Doug Fister: Unlikely Possessor of Record
As it happens, we were at Doug Fister‘s major-league debut. By “we” I mean myself, Dave Cameron, and some hundreds of USS Mariner and Lookout Landing readers. We weren’t there specifically for Fister; we were there for a blog event and a game, and Fister just happened to pitch in it. He pitched after Sean White, who pitched after Garrett Olson, who pitched after Chris Jakubauskas, who pitched after Ian Snell. The Mariners did not win that game.
Fister’s debut drew a modest response, because it’s always cool to see a guy play for the first time, and because the Safeco PA system uttered the name “Doug Fister” for the first time. But nobody had attended in the hopes of seeing Doug Fister pitch, because Fister was generally considered a no-stuff non-prospect. He could conceivably fill out the back of a bullpen or serve as rotation depth, sure, maybe, but he wasn’t thought of as someone to get excited over. Fister debuted in August 2009. All these sentences bring us to this:
It’s been a weird ride.
Thursday afternoon, Fister started against the Royals, and through three and two-thirds he had one strikeout. Then he closed the fourth by striking out Salvador Perez. Then he struck out Mike Moustakas, Jeff Francoeur, Brayan Pena, Johnny Giavotella, David Lough, Alcides Escobar, Alex Gordon, and Billy Butler, all in a row. Fister then got to 0-and-2 against Perez, but Perez ultimately took an off-balance swing and bounced a weak grounder to short. The crowd at Comerica groaned before giving another standing ovation.
With eight consecutive strikeouts, Fister broke the Detroit Tigers’ all-time record, and he tied the American League’s all-time record. With nine consecutive strikeouts, Fister grabbed the AL’s all-time record all for himself. The MLB all-time record is ten consecutive strikeouts, done by Tom Seaver in this game in 1970, but the AL and the NL can be very different so it makes some sense to list separate records. No, Doug Fister didn’t match Tom Seaver, but consider that sentence now, and consider how close Fister came.
Coming into today, the Royals as a team had the lowest strikeout rate in baseball. The lineup, of course, was a little different from usual, and I’ve never actually heard of David Lough before in my life, but the point is, if you knew an AL starter was going to set a new consecutive strikeouts record on Thursday, you probably wouldn’t have guessed it would be Doug Fister against Kansas City. Because I know you’re wondering, yes, I have prepared .gifs of the final pitches of all nine strikeouts. Here are those .gifs and please extend my apologies to your hard drives.
You might notice the relative lack of swings and misses. Fister struck out ten batters on the afternoon, and he registered just seven swinging strikes. Over the course of his nine-strikeout streak, Fister registered just four swinging strikes. Fister was doing the job not by making batters miss, but by making batters confused, and this is just a big part of the Doug Fister game plan.
Doug Fister is a location-first starting pitcher, and all nine of those final pitches above were located on or just beyond some edge of the strike zone. Take my word for it, please, because I don’t feel like working up an image to prove it. Just watch the .gifs if that floats your boat. Among American League starting pitchers, Doug Fister actually has a slightly below-average contact rate. He has an above-average strikeout rate because he has an above-average ability to put the baseball where he wants to. Cliff Lee succeeds in a very similar way. In this post we just compared Doug Fister to Cliff Lee, and it made sense. Fister is near that level of effectiveness, not long after he was considered nothing but a number-five starter.
Of course, you don’t necessarily have to be an amazing starting pitcher to record a high number of consecutive strikeouts. It helps, but Aaron Harang recorded nine consecutive strikeouts. Ron Davis and Blake Stein recorded eight consecutive strikeouts. You’ll see Stein’s name in the screenshot near the top of this post and Stein was a Royals pitcher around the turn of the millennium. That says everything about Blake Stein that you need to know. But the story isn’t just about Fister’s new record — it’s about Fister’s incredible development. Thursday afternoon, Doug Fister struck out nine batters in a row. In 2009 and 2010, Fister never struck out more than six batters in a whole game. Doug Fister has blossomed into this borderline ace, and now he has this record to put on his resume. This record, on its own, is just a neat thing, but it’s also evidence of Doug Fister having ingested pure magic. It happened somewhere around the time Fister got traded from the Mariners to the Tigers. That sure was a neat trade for the Mariners.
Just over three years ago, I was watching Doug Fister debut in the majors with Dave Cameron, and neither of us really cared. Nobody really cared, outside of Fister’s assortment of loved ones and liked ones. Since joining the Tigers, Fister’s posted a lower xFIP than Justin Verlander, to go with a sub-3 ERA and a barely-3 FIP. On Thursday, Fister set a new all-time American League record for consecutive strikeouts. There might be somebody out there to whom baseball makes sense, but if there is, that person sure as hell isn’t writing about it.
Such beauty!
“Thursday afternoon, Doug Fister struck out nine batters in a row. In 2009 and 2010, Fister never struck out more than six batters in a whole game.”
This sentence says it all. I freaking love baseball.
#5 is rather nutso. Awesome.
Looks like a good framing job by the catcher, too.
I was thinking that #8 was a nice framing job by the catcher, making the pitcher seem closer to the plate than it was.
Avila is good at that.
As a Tiger fan and one that watches every start, I’ve become a big fan of Mister Fister. I first became acquainted with him, honestly, looking for rotation depth for my fantasy team, and had followed his progress with Seattle.
I liked the trade when the Tigers sent four players to Seattle in the deal, although I also really liked Casper Wells (better than Boesch), Chance Ruffin as a potential back end reliever, and Charlie Furbush because of the cool name.
Since coming to Detroit, Fister has been great. As Jeff mentions, his FiP and xFIP have been amazing. Seattle has very favorable conditions for pitchers, so you could expect some regression in ERA, but we haven’t seen it. He had an annoying lack of run support there, and he’s had stretches of no run support in Detroit. The infield defense is atrocious with the Tigers- worst in the league, IMO.
Fister is a big dude. Six foot eight, and he comes right over the top with a lot of length and a lot of downward plane and more downward movement on the ball. He hits his locations like he’s putting it in a tea cup. His delivery is fluid, and you wouldn’t think that there is much risk of injury.
Fister went on the DL twice this year with the same injury in his side. He was a huge loss as the Tigers struggled to find replacement pitchers in the minors for him.
If you told anyone that a Tiger pitcher would break the AL record for most consecutive K’s, many would not be surprised. Verlander and Scherzer are at the top of the league in K’s and K/9 respectively. But Fister? Didn’t expect that. I do expect great things from him, though. Starting with the playoffs this season.
A couple of those called third strikes look to be a bit generous. I hate the offset angle, though; it’s hard to tell.
You could look them up on Brooksbaseball, see if you’re right.
I agree, it’s a wierd angle but he was getting high, low, inside and outside pitches called as strikes. Pretty big strike zone.
Fister? I hardly know her….
This is the only correct response to this article.
I was so near certain someone had posted that that I just searched for it to make sure I didn’t have to.
Baseball sure is a funny game. A lot of people tend to forget that last year Fister was our best pitcher in the playoffs, Verlander actually sorta sucked.
Had it not been for those injuries, I think we can assert pretty confidently Detroit’s record would be a lot different (I’d say at least a few more wins!) and the race wouldn’t be as tight as it is. But like I said, baseball sure is a funny game, and that’s why I love it so much. Most sports you can give pretty reliable trends on. With baseball and a 162 game season, completely out the window.
I’ve never thought about this before, and it’s totally insignificant, but I noticed that Jeff Nelson has a called 3rd strike motion for right handed batters and a different one for left handed batters.
Does anyone know if other umpires do this as well?
Fister also only threw 9 total balls during the strikeout streak. Just an amazing stretch.
Wow, Fister was really pounding the zone.
Weird that Bartolo Colon had that record for consecutive strikes a while back (46? 47?) but Fister is the one with the consecutive strikeout record. Nifty.
Watching him as a Tiger, Lee was the guy Fister reminded me most of. Especially last year when he had a touch more velocity. Nobody really disagreed with me but still good to see my bias confirmed!
Good movement+good location+consistent throwing motion=great results
I was at that game with you and Dave, Jeff. The big tall kid on the mound looked nervous as hell, and like maybe the sticker was still on the package, but when you compare some of the other guys the M’s had throwing that day, he was certainly an improvement (even if he’d stunk).
How does one go about finding a specific game on baseball-reference? I want to see Milwaukee’s lineup the day Blake Stein struck out 8 in a row. According to wikipedia, it was July 17, 2001.
Here it is:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/MIL/MIL200106170.shtml
June, not July. I got to it by going Kansas City > Franchise Encyclopedia > 2001, and then selected the game I wanted to look at. There’s probably an easier way though.
There are some classic striker-outers in that lineup; Richie Sexson, Devon White, Jose Hernandez…
Interesting, while this was the old ‘AL’ record, it was achieved playing by NL rules.
the AL record, recorded against an NL team that used to be in the AL
RE: how to find boxscores for a specific game: Click on Boxscores in the top menu on the main Baseball-Reference page, then click the year you’re interested in to see a calendar of all days on which games were played. Click on the day in question, and then click the “Score” link NOT the pitcher links to view the game details.
You can never have too many .gifs!!
While watching this game, I kept thinking to myself “This is amazing but I really hope it’s amazing enough for Jeff Sullivan to write an article over”. No joke
I thought the same thing!
As a Baltimore fan, this Detroit starting pitching has me very, very concerned. Yesterday Sabchez has 10k, complete game shutout. Two days prior to that Fister threw his first complete game shutout. We all know Ver. Fister k’s 10 today. Scherzer hurt his shoulder in the past week. But Scherzer, up until his shoulder tweek, easily out-pitched Verlander. Read it again, he out-pitched Verlander, over roughly 7 weeks(?). If Scherzer comes back at 100%, this starting rotation looks like a bunch of assassins. Anyone else surprised by these guys?
Surprised by occasional brilliance? No, all of the Tigers top 4 can be very good. JV hasn’t been quite himself, though, Scherzer can be maddeningly inconsistent with his command, Fister hasn’t been fully healthy most of the year, and Sanchez only has a few good starts in the AL with just as many mediocre or worse ones.
It’s a good rotation, worthy of fear, but it’s not as good as it sometimes looks.
JV hasn’t been quite himself? That’s a laugh. Walks, strikeouts, and innings all in line with last year. A few more hits, but still well below league average, which is amazing considering the defense he’s pitching in front of.
He’s easily the best pitcher in the AL this year and if he wasn’t third from the bottom in run support he’d have 20 wins to show for it. But no one is making a Cy Young case for him, at least in these parts.
What is the record for the most consecutive animated .gifs by a blogger?
This has to be up there:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/mattbellassai/51-infomercial-characters-who-need-to-get-their-sh-6z51
Seeing JV one day and Doug Fister the next can’t be good for opposing batters. One day you are swinging through a fastball that ranges from 91-100 mph and the next, you are getting called out on 87 mph pitches that paint the black. They’ve booth got nasty curves though, so I guess there is that.
Interestingly, Tom Seaver had 5 looking strikeouts during his 10 consecutive. Not that he needed help striking guys out, but it’d be interesting to know what his strike zone was like (and if it expanded as the game went on).
I’ve been under the impression that if the pitcher is pounding the zone (generally) and getting a lot of Ks, the zone will start to get bigger sort of as a way of telling the batters to start getting their shit together.
“Stop looking and starting hitting, boys. This dude is earning and owning this strike zone.”
Glad my day job isn’t trying to hit his changeup.
The fact that he surpassed Blake Stein shows how much randomness goes into this feat.
Sweetspot has a graphic showing the location of his nine Ks:
http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/29299/fister-makes-tigers-a-scary-playoff-team
With young pitchers especially, it seems like actual performance gets discredited if there isn’t actual “stuff” to back that performance up. A pitcher in the Mariner’s system that seems to be flying under the radar right now is Anthony Fernandez. If you look at his record, he’s performed consistently at every level of the minor leagues through Double-A, which is where he is currently. At the same time, there is essentially zero prospect hype about him, other than a brief write up by Churchill a few months ago.
Now, I don’t know anything about this guy other than his name, his numbers, and that brief write up by Churchill. He almost certainly won’t be listed among the M’s Top 10 prospects this offseason, nor anyone else’s. At the same time, if he makes the Triple-A roster next year and adjusts and is able to perform well in that league (and stays healthy), he’ll almost certainly get some sort of major league opportunity. I’ll be watching his progress next year with interest.
The 4th gif is amazingly rhythmic. The beginning and end of the pitch, and the two umpire motions were on the beat of my music for over a minute before the slight difference in BPM finally prevailed.
It was extremely satisfying in a kind of weird, but not actually that weird, way.
The frustrating thing about Fister (and I’m sure about every guy with similar strengths and weaknesses) is that his success on any given night is – to such a degree – dependent on the guy calling balls and strikes. He HAS to be getting calls on pitches that paint the zone or it all falls apart – his supernatural ability to paint said zone counts for nothing.