Big Maple came up HUGE in game 5

Before the game that we will not mention happened, James Paxton saved the Yankees’ season in Game 5. His final line was 6.0 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 4 BB, 9K on a season-high 112 pitches. He shut down the mighty Astros, and by the end of it, we were all feeling like this:

Let’s take a look at how he did it. Here is his strikezone plot from Friday:

You see a ton of fastballs up, and the off-speed pitches thrown down and away to lefties or down and in on righties. Overall the command was not great, but there weren’t too many pitches over the heart of the plate, which explains why Houston was only able to muster 4 hits off him.

Pitch Velocity and Type

This chart tells us two very important things about…