The batsmen have no idea what’s to come

Only five starting pitchers in Major League Baseball average 97 miles per hour with their fastballs. They all throw that pitch more than half the time except Shane McClanahan of the Tampa Bay Rays. He has too many other options.

“It’s hard to be on time for 97, 87, 86, 82,” McClanahan said Thursday at his locker in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, listing typical speed measurements for his fastball, slider, changeup and curveball.

“It’s a tough game, man, and the hitters in the league deserve so much credit. Because what they do seems impossible. I look around this room here, I see all these guys with this elitist stuff, and it’s like, ‘How do you achieve that?’ It makes me realize, ‘Wow, I’m glad I’m a pitcher.’”

McClanahan, 26, is one of the best. He will take the mound in the Bronx on Saturday with a 7-0 record and a 1.76 earned run average, the ace of a Rays team that has racked up 30 wins faster than any team in nearly four decades.

He does it with the most varied and dominant arsenal of any pitcher in the game. Starting last month against the Chicago White Sox, McClanahan induced 32 misses under 49 swings for a 65.3 percent Whiff rate, the best single-game mark since MLB began tracking such records in 2008. He throws each of his four pitches at least 14 percent of the time, mixing the trickery of a magician with the power of a puncher.

“He’s probably got as good a mix of four pitches as you’ll see from any starter in baseball,” said Kyle Snyder, the Rays’ pitching coach. “You take the quality repertoire he has, you mix all four pitches in the zone for two hits to keep the unpredictability, you check the count – and then you do your best to go for the kill shot.”

Through Thursday, only one pitcher in the majors — Atlanta’s Spencer Strider — has landed more swings and misses this season than McClanahan. The Rays knew McClanahan would be hard to hit when they ranked him 31st at the University of South Florida in 2018. They didn’t envision this kind of polish.

“The general thought was, big arm, throws 100, don’t really know where it’s going,” said Peter Bendix, general manager of the Rays. “If you have a college pitcher who gets into the first round but isn’t top of the draft, they usually throw 89 and get everyone out, or they throw 100 and don’t get that many guys out. There was a lot of bullpen- risk: two throws, high running rate, high success rate.

That wasn’t the kind of pitcher McClanahan wanted to be. Although his favorite player was a shortstop, Cal Ripken Jr. admired him. — McClanahan, born in Baltimore, number 18 because Ripken wore 8 — pitchers like Cliff Lee and Greg Maddux, who were masters of efficiency.

“Maddux may not have been the most overwhelming pitcher in the world, but he knew how to pitch,” said McClanahan. “He knew how to sequence, knew how to change eye heights and speeds — inside, outside, up, down. It’s art.”

McClanahan hit 94 miles per hour as a senior at Cape Coral High School in Florida, good enough to be drafted by the Mets in the 26th round in 2015. the typical bonus for such a low round – and perhaps not well done.

At USF, McClanahan sometimes struggled with health (Tommy John surgery), control (five walks per nine innings), and controlling his emotions (“When things got fast,” said Bendix, “he just tried to throw 150 miles an hour” ). By the time the Rays drafted him, he was ready for pro ball and moved up three levels in the farm system in his first full season.

After that 2019 season, McClanahan rewarded himself by purchasing a ticket to a divisional series game at Tropicana Field. It was the first postseason game he had ever attended, and the Rays held off the elimination by defeating Justin Verlander and the Houston Astros. The Rays had taken the tarpaulins off the top deck and the crowd inspired their class AA lefty sitting 20 rows from first base.

“It was funny because at the time I was like, ‘Man, me need it, I have to do this, I have to get here,” McClanahan said. “It was surreal. The fans, the energy, it was unparalleled.”

A year later, McClanahan would be part of the team. He spent the pandemic-shortened 2020 season at the team’s alternate training site in Port Charlotte, Fla.

He thought it was a joke—”I was like, ‘Where’s the camera?'” McClanahan said—but the Rays liked the idea of ​​unleashing a little-known flamethrower on the playoff stage. McClanahan became the first pitcher ever to make his Major League-debut in the postseason, releasing in four games, including one in the World Series.

The following season — armed with a slider that he picked up in one bullpen session, Snyder said — McClanahan went 10–6 to earn the Rays’ only victory in a four-game playoff loss to Boston. In 2022, he used an improved substitution to make a start in the All-Star Game in Los Angeles. He may do it again in July in Seattle.

“He’s determined to keep getting better,” said Zach Eflin, a seasoned Rays starter. “Every pitch he has is extremely nasty and extremely difficult, and with every performance it feels like he changes it up a little bit, so he’s always evolving. He doesn’t just date with a stock plan.

The Rays have a knack for using advanced data to underline old-fashioned wisdom, such as the classic advice to a wild pitcher: pitch hits, Babe Ruth is dead. In other words, hitters are mortal and a talented, fearless pitcher will always have the advantage.

“The most important thing they did was show me how many times I’ve been victimized by balls down the middle, which is surprisingly few,” said Drew Rasmussen, who faced the Yankees for seven innings on Thursday. “Riking is really, really hard. So if you can keep attacking the strike zone, you have a good chance of success.”

McClanahan’s running speed has increased this year, but hitters are as helpless as ever, averaging .194 against him, the same as last season. That figure falls even lower in at bats that end with a substitution.

He’s been deeper in his hand this season to reduce spin and drop as a splitter and the pitch has been a revelation. Hitters swing and miss on more than half of McClanahan’s substitutions, according to Statcast, and their average against that is .140. He throws it about a quarter of the time – enough to be effective and reliable, but not enough to be familiar, much like he does with the fastball, slider, and curve.

“Every night something can’t feel like it’s there,” McClanahan said. “It just comes down to being able to rely on it. Even if you don’t feel like you have it, just keep throwing it. Trust the grip, trust its movement pattern, and trust the guys behind you.

In that way, McClanahan is perhaps the best example of the essence of the Rays: trust the coaches, trust the data, trust yourself. In that spirit of collaboration, McClanahan – who can’t be a free agent until after the 2027 season – would like to stay for a while longer.

“I like the guys around me, I like my organization and I like Tampa,” he said. “I mean, how lucky am I to be able to pitch in front of my friends and family and be in a place that calls home? I hope I can do it for a long time.”