Ernie Clement

But at this point in his career, when hitters aren't that familiar with him,

It is such a peculiar pitch that often they don't know how to handle it because they just haven't seen a lot of pitches that look like it.

He's also really always been a strikeout pitcher.

Coming up through the minor leagues, that's part of the reason he was so special and he moved so quickly is because he was able to miss bats, whether it's with the splitter or the fastballs ride or with this peculiar slider that he has.

I wouldn't be trying to take that away.

I wouldn't be trying to turn him into a different pitcher.

It's not like he features a sinker or something like that.

I don't see a world where Trey Savage's future is three pitch at bats where he's getting ground balls all the time.

That's just never really been his thing.

He throws at the top of the zone with...

the fastball and then he uses both of those other secondary pitches to miss bats and that's what's been effective for me it's not too dissimilar from kevin gosman like those sliders are a little bit different but you can't really change the fundamentals of what a pitcher is and what they do even if you can tweak things around the edges just like with dylan cease he can be more efficient he can get you into the seventh once in a while but he's gonna be a big strikeout guy he's probably gonna be a decently big walk guy a lot of time like

There are some fundamentals with all pitchers, and I don't think the fact that Savage really goes for the strikeout is a negative fundamental with him.

It was a solid showing, and unless he had come out and hit three home runs or something, there's nothing he probably could have done that would have said, okay, he's completely locked in and he's on fire after one game.

You know what I mean?

You can't have a one-game streak of any kind.

So what he did to the plate was encouraging in the sense that the swing decisions were good and he was able to take the walks.

We'll just have to wait a little bit longer to see where he settles in offensively.

Defensively,

He has one of the very best arms in baseball.

When they talk about the five tools, you could make a case that the arm is the least important of those tools.