Baseball: A Two-Way Player

Chapter 715 40: Striking the Smiling Man

Unlike the Yankees' simple NY logo, the Cleveland Indians' cap features their mascot "Chief Wahoo," specially designed when the team was renamed in the early 20th century to commemorate the North American native players who made outstanding contributions to baseball in Cleveland.

The red skin, hooked nose, and the iconic smile with big white teeth are the most prominent features of "Chief Wahoo." Because of this, many MLB fan groups also refer to the Indians as the "Smiling Faces."

However, to the Yankee fans today, Chief Wahoo's smile seems somewhat glaring: After all, the visiting Indians are leading the New York Yankees with an overwhelming 2-0 advantage, adding a hint of irony to the context.

If possible, Yankees fans wish they could stop the smiling faces from smiling, and now the opportunity has come:

In the bottom of the sixth inning, with two outs already secured, the Indians' starting pitcher Carlos Carrasco allowed consecutive hits and walks, quickly loading the bases.

Facing a bases-loaded crisis, Indians' head coach Terry Frankner chose to bring in Andrew Miller, their team's and the league's best middle reliever, hoping to leverage the left-handed pitcher's natural dominance over left-handed batters and the advantage of a first encounter to defuse the bases-loaded situation.

As one of the top relief pitchers in the league, Andrew Miller's over two-meter tall stature and three-quarter arm slot pitching mechanics give him a unique release angle; with fastballs up to 99 mph, averaging 94 mph, and a sharply curving slider averaging 84 mph as his main weapons, he boasts an impressive strikeout capability: since transitioning to a relief pitcher, Miller's strikeout rate is as high as 13.2, and he's one of the few in the entire league with more career strikeouts than innings pitched.

But Lin Guanglai wasn't afraid at all; rather, the more intense the pressure, the calmer his mindset becomes, which helps him perform exceptionally:

Under the gaze of nearly fifty thousand home team fans at Yankee Stadium, Lin Guanglai walked into the batter's box with a relaxed expression; at this potentially pivotal moment in the entire game, he even had the composure to blow a bubble, as if completely unaffected.

The home plate umpire lightly pointed his right hand towards the pitcher's mound, and the battle resumed; the Yankee fans in the stands seemed to have gone mad, standing up, creating the loudest noise possible, cheering for Lin Guanglai and simultaneously distracting Andrew Miller on the mound.

As Miller lifted his leg and swung his arm, the next second, the baseball whistled sharply towards home plate: it initially seemed to head towards Lin Guanglai's inside corner but soon showed significant movement, sliding towards the outside corner—this is Andrew Miller's signature skill and his most frequently used premium slider.

Facing this pitch, Lin Guanglai in the left batter's box just slightly leaned forward to gather strength, with no other movements: he never intended to directly confront Miller's slider in this at-bat; his strategy was to force Miller to attack his inside corner with a fastball, then pull the ball out to right field.

Indeed, Miller's initial 85 mph slider was mainly intended to lure, and it ultimately crossed right into the right batter's box, bringing the count to 1 ball, 0 strikes.

The second pitch was also a slider, but this time a real one that landed in the strike zone—although the strategy was to pressure the opponent to challenge his inside corner, when the opportunity arose, Lin Guanglai wouldn't hesitate. He decisively swung the bat, pulling the ball towards right field, but it didn't stay in play, eventually flying into the first-base stands.

After two probing sliders, the count went to 1 ball, 1 strike, giving the pitcher a slight advantage. Andrew Miller also felt he had grasped Lin Guanglai's rough intentions for this at-bat.

The third pitch, still a slider, this time targeted Lin Guanglai's inside corner: in the batter's view, this pitch was dangerously close to hitting him, prompting Lin Guanglai to instinctively protect himself by swiftly dodging backward, while the baseball precisely landed on the inside edge of his strike zone, marked as a strike by the home plate umpire.

Holding a dominant 1 ball, 2 strikes advantage, a slight smile emerged on Andrew Miller's face: he was already contemplating how to strike out Lin Guanglai next.

For the fourth pitch, after discussing with his catcher Yan Gomez, Andrew Miller didn't immediately decide the outcome but set it up—still a slider at the bottom of the strike zone, which Lin Guanglai easily let go.

Miller indeed loves using his slider to dominate batters, partly because his signature slider is very sharp, not only with significant movement but also precise ball path control, particularly effective against left-handed hitters, often creating a visual gap, tricking them into thinking it's an inside pitch and swinging and missing, or hitting the ball for infield pop-ups.

On the other hand, the reason Miller relies so much on the slider is that compared to top-tier fastball closers like Chapman, his fastball is extremely easy to suffer in terms of spin rate: