthy year that I wanted to reach.”
But as of Sunday, the reins were off. Pearson’s pitch limit in his remaining starts will be 100. He has pitched 72 innings. With five starts left (the season ends on Labour Day), he’ll finish well short of his club-imposed innings limit of 125.
It was sunny and hot as Pearson’s visiting New Hampshire Fisher Cats prepared for the final game of their road trip against Erie, a Tigers’ affiliate. In his previous start, Pearson had worked six shutout innings, a career high. His ERA for the season, covering 19 starts at Dunedin and New Hampshire, was 2.01.
His first pitch was a fastball at 98 mph, top of the zone. His third was a slider down. The batter grounded out to third.
For three innings, that was the pattern. The hitters were late on the heater, stumped by the slider. He got a come backer on a change up. One fastball hit 100 mph. The batter fouled it off.
Pearson worked quickly, a towering figure at 6-foot-6, his head jerking toward first base as he released the ball, his stare side-eyed as he tracked each pitch. His stoic expression never flickered.
The day before, after finishing his afternoon work with the pitchers, New Hampshire coach Vince Horsman sat on the bullpen bench and offered a scouting report on the robust righthander now ranked as the Blue Jays’ best prospect.
“Big strong guy,” Horsman said. “He’s really fun to watch. He’s got the four-pitch mix. His work ethic is off the charts. Very focused, very determined. He really is a coach’s dream. Very coachable, but yet as a coach, you really don’t have to impart a lot on Nate. Everything’s already in place. He just needs to go out there and pitch and make the in-game adjustments.”
And now, “He has some innings to play with. Now we can just let him go.”
The last batter of the third inning swung late at a 97-mph fastball and grounded out. Nine batters up, nine down. The Fisher Cats led 1-0.
Returning from the third-base coach’s box, Erie manager Mike Rabelo stood on the steps and told his troops: “We got ‘em right where we want ‘em.”
Maybe it was hot air. Or maybe he’d noticed something.
Pearson’s potent pitching pattern included some tiny telltale signs.
Through three innings, Pearson was averaging 13 pitches. In the fourth, he doubled that number.
He started the inning with two strikeouts, two of his best at-bats of the day. He set up the first with a high, teasing fastball at 98 mph for a ball, then dropped in a swing-and-miss slider, 86 and down. The next batter got a diet of offspeed stuff, including a spiked show-me curveball. After mixing in another 100-mph heater (fouled off), he froze the hitter with a slider for his fourth K.
Then came the turn.
“The biggest thing for Nate is just commanding his body,” Horsman had said the previous day. “There are times when he’ll just try to overmuscle a ball or overpower a ball. That’s pretty tempting when you’re 6-6 and throw 100. I think what he’s learning here is, regardless of how hard he throws, there still has to be a measure of pitching. He has to command his fastball and work his fastball to both sides of the plate.”
At his best, Pearson is masterful with his fastball at the top of the zone. His heater has late life. His stride is long. Those factors, and his elite velocity, further divide the split-second that hitters have to decide whether to swing or take, regardless of pitch location.
But when a pitcher misses his spot, hitters can hit heat. Pearson had missed a few times in the early innings – not by much, mind you – and in his second time through the order, he started to miss a little more often.
With two down, he put a 100-mph pitch in the lower outside quadrant and Jose Azocar lined it to the opposite field for Erie’s first hit. Good pitch, good hitting.
Up stepped Josh Lester, a left-handed batter with 14 home runs. On a 2-1 count, Pearson left a 97-mph pitch up and out over the plate. Lester hit it over the right-field fence.
The next batter took 99 mph for a ball, then got 96 right down the middle. He hit a fly ball to deep right. Chad Spanberger lined it up, then started swatting his glove at the sun. The ball dropped for a triple.
Pearson stranded the runner. But it took him eight pitches to strike out the next batter. With hitters starting to time up his fastball, he went heavy on sliders, the last a swing-and-miss beauty at 86. (“His slider has come a long way since he’s come up here from Dunedin,” Horsman said.)
Three batters had reached base, but only two scored. The damage was minimal. But it felt like a long inning, and for Pearson, at 26 pitches, it was.
After four innings, his pitch count was 65. He would not reach 100.
Since his college days, Pearson has been a devotee of the famed Driveline Baseball training and conditioning program, which focuses heavily on motion-capture technology and high-speed, slow-motion video. Back then, he started using a series of Drive line-designed weighted balls to improve arm strength. This past offseason, he visited the Driveline facility in Seattle for in-person instruction.
Driveline features two key tools, which have taken baseball by storm in the past couple of years:
The Blue Jays invested heavily in Rapsodo and Edgertronic equipment for their minor-league teams this year. The systems are used during each pitcher’s bullpen session.
“It’s a humongous aid to the pitching coach,” Horsman said. “Nate might say, ‘I’m getting around my slider.’ We have data from Rapsodo telling us what his slider is supposed to look like, and we have video from the Edgertronic that shows where his hand is when he’s throwing his good slider versus where his hand is now. It’s instant feedback.”
Pearson says the Driveline program has helped him with the “design” of his breaking pitches. To hear him talk, one might conclude that his understanding of the technology might surpass that of his coaches.
“I’ve spent more time on it, learning about it the last couple years,” he said. “They kind of just introduced it to the coaches this year, so they’re all kind of still learning. Baseball’s starting to go that way, so they’re trying to learn, which is good.”
Horsman, a Halifax native in his 12th season as a coach in the Jays system, certainly likes the technology. But it can’t be used during games. That leaves a coach to rely on old-school techniques.
“You just have to go with your experience, with what you see,” he said.
Which is what he did in the fifth inning on Sunday, when things started going sideways for Pearson.
Facing the bottom of the order, he started with a walk. With one out, he gave up three straight singles, the last one loading the bases with a run in. The pitches weren’t meatballs, by any means. But Pearson was missing his spots, by just a bit, catching enough of the plate to let batters pounce.
Horsman came out for a visit. After he left, Pearson threw just one pitch, a slider down, on the inner half. Azocar bounced it into a 6-4-3 double play.
Pearson’s final line: five innings, six hits, three runs, a walk, five strikeouts and 81 pitches. It ended in a grind under a scorching sun. He threw 42 pitches over the fourth and fifth innings.
By most standards, it was a decent outing. He’d limited the damage. He’d maintained his velocity, touching 100 mph again in his last inning. He’d killed a budding rally with a one-pitch at-bat. And his ERA for the season over two levels stood at 2.25.
But by Pearson’s standards, it wasn’t good enough. He and Horsman will give the Edgertronic and Rapsodo units a workout during his next bullpen sessions. The Jays’ top prospect turns 23 in two weeks, and while he understands patience is a virtue, he’s still trying to make up for a lost season of development. Over the next month, he says, he aims to pile up innings and gain the knowledge that comes from pitching deep into his starts.
A day earlier, as he discussed the work ethic that Horman called “off the charts,” Pearson said: “I guess I spend more time taking care of my body than maybe other guys.”
For some new pro pitchers, ramping up their workout comes after an epiphany of sorts, when they watch the habits of more experienced pitchers. Not so with Pearson.
“I’ve always had that kind of approach, ever since high school,” he said. “I can’t do the same things that other guys do and expect better results. I’ve got to build my own routine that works for me, and I think I’ve got a good foundation of that now.”
And then, the kicker that sums up the mentality that drives Nate Pearson.
“I want to be the best,” he said, “and I’ve got to do stuff that separates me from the others.”
He’s well on his way, with plenty more to learn, from technology and especially from experience.
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