Bullpen Report: July 6, 2018

The last two weeks of June did not go smoothly for Brad Hand, but the Padres’ closer got his July off to a good start. Making his first appearance in five days, Hand preserved a 6-3 lead against the Diamondbacks for his 24th save of the season. After giving up a soft ground ball single to Daniel Descalso to lead off the bottom of the ninth inning, Hand struck out the next three Diamondbacks in succession.

Over his final six appearances in June, Hand had no problem missing bats, posting a 17.9 percent swinging strike rate, but when he did allow contact, it tended to be airborne (36.8 percent ground ball rate) and not gentle (10.5 percent soft contact rate). That contributed to him allowing at least one run in four of those appearances for a total of seven runs over five innings. It’s a little too soon to determine if Hand is past his difficulties, but Thursday’s outing was a step in the right direction.

Heading into Thursday night’s game at Houston, Joakim Soria had gone nearly seven weeks without having allowed an earned run. The Astros, however, wasted little time in ending that streak. Charged with protecting a 3-2 lead, Soria began the bottom of the ninth inning by walking Tony Kemp and then coughing up back-to-back singles to Marwin Gonzalez and George Springer. The latter of these drove Kemp home for the tying run, giving Soria his first blown save since May 1. Still with no outs, he walked Alex Bregman to load the bases, but Rick Renteria kept Soria in the game. The righty rewarded his manager’s faith by striking out Jose Altuve, but two pitches later, Yulieski Gurriel ended the game with a walk-off single.

Though Soria had been on a roll, he continued a potentially troubling trend that finally caught up with him. This was his fourth consecutive game with a below-average O-Swing%, and over that span he has induced swings on only 23.5 percent of his pitches out of the strike zone. That’s a full seven percentage points below the major league average. This would be a greater concern if Soria were prone to be wild, but it’s still a development worth tracking.

There have been no warning signs for Keone Kela of late. Prior to Thursday night’s series opener against the Tigers at Comerica Park, he had allowed only one run and three hits over his previous 10 appearances spanning 9.2 innings. He got into early trouble in the ninth inning against the Tigers, though he was fortunate to be working with a three-run lead. The first three Tiger batters got aboard, though Jose Iglesias reached on a Jurickson Profar error. Nonetheless, the run scored by Ronny Rodriguez on Victor Reyes‘ single was charged to Kela, snapping a string of seven straight appearances without an earned run. Of the four balls put in play against Kela, only Reyes’ produced a hit probability above 11 percent (per Baseball Savant).

For the second time in July and the eighth time this season, Edwin Diaz struck out the side in the final inning of a Mariners win. We have become accustomed to this feat, and we are starting to get more used to seeing James Pazos in the seventh inning in hold situations, even when right-handed batters are due up. Pazos pitched a scoreless seventh inning against the Angels, working in front of Alex Colome and Diaz in the Mariners’ 4-1 win. It was the third time Scott Servais opted to use Pazos in this type of situation instead of Juan Nicasio since June 18, when the Mariners activated Nicasio from the 10-day disabled list. For now, Nicasio still holds down the third spot in the Mariners’ portion of the closer grid, but he may not hold it for long.

Quick hits: Kirby Yates is due to return from paternity leave and be available for Friday night’s game against the Diamondbacks…Dan Jennings recorded his first save of the season by pitching two perfect innings to wind up the Brewers’ 7-2 win over the Braves on Thursday night. Corey Knebel had pitched on three consecutive days, and Jeremy Jeffress was likely unavailable after having thrown 23 pitches on Wednesday. Josh Hader may have also been getting some rest after a 36-pitch outing on Tuesday…Dan Winkler allowed three runs, including Hernan Perez‘s two-run homer, in an inning of work against the Brewers. It was the third time in his last nine appearances he had given up multiple runs. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that Winkler’s Z-Swing% has been 77.4 percent over that period, as compared to 66.5 percent over his prior 29 appearances…Adam Conley aided the Nationals’ comeback from a 9-0 deficit by walking four batters in 0.2 innings of work. Two of the batters Conley walked scored on Trea Turner’s go-ahead grand slam.