Dodgers lineup a tough test for walk-prone Gil

Sometimes, it’s not quite obvious what the story of an upcoming game or matchup is going to be. Sometimes, it’s one good team against another, without a clear “what to watch for” hook beyond that.

This is not one of those times.

In Tuesday’s World Series Game 4 at Yankee Stadium, New York is going to start rookie Luis Gil, who led the Majors in walks, despite throwing the 64th-most innings. He managed that, in part, because despite excellent stuff, he simply doesn’t get batters to chase (15th percentile in that metric). He’ll be facing a Dodgers lineup that craves walks (9.6%, third-most in the Majors), doesn’t chase (25.7%, second-lowest in the Majors), and is No.1 in at least one more advanced swing decision metric, Robert Orr’s “SEAGER.”

A pitcher who has a hard time limiting walks against one of the sport’s most discerning lineups? Now there’s a hook.

Over the last four years, only two starters who have thrown at least 180 innings have a higher walk rate than Gil’s 12.5%. One of them, Miami’s Edward Cabrera, finished with a 4.95 ERA this year and was demoted to the Minors last season explicitly to try to throw more strikes. The other is actually also in the 2024 World Series, and he’s been dominant, but he’s no longer a starter – Los Angeles’ Michael Kopech. It’s not exactly a traditional recipe for success.

On the other side: Despite seeing higher-quality pitching, that 25.7% Dodgers chase rate in the regular season has remained exactly 25.7% in the postseason. Since Statcast came online back in 2015, four of the seven lowest team chase rate postseasons (at least among teams who stuck around long enough to see 750 pitches) have been Dodgers clubs, namely the 2017, ’18, ’20 and ’24. It’s not a fluke. It’s what they do.

It doesn’t mean Gil can’t be effective, obviously, because of course we saw him have an All-Star-caliber first half (even if he wasn’t selected), and the Yankees won Game 4 of the ALCS, his only previous start this month. It helps, too, that he shares some qualities with one of the top starters in baseball (as we’ll detail shortly).

It goes without saying that you don’t get to make a World Series start against a lineup that isn’t dangerous, but this is not exactly an ideal matchup either, is it? Here, then, is what exactly to keep an eye out for on Tuesday evening.

1) It’s actually not that Gil can’t throw strikes.

This is the first thing you’d think, right? “Pitcher issues a ton of walks, so he must have terrible command.”

But it’s not that Gil can’t throw strikes; his in-zone rate of 49% is only a little below the Major League average of 51%. When he does enter the zone, he gets a league-average rate of swings on those pitches, and a better-than-average rate of misses. Where the walks come from is really a combination of two things:

A) He’s poor at getting chase. When he does leave the zone, he gets a swing on just 25% of those pitches. The Major League average is 29%, and starters who are really good at this, like Cristopher Sánchez or Shota Imanaga, can get near 40%. You generally want to get hitters to offer at “bad” pitches, and Gil doesn’t.

B) He’s really poor at first-pitch strikes. Among those starters, nearly 200 of them, who have thrown 180 innings over the last four years, Gil’s first-pitch strike rate of 55% is third-lowest. It’s a mixed bag in this area, really. There’s Kopech again in the bottom five, as well as the mostly ineffective Zach Davies (5.43 ERA in that time), but also Cristian Javier, who, when healthy, has been quite good. You probably don’t want to do this, but it’s not fatal, either.

What ends up happening is a lot of deep counts, because only four qualified pitchers use more pitches per plate appearance than Gil does, and one prerequisite of a walk is that you can’t issue one before the count gets to three balls. More than 10% of Gil’s pitches come with a three-ball count, and you will be unsurprised to know that this is one of the highest rates of any regular starting pitcher this year. The Dodgers lineup sees the fifth-most pitches per plate appearance, so expect a lot of deep counts on Tuesday.

So how does a pitcher who doesn’t limit walks, doesn’t get much chase and racks up high pitch counts survive? By being generally unhittable otherwise. Part of Gil’s early season success was in simply limiting hits; his .171 average against was one of the lowest first-half marks in the last 70 years. That was never quite going to last to that extent, but it gives you an idea of what he does, which is “throw nasty stuff and dare you to damage it, and if that comes with a walk, so be it.”

Wait a minute: Why does this sound so familiar?

2) There is a way to succeed like this – or was.

Last year, Blake Snell won the National League Cy Young Award, making him the first winner to take the trophy home while leading his league in walks since 1959. Earlier, when we said that Gil worked out of three-ball counts more than almost anyone else this year, one of the “almost anyone else” names was Snell. Gil sees a mere 45% swing rate, one of the 15 lowest among regular starters; he is essentially tied with Snell. How did Snell win that Cy last year? Because it was his third entry in the top 10 of “lowest batting average against” seasons dating back to the start of the Wild Card in 1995.

You can get away with this if you just can’t be hit, and for the first half, Gil was doing his best Snell impression.

In his first 22 starts, through Aug. 7:

But he lasted only four innings against the White Sox on Aug. 12, then left his Aug. 20 start early with a minor back strain. When he returned in September, Gil allowed only two earned runs over his next three starts, but the underlying metrics were worse. His final two starts, against Oakland and Pittsburgh, were somewhat disastrous, capping a rough home stretch.

The walk rate, believe it or not, barely moved. What happened was the pitches became more hittable, particularly the four-seamer, which allowed a .337 first-half slugging percentage before a .548 mark in the second half.

All of which seems problematic, though it’s interesting to see how he tried to adjust against the Guardians in the ALCS. Ten of the 14 sliders he threw in Game 4 of that series were in the zone, his highest slider zone rate of his entire career. Eleven of his 21 changeups were in the zone, the fourth-highest rate of any start where he’d thrown at least 10. Meanwhile, his four-seamer had one of the lowest zone rates of any start of his career.

3) He’s already had a good start against the Dodgers in 2024.

It’s worth noting that we have seen this matchup already this season, back on June 9. Gil was more good than great, allowing three runs in 5 2/3 innings, but more importantly, he walked just one hitter, Freddie Freeman.

Gil didn’t do it by throwing strikes – it was, in fact, exactly the opposite: his zone rate was one of his lowest of the season. What he did was to entice the Dodgers to swing (his fourth-highest swing rate of any start in his career, in fact) and to chase (his eighth-highest chase rate of any start in his career). In particular, he got Shohei Ohtani to swing at six of nine pitches, and to go 0-for-2 against him.

But that was first-half Gil, wasn’t it? His success in Game 4 will be largely about keeping traffic off the bases, sure. But it’ll be as much or more about preventing damage on the fastball. He can, and has, thrived while allowing walks. He can’t last if there’s damage on the four-seamer – and for all the great things this Dodger lineup has done, they were actually below-average this year against right-handed four-seamers.

There’s a path to success here, even if it’s a narrow one.