Olson rethinking his approach after Rays sit slider

DETROIT -- The grounds crew at Comerica Park did wonders to turn the playing surface from a baseball diamond to a soccer pitch for last Sunday’s Crystal Palace-Sevilla preseason match, then back to a ballfield for Friday’s Tigers-Rays series opener. Then the Rays wore it out on Reese Olson.

The lines of the soccer pitch were just barely visible, enough that one could imagine Rays batters attacking the flanks and setting up crosses against the Tigers defense while Olson sought to clear his lines. Then Jose Siri provided the long ball, a two-run homer off the bricks beyond the left-center-field fence.

Five of Tampa Bay’s first eight batters reached base safely. Four of them rounded the bases. Olson allowed only one more hit from there, but the damage was enough to put the Rays in command and put the Tigers on their way to an 8-0 loss on Friday night, extending the run differential in the season series to a 29-3 Rays advantage.

Olson wasn’t around for the other three Rays wins during Detroit’s season-opening series at Tropicana Field, but he got a look at how the Rays seek out trends to exploit.

Olson has allowed 13 runs on 20 hits over 16 innings in his last three starts, raising his ERA from 3.96 to 4.94. He has allowed more home runs over his last four starts (five) than he did over his first eight (four). Surprisingly, a healthy amount of damage has come against his slider. Though opponents had just four hits off it in July and a higher swing-and-miss rate against it compared to June, according to Statcast, all of the hits went for extra bases. Add in former Tiger Isaac Paredes’ double and Siri’s homer on Friday, Olson’s first start of August, and the trend continued.

“I think their approach was just sitting on my slider,” Olson said. “I mean, it makes sense, the way I’ve used it in my time up so far. I think that was definitely their plan coming in, so once I realized that after the second inning, I went to more curveball and changeup and got three scoreless [innings]. I just think that was the big thing in those first two innings.”

In Siri’s at-bat in particular, the right-handed hitter took two fastballs in the zone to begin the at-bat, then fouled off a couple to stay alive. He didn’t offer at an 0-2 slider well off the outside corner, but he pounced when Olson left his 2-2 slider over the plate.

“He was off all the heaters,” Olson said. “I threw a slider in the zone trying to get some contact so I didn’t go to 3-2, and he was sitting on it.”

Olson’s slider usage has stayed fairly consistent over his time in the Tigers rotation, right around 33 percent. But there’s a difference between throwing the slider for strikes and throwing it to get hitters to chase out of the zone. For the latter, too, there’s a difference between throwing it just off the plate and throwing a non-competitive pitch that is recognized quickly.

“Execution, I think, is the key,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “If you saw some of the funny swings, that’s the same slider that, if it’s middle-middle, it gets hit. It’s not as simplified as that all the time, but generally speaking, I think these guys at this level don’t miss a lot of mistakes, especially good teams.

“The adjustment’s going to be really fine-tuning the execution with it. It’s not a free strike, especially against these guys.”

Though the average spin rate on Olson’s slider has dropped almost imperceptibly since his first month, it remains among the higher-echelon spinners in the game.

“It’s definitely the same pitch, same movement profile,” Olson said. “Obviously they have scouting reports too, and they see the slider’s probably my best pitch, so they can sit on that.”

But the slider wasn’t always Olson’s best pitch. He didn’t have this type of slider until the last year or so. Olson’s changeup was more of an out pitch for a good portion of his way up the Minor Leagues. His curveball was his breaking pitch of choice early in his pro career.

“The curveball’s a huge pitch to get them off that slider,” Olson said. “I didn’t throw much of it for the first two months I was up. From this point forward, I’m sure I’ll be kind of leaning on that a little bit more.”