Kyle Harrison got Stu-ed

It’s Stu again.

You can’t blame Kyle Harrison if he felt like the rug was pulled out from him in the 5th inning.

For the first four innings, the San Francisco Giants southpaw had been excellent. Holding up his end of the bout in the battle of the four-seam, Harrison and Milwaukee Brewers’ starter Freddy Peralta were in a dead heat. Through four innings, Peralta had allowed 1 hit, 2 walks, 0 runs with 5 strikeouts on 63 pitches. Harrison had allowed 1 hit, 1 walk, 0 runs with 5 strikeouts on 62 pitches.

Both single and walk were to center fielder Blake Perkins. The momentary slip in command gifted the speedy Perkins a lead off walk in the 4th. Perkins advanced to second on a passed ball by Andrew Knapp as the game’s first runner in scoring position. Out of the stretch, a man breathing down his neck while facing the 3-4-5 hitters of the Brewer lineup, Harrison bared down. He fanned William Conteras with an elevated fastball at the top of the zone. Four pitches later another fastball sent Willy Adames back to the bench.

The fastball was alive. It had action. It rode, or it wilted, or it tailed…I’m not sure what it did, but it looked different and good. It did something. The average spin rate was actually down on the pitch, which gave it 2 inches more of vertical break than average, but with Harrison’s arm slot that seemed to accentuate movement away from righties. 57% of his fastballs were in the zone, and the Brewers’ swings connected only 70% of those offerings over the plate (MLB average against all pitch types is around 80%).

The pitch velocity typically plays up because of Harrison’s delivery, and the 40% use of his secondary offerings geeked it up even more. Timed for the heater, hunting for his signature pitch, Harrison feathered in his slurve.

It’s a pitch that burned him over his short career, and a weapon he typically wants to use against lefties, but Harrison has been feeling more and more confident with it over his last couple of starts. The 40% usage was his highest of the year so far, and he dotted the corner with it. Whether it buckled their knees or hitters just gave up on it, the slurve stole strikes for Harrison, it’s backdoor movement scraping the outside of the zone against a gauntlet of right-handers, bagging a total of 14 called strikes. Though it was thrown in the zone 65% of the time, and of those pitches in the zone, hitters swung at only 42% of them. Only one slurve was put in play before the 5th.

Ah yes, the 5th. It was the 5th that this dance of pitching delights, well…exploded. And I don’t want to be that guy who blames the entire 5-run outburst on the umpire for one measly missed call, misplacing a warped sphere darting towards him at nearly 100 MPH by a fraction of an inch. There’s so little grace given in this world, surely we can afford some in such a silly game as this…

No. The answer is no, because the home plate umpire was this guy.

His name is Stu. We know Stu. We know Stu because he did this, and then he did this (which actually ended up being okay because the Giants did this), and now he’s done this.

Stu Scheurwater hates nuance. He hates art. He probably calls the MOMA the Museum of Modern Fart, and then makes a disgusting, childish fart noise in front of Van Gogh’s Starry Night. Given the opportunity, he’d probably draw a mustache on the Mona Lisa and shave the mustache off Salvador Dalí.

After four frames as Harrison’s benefactor, as his champion, as his “yes man” on all pitches flitting about the corners, Stu jumped ship. He took the paint brush out of Harrison’s hand, and told him to get a real job. Yeah, Stu’s a philistine.

The inside fastball was a stitch too far. A stroke so perfectly applied it shocked, as did J. M. W. Turner’s willingness to push and blur the boundaries of the line in England during the mid-19th century. The fifth pitch of the at-bat, the 2-2 fastball to Andruw Monasterio that would’ve been the second out of the inning, was misunderstood, called a ball. Two pitches later, Harrison couldn’t quite get a slurve to bend back to the plate, allowing only the third Brewer runner to reach base.

Harrison rebounded by fanning Joey Ortiz on an elevated 1-2 fastball. The seventh pitch of the at-bat, but note the pitcher’s count. Milwaukee hitters were putting up a fight, nor was he backing down, Harrison kept pounding the zone. Two outs, two more strikeouts in the inning, Harrison was in control.

Alas, Stu doubled down. He missed another: a 2-1 breaking ball that dropped in at Sal Frelick’s knees. In a 3-1 count, Harrison again drilled the upper-90, and again, Stu didn’t budge.

Scared off the corners, unable to trust a zone that he had earned and established, Harrison had to start coming in and he paid the price for it. Frustration played its part too, lack of concentration as well exhaustion from the mugginess, the pitch count approaching 90, and just good hitters in the box.

With just one more out to get, Harrison served up a 1-1 slurve over the heart of the plate that rookie Jackson Chourio deftly slapped into right for an RBI single.

Next pitch Stu sadistically called a breaking ball off the plate for a strike. Fed up with the world, its cruelty and its suppression of true art always capriciously judged by those in power, Harrison waved his white flag, serving up main street fastball to Perkins who yanked it over Michael Conforto’s head in left for a 2-run double.

A pitch later, William Contreras drilled a flat change-up 435 feet to knock a dazed Harrison from the mound and blow open the game.

If Patrick Bailey is behind the dish, does Harrison get those calls? Is Monasterio rung up? Frelick canned? Sometimes the frame can ruin the artwork, but I saw little to fault with Andrew Knapp’s work. Nor did I see anything special from Contreras that warranted Stu’s free-wheelin’ zone when Peralta or any of the other Milwaukee arms were on the mound.

The Giants’ offense scratched together three unanswered runs, and even threatened with the tying run at the plate after Conforto’s and Ramos’s two-out RBI hits in the 8th. But Joel Payamps got Matt Chapman to swing through a 2-2 slider—a hole he was in thanks to a low slider strikingly similar to one that missed to Frelick.

Unfortunate inconsistencies that I would happily let slide and write-off as one of the many charms of this beloved game if the Braves and the Cubs hadn’t won today, if it wasn’t nearly September, if the Giants weren’t trapped in the rip-current of .500, if anybody else was behind home plate…but it all happened, it was all just Stu.

Take a hike, Stu, we’re not in the mood.