Player review: Mason Black

Add him to the list of feel-good debuts — though the feeling didn’t last long…

2024 stats: 9 G (8 GS), 36.1 IP, 6.44 ERA, 1.679 WHIP, 7.7 K/9, 3.7 BB/9, 11.4 H/9, 1.7 HR/9, 16.4 Whiff%, 32.5 GB%

Right-hander Mason Black made his MLB debut in front of his hometown crowd of sorts. The Scranton-raised Pennslyvanian took the mound at Citizens Bank Park to face off against the Philadelphia Phillies, the team he grew up rooting for as a kid. It was a cool personal moment in a season full of cool, personal moments.

The 2024 San Francisco Giants were all about making memories. Not the ones that alter the topography of a fanbase’s collective consciousness, nor the ones that link us together through a mycorrhizal network of mycelial memory ticklers that feed us and sustain us and bind us together. No, that kind of team is a decade old. The memories this year were made on the more individual, player-development level. Meaningful debuts, long awaited debuts…just a lot of debuts really.

Mason Black’s debut was no doubt unforgettable to him, but pretty forgettable to fans: a 6-1 trouncing by an inevitable playoff team, making it clear no matter how much we refused to admit it at the time, that the Giants were in fact not a playoff team.

But the day started out well enough. In his first inning of work, Black fanned J.T. Realmuto on a four-seam fastball and was so excited that he walked off the mound and halfway to first before correcting his course. He then froze Bryce Harper on an inside change-up that appeared to take a right turn into the zone.

Black didn’t throw a better offspeed pitch all year, nor did he work a better inning. The outing in Philly developed through a series of close-shaves and escapes before it unraveled on Bryce Harper’s 3-run homer in the 5th. Black’s afternoon done. His debut done-in by a third tour of duty facing Philly’s lineup.

Black pitched well in his second start against Cincinnati but the cumulative numbers across four appearances in May didn’t boast much: 14 earned runs across 14.1 IP, along with 21 hits, 7 walks to 10 strikeouts. Good for an 8.79 ERA. He gave up a homer in each appearance as well, notably a 3-run job to Joey Bart on May 23rd. That middle-and-low four-seamer to the Giants past number-one pick ended up being Black’s last pitch of significance for the summer.

Called back up at the end of August, Black’s second stint was much better than the first. He still got knocked around a bit by San Diego and Arizona and ended up the losing pitcher-of-record in four of five games, but needing just 74 pitches to complete five innings against Miami was a notable improvement, as was pitching into the 6th against Kansas City which set-up Black up for his first career win.

In five starts, he threw 22 innings allowing 12 runs on 25 hits and 21 strikeouts, posting a 4.91 ERA. The K-rate rose, the BB-rate dropped and it would’ve dropped precipitously without the 5 walks he allowed in his final start.

Improvements, not knockout numbers but they reflect growth. It’d be a red flag to the organization if Black returned after two months of workshopping his approach in Sacramento only to try and run everything back. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was. That’s called insanity, not intelligence. And I’m pretty sure Black is intelligent. The Giants media team made a whole video centered on the fact that he kinda likes science. If you like science, you’re smart. One and one make two.

I imagine the field research and evidence gathered from Black’s first extended experiment in the Majors helped him arrive at some reasonable conclusions. One, it’s going to be hard to work deep into games with three pitches; two, a four-seam fastball and a sinker with the same velocity and similar arm-side movement are effectively the same pitch; three, when two of your three pitches are pretty similar, you really only have two pitches, which means you really have to learn to throw another pitch; four, did you hear what I said? Throw another pitch.

It appears Black took his findings to heart. His slider usage jumped from 4.6% in May to 19% in September, while his sweeper fell from 35% to 16.6%. He threw this slider more than 60 times in September, and it was only put into play 11 times. Opponents have yet to record a hit off the offering. It’s a funny pitch. There’s some debate amongst the data-scientist beep-bop-boop robots whether it’s a slider at all or a cut-fastball. On Savant’s movement profile graph, the pitch sits dead-red, a bullseye nearly every time. Compared to other sliders, it has no break, no play on the x-axis, just a slight rise and fall on the y-ladder.

If it is a breaking ball, it’s a bad one. But “bad” does not mean “ineffective.” Mike Krukow never fails to remind viewers that the best way to get Mike Schmidt out was to throw a hanging slider. Black’s “slider” hangs.

Watch this one to K San Diego’s Mason McCoy.

The pitch hesitates, like a hummingbird in front of a flower. There is the slightest beat before it passes through the zone. The put-outs recorded on the pitch are a collection of weak opposite field flares and grounders to second, the “crack” of contact replaced with the thin snap of fitting a plastic lid onto tupperware.

Swings are timed to Black’s fastballs with the batters anticipating the natural ride of both offerings rather “the shadow break” of the slider/cutter. It’s an effective riff off Black’s higher velocity slings. That fact that it stops peeling away from lefties, or punching in on righties is enough to not necessarily miss the bat, but the barrel.

Gee whiz though that’s a scary pitch to throw to most of the Major Leagues let alone the National League West. The way it freezes at the height of its rise like a cartoon character — the ball practically has “hit me” stitched into his leather, and the league will oblige soon enough if Black can’t figure out a way to protect it. One solution might be elevating his fastballs better. Getting that four-seamer consistently up will help change the eye-line of the hitter and expose holes in their swing down in the zone for Black’s sweeper or change-up to exploit. Remember that pitch he got Harper on back in May? He threw just thirteen more offspeed in 2024. I imagine he’ll need to get comfortable throwing a lot more of them if he wants to be a part of the Giants 2025 pitching plans.

Different speeds, different movements, different locations — the more varying looks the better. That’s what Black needs to improve on in the offseason, and even then, it’s a stretch to envision the right-hander getting a substantial amount of innings with arms like Beck, Birdsong, Bivens to contend with — and those are just the last names that start with “B”!