A's Thump Mariners, Joey Estes Adds Velo

Jason Burke | May 12, 2024

May 11, 2024; Seattle, Washington, USA; Oakland Athletics starter Joey Estes (68) delivers a pitch / Stephen Brashear-USA TODAY Sports

The Oakland A's have secured as many wins this season against the Seattle Mariners as they had all of last year, following Saturday night's 8-1 thumping. Abraham Toro stayed hot, going 2-for-5 out of the leadoff spot, and he is now 23 for his last 57, good for a .403 average over his last 15 games dating back to the first game the A's played in Baltimore at the end of April.

After Seattle intentionally walked Shea Langeliers to face Max Schuemann, the A's shortstop used the slight as motivation and swatted a bases-clearing three-run double in the eighth inning. JJ Bleday followed that up by crushing his fifth homer of the season to put the A's up 8-1 in the top of the ninth.

With the win, the A's now sit at 19-23 with the chance to make a big statement on Sunday by taking the series against a team that has tormented them in recent years. Since the beginning of 2021, the A's were just 13-38 against Seattle heading into this series, which includes a 1-12 showing last year. A win on Sunday, on the road, would signify that the A's are not the same team they've been in recent years.

Outside of the offensive fireworks, the biggest story coming out of this game has to be Joey Estes, who secured his first MLB win in his 2024 debut. Estes had made two starts with the club at the end of the '23 campaign, and in ten innings he gave up eight earned runs and four long balls. His home run per fly ball rate last year, regardless of the level he was pitching, sat at around 20%. This season with Las Vegas it was still up to 20.6%.

On Saturday he gave up a homer to Cal Raleigh, but that would be the only run Seattle would get all evening.

When a player comes up and has success after struggling a bit, it's always interesting to look at what kinds of changes they've made to their pitch mix. For Estes, it looks as though he has dumped his sweeper from last year, though with sliders and sweepers in general, sometimes Statcast has a hard time distinguishing one pitch type from the other.

With the sweeper seemingly gone, Estes' fastball usage ticked up in this contest from about 47% to 54%, which is right in line with how much he used it in his final start before his call-up. The cutter was also used a little less, going from 8.5% to 3%, but this is just one start and could be more of a game plan thing for this specific opponent. He used it 17% in his last Triple-A start.

Other than the usage differences, the big standout for Estes was that his slider was coming in 3.6 miles per hour harder than it was clocked at last season, averaging 82.2 mph on Saturday. This could be something to keep an eye on. He threw 17 sliders against the Mariners and nine of them elicited swings. Of those nine, four were swung on and missed, good for a 44% whiff rate. This is obviously a very small sample size, but that 44% is nearly exactly the whiff rate San Francisco Giants closer Camilo Doval has (44.3) on his 88 mph slider, which is another development to keep an eye on.

What comes next for Estes is still unknown. The A's have a spot open in the rotation with Joe Boyle on the IL, and with Kyle Muller and Mitch Spence pitching so well in long relief, the A's may not want to mess with their bullpen mix too much. Estes has certainly earned another look. If he sticks in the rotation, his next start would be on Thursday in the final game of the series against the Houston Astros.