KC Royals: Five Reasons Chris Young Can Continue to Dominate

May 22, 2015; Kansas City, MO, USA; Kansas City Royals pitcher Chris Young (32) delivers a pitch against the St. Louis Cardinals during the first inning at Kauffman Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Peter G. Aiken-USA TODAY Sports

3) Chris Young Has A Unique Approach To Pitching

Most pitching coaches emphasize keeping the ball low. If you keep the ball low, you tend to get more ground balls and prevent extra base hits and home runs.

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This traditional approach to pitching results in hitters seeing a constant diet of low pitches. That means, to survive, hitter need to learn how to handle the ball low in the zone.

But, Chris Young likes to throw high.

Pitchers that throw high in the zone, tend to be power pitchers. Not guys like Chris Young who rarely break 87 mph on the radar gun. Conventional wisdom suggests those players will end up serving meatballs that end up in the seats.

While Chris Young does give up his share of home runs (26 last season, and 139 for his career in 1114.2 innings pitched), he also gets a lot of popups (15.2 percent of his batted balls result in infield fly balls over his career).

Fangraphs.com writer Eno Sarris said this about Chris Young’s tendency to throw up in the zone in an article from 2014:

"When I asked him if throwing a mid-80s fastball up in the zone was daring, that’s when things got serious. “That’s your opinion,” he told me. “I’ll show you a chart on every hitter that shows you that most hitters have a hole in the zone up.”"

When he looked into the matter, Sarris found that while pitching low in the zone does lead to ground balls; meanwhile, pitching high in the strike zone does not necessarily lead to an increase in home runs.

Chris Young insisted to Sarris that pitching high in the strike zone makes sense in the current environment:

"“You can look across the board and see that pitching up can be just as effective as pitching down, maybe moreso,” he said. “Hitting is cyclical. I’ve given up plenty of home runs on low balls. Hitters are very good low ball hitters now, too.”"

Sarris concluded his 2014 article this way:

"By being able to hit the high-and-tight pitch, Young is able to exploit a baseball-wide hole. By concentrating on high fastballs, he’s working against the current low-ball trend in baseball. By focusing on each particular hitter, he’s making sure his game plan is locked down. Add in a little boost in perceived velocity that might come from Young’s natural mechanics and height, and that’s how you can still get great innings from a 35-year-old pitcher with a mid-80s fastball."

Chris Young is doing the same thing for the KC Royals this year, except he’s even better. One difference is that Young has switched up his pitch mix. Last year, Chris Young threw fastballs 66.4% of the time. In 2015, his fastball rate has dropped to 60.8%, while his slider rate has zoomed to a career high 37.7%.

The change seems to have helped Chris Young succeed in his first season with the Kansas City Royals . His 1.98 ERA is nothing short of outstanding.

Next: Chris Young Is Finally Healthy