It has been a bit of a mixed bag for Chase Dollander through his first three games of MLB competition.
Making his debut against the Athletics of no particular home, he showed off both extremes, giving up a few long blasts and also collecting quite a few swings and misses.
Then it was off to San Diego to face the hottest team in baseball and once again he was greeted with a power stroke, this time from Fernando Tatis Jr., but then settled into another nice outing.
In his return home to Coors Field, and given a chance to face a lineup with far fewer stars, Dollander pitched his first dud, getting tagged for six earned runs in just four innings, surrendering four round-trippers. That ballooned his ERA to 7.36 over 14.2 IP.
There’s a lot of room to grow and yet plenty to like about what we have seen so far so let’s take a look at the Ups and Downs so far for Chase Dollander.
Up: Strikeouts
The clearest sign of good things to come in the future is the 18 strikeouts that Dollander has already been able to produce. Impressive as that is, especially considering he clearly hasn’t put together a complete outing yet, is has been the manner in which he gets his whiffs that is eye-opening.
He has induced some ugly swings not just using his 99 MPH fastball but also a wicked cutter and a wipeout curveball. At this point, the change-up is the only one of his four-pitch mix that has yet to work as an out-pitch. The cutter and curve have been particularly devastating as hitters gear up for the velocity on the four-seemer.
Oh his 18 Ks, none were more impressive than the pair he recorded against Tatis Jr. in the next two at-bats after the Padre took him deep.
Down: Home Runs
This one is a bit obvious but still has to take precedent. Dollander has already given up eight home runs, multiple homers in each game he has pitched, and has shown a tendency to leave pitches, most especially the fastball, right down the middle of the strike zone.
In the minor leagues, given the velo and movement, this is a mistake you can get away with sometimes but at the MLB level, every team has guys who can and will hit that pitch.
Despite not starting the season with the club, Dollander already leads the NL in homers surrendered and that will need to be addressed for him to reach the heights he and the Rockies are hopeful of.
Up: Composure
This is a weird one to write immediately after a five-run inning saw him fall apart a bit. The defense that inning was atrocious (though, he started it on a bad play at first) and moving forward it would be good to see him bounce back better from those types of moments.
But in his first two games, he managed to do exactly that, not letting early runs get to him, managing to go back to the mound and get his outs. In the first two games, the homers didn’t seem to rattle him while a nightmare inning in the third did seem to get to him a bit. This will be an interesting aspect of his game to keep an eye on moving forward.
Down: Efficiency
Dollander has yet to pitch into the sixth inning and has seen opponents manage to drive up his pitch counts as he hunts for strikeouts early in games. There may need to be an adjustment of sorts so that he can learn how to get a few quicker outs in the early innings so he isn’t so regularly hovering around the 80-pitch mark in the fifth.
This is one of the most common things to see out of a young pitcher, being careful with the MLB lineups he is facing for the first time. Still, he has had too many at-bats where he held a clear advantage but let the hitter hang around for a few extra pitches and will need to clean that up.
Up: Walk Rate
That said, he hasn’t been handing out an inordinate number of free passes and that is a good thing. With just five so far, Dollander is actually a little bit below his minor-league walk rate, sitting at a perfectly acceptable 3.07 per nine innings.
The at-bats are getting extended but he is showing a tendency to bear down and throw strikes in those 2-2 and 3-2 counts. Of course, some of those strikes catch a little too much plate and then catch a little too much bleacher but the mindset is good.
Now, if he can just make those challenge pitches a little less enticing to hit…
Down: Inconsistency
They say that for hitters, the difference between being good and being great is a base hit or two a week. For pitchers, that can be a pitch or two per inning.
With Dollander right now, he is about 50/50 when it comes to winning the key pitch of an inning. Sometimes he throws something so good that a player with the talent of Fernando Tatis Jr. looks silly trying to make contact with it. Sometimes he throws a pitch so bad that any hitter in MLB would tee off on it. And it can change from pitch to pitch.
The more he can swing that ratio in his favor, if he can find a way over the course of the year to win that key pitch closer to 70 percent of the time, he will begin to realize the star potential that is so readily apparent.