PEORIA, Ariz. — Dylan Moore stepped into the batter’s box with a personal scouting report of Andres Munoz having played behind the hard-throwing reliever or watched from the dugout as opponents were overwhelmed by his triple-digit fastball and nasty mid-80s slider.
He’d also heard rumors of a new pitch that Munoz was throwing in bullpen sessions — a sinking two-seam fastball that could leak toward his bat foot while still carrying the upper 90s velocity.
He saw it in the second pitch of his first at-bat against Munoz.
The sinking heater started just above his knees over the inside part of the plate and ended by his back foot.
“I knew he was going try it out,” Moore said. “I was trying to see exactly how it moved.”
With Munoz being slow-played in his buildup to the season because of offseason foot surgery, he had been limited to bullpen sessions until Friday afternoon when he threw his second live batting practice session of the spring.
Munoz was throwing the two-seam fastball in bullpen sessions, getting positive feedback the Mariners pitching coaches, the catchers behind the plate and the pitch-tracking data.
But he’d never thrown it with a batter in the box trying to hit it.
Moore was the first hitter to see the pitch. And he saw it multiple times in the live BP sessions.
“It’s super heavy,” Moore said. “He has the low arm slot and with how hard he throws it. It just dives down at the same speed as his fastball.”
Moore compared the potential of the four-seam/two-seam combination that makes Luis Castillo so effective.
“You’ve got to stay on top of the four seam and then all of a sudden he’s got that one that goes under your hands and it’s moving into you,” Moore said.
And of course, there is the slider — one of the most effective in baseball — that is waiting to make you look silly.
“I swung and missed at a slider and I was like, ‘so that’s what everyone feels like when they are trying to get on his fastball,’” Moore said.
Munoz also used the sinker to break one of Moore’s bats on soft liner up the middle.
“I knew he was throwing a fastball and I tried to be on time with it, but I was still a little late,” he said. “I’m glad it was 102 mph because it looked like it.”
So when did Munoz come up with the idea of adding a new pitch?
“I started practicing it last year, but I never threw it in a game,” he said.
He watched as Robbie Ray started using the two-seamer out of need and he saw the success that George Kirby had with the pitch, particularly against lefties.
“I feel like (hitters) have seen my slider and fastball too much,” he said. “It’s not something I’m doing for no reason. We have a reason for why we are doing that, and I feel pretty good about it.”
Giving Munoz a weapon to play off his other two pitches seems logical. Teams know he’s going to use the slider to get outs. A year ago, he threw it 662 times with opposing hitters batting just .126 with a .176 slugging percentage against it. He gave up just two doubles and two homers on the pitch. Hitters swung and missed at the pitch 50.8% of the time.
But the sinker is far from a finished product. He is expected to pitch in a Cactus League game next week. He will test the new pitch in a more competitive environment.
“The important thing for me right now is control with it,” he said. “Right now, I try to throw it in the middle and let it move. It doesn’t get the swings that I want to get. As soon as I can control it, I can use it to get a first strike.”
The philosophy is simple: “You just grip the pitch the way it’s supposed to and throw it as hard as I can. With my other two pitches, I do the same thing. I keep the same intensity. I don’t try to manipulate or do anything with it.”
In his first live batting practice session this spring, Munoz felt some discomfort in his surgically repaired right ankle/foot. But there was no discomfort in his most recent outing.
“I wasn’t very comfortable the first time that I threw, but right now I feel really good,” he said. “I can put all my weight on the leg and it doesn’t bother me. When I don’t think about it, everything is good.”
Munoz pitched through persistent pain in his ankle last season.
“On almost every pitch, I felt some kind of pain,” he said. “But with time, I got more used to throwing with that pain.”
He knew a procedure would be necessary after the season. The discomfort started in 2020. He had a procedure to clean out a piece of fractured bone. When the pain returned this season, an MRI revealed a bigger issue in the same spot. It required bone-fusion surgery with three screws inserted into his ankle.
“They told me it was from an old fracture,” he said. “I didn’t treat it back then because I didn’t know it was fractured.”
How old was the fracture?
It came when Munoz was a teenager and competing as a triple jumper. He was considered an elite competitor in the event at his age. Both of his brothers were javelin throwers.
“I never got an x-ray or MRI on it,” he said.
With a healthy ankle, and another weapon to overpower hitters, Munoz has a chance to not only be the top reliever in the Mariners’ bullpen but in all of baseball.