Cleveland Sports Forum

10-3 losing after 4. Believe pitching. I hate the way he pitches.

Maybe we could ask Seattle to leave their bats here when they leave.

Belisle is bad but McAllister has been worse. 5 runs [4 earned] in one inning today. Now 8 2/3 IP 10 ER 3 HR.

Carl Willis vs Mickey Calloway.

Mickey could fix em'.

Final 12-4. Maybe tomorrow will be better.

Carrasco didn't give them a chance in this one. Hey, sometimes those starters save the day too but not today.

Mariners up 2-0 in 2nd. Tomlin is pitching today

Even though I can't stand Tomlin, I have to concede he's pitching much better today. Merely 1 home run allowed in 3 innings and no runs scored in two of them.

Losing 6-2 in 6th.

I will spare you thdetails, but losing 9-4 in 8th.

Hey, whatchya gonna do. Carrasco, then Tomlin both got shelled and took the team out of it early, both days. Feel bad for the crowd!

Sleepless FROM Seattle's bats. Pretty darn good hitting team.

Didn't think our pitching was capable of surrendering double figure runs two runs in a row. I was wrong

Carl Willis

Shoot, from all the interviews...here I thought Kluber was the pitching coach!

This story has Scott Atchison as the man dealing with McAllister's mechanical problems

CLEVELAND -- Something small within a pitcher's mechanics can have a significant impact on his offerings. Indians reliever Zach McAllister and bullpen coach Scott Atchison have been working to identify what has been behind the increased horizontal movement on the right-hander's fastball.

The working theory is that this change in McAllister's fastball might be one of the causes for what has been a rough first month for the reliever. His velocity and direction to the plate -- two key components for the right-hander -- are fine at the moment. It has been something earlier in his delivery that could be creating a ripple effect in the pitch's path to the plate.

"Atch and them [i.e. Willis?] mentioned that I'm getting a little tilt too early," McAllister explained before Sunday's series finale against the Mariners. "So, I'm getting that tilt over the rubber instead of coming down the slope with it."

The results have not been pretty. After allowing five runs in the fourth inning of Saturday's 12-4 loss to the Mariners, McAllister's season ERA climbed to 10.38 in 8 2/3 innings. The big right-hander had only three strikeouts through his 11 appearances. It has been a drastic dropoff from last year, when McAllister turned in a 2.61 ERA with 66 strikeouts in 62 innings for Cleveland.

While McAllister is working to correct the flaw in his mechanics, he is also staying focused on the positives within his outings.

Per Statcast™, he has averaged 94.2 mph on his fastball, compared to 94.1 mph in April of last year. McAllister has thrown 51.2 percent of his pitches in the strike zone -- right in the range of his 2017 showing (52.7). His walk rate (6.1 percent) is below his career rate (8.0 percent), while his first-pitch strike rate and overall strike percentage have been better than his career norms.

"One thing that makes it a little better to swallow is the fact that I'm happy with where my stuff is," McAllister said. "If my stuff was down, if I wasn't throwing hard and my breaking ball was terrible, it'd be easy to be like, 'OK, this is why I'm not doing well.' And that makes it a little challenging sometimes, because when your stuff is good and you're not getting results, that's frustrating."

Fortunately, McAllister and Atchison believe they may have found a contributing factor for the inconsistent fastball command and movement.

"There's been a little more run instead of ride, I guess, would be the way to put it," Atchison said. "Other than that, the [velocity] is normal. The breaking ball's in a pretty good spot. It's just some execution on some pitches and we're kind of trying to find a way to get him on a roll."