Ian Anderson has struggled enough to raise some concerns about his spot in the Atlanta Braves rotation, but Tuesday he showed some positive signs.
It wasn’t all great for Ian Anderson on Tuesday, but he navigated through 5 innings and earned another win for the Atlanta Braves.
Ian Anderson was coming off a month in June in which he had a 6.91 ERA and gave up 22 earned runs in 28.2 innings pitched.
It’s understandable why his first start of July was so important for the 24-year-old who is trying to get back on track.
While his line on Tuesday of 5 IP, 8 H, 1 BB, 1 ER, and 3 Ks isn’t spectacular, it’s certainly a step in the right direction.
Braves Analysis: The Good For Ian Anderson
The biggest positive for Anderson on Tuesday was the average exit velocity against.
His average exit velocity against in Philadelphia was almost 90 MPH, higher than his season number of 89.1 MPH, which ranks in the 37th percentile, according to Baseball Savant.
On Tuesday, St. Louis had an average exit velocity of just 85.1 MPH.
While he did get a little lucky with four lineouts that were hit hard, 5 of the 8 hits he allowed were hit 82.2 MPH or softer.
Another positive is the fact he didn’t give up any extra-base hits — all 8 hits were singles.
And the final positive — just one walk. In June, he issued 14 free passes in 28.2 innings.
You can live with soft singles when you aren’t walking 3 or 4 batters.
Braves Analysis: The Bad for Ian Anderson
My biggest complaint for Ian Anderson on Tuesday is that he still wasn’t very efficient with his pitches and had a lot of deep counts.
Of the 24 batters he faced, he went to a three-ball count to eight of them.
There still wasn’t much deviation to what he’s been doing — fastballs up and change-ups down.
In the 5th inning, he started throwing more fastballs and curveballs. But that led to a couple of singles. Then he tried to go back to the change-up and couldn’t throw it for a strike.
Against his final batter of the night with the bases loaded he threw four change-ups to Dylan Carlson and ultimately got a groundout on a change-up down in the zone.
And that’s the next place to go — the location of the change-ups.
Anderson threw 34 change-ups on the night. Fifteen of them were in the strike zone and 19 of them were out.
However, five of the change-ups that landed outside of the zone were just outside and were quality pitches.
He gave up 3 hits on the change-up, two of them were right down the middle.
This could go in the positive category for this start as one of the biggest concerns for Anderson lately is not throwing enough quality change-ups.
Overall, there were more positives than negatives on Tuesday, but we’ll need to see more before Anderson proves he’s back.