Drayer: Andrés Muñoz, Mariners coach discuss his early struggles

Perhaps one of the most unenviable aspects of being a big league reliever is that when things go wrong, you don’t have the opportunity to practice. Games don’t stop to give you a day or three to work on things.

Seattle Mariners’ slow start has featured some bad luck

Starters get a bullpen day because they are on a five-day schedule. Relievers are on an everyday schedule in terms of availability, and, as such, they can’t waste their bullets in a bullpen session. It’s a delicate balance, as you don’t want them throwing too much in or out of games. Too much and they can end up fatigued.

Too little, which perhaps played a part in what we saw from Seattle Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz when he gave up five runs in the ninth inning Wednesday night in San Diego, and there can be rust.

“I think that can be,” Muñoz agreed, “but I don’t think that’s why that is happening. Obviously, they are trying to get me the work even with the four-run lead, but I just need to find myself again.”

Muñoz’s demeanor at his locker in the visiting clubhouse in San Diego was uncharacteristically but understandably somber less than a day removed from what he called the worst outing of his career. The issue in his eyes was the slider, his bread-and-butter pitch that batters hit just .109 against last year. Muñoz said that pitch has not felt right now for some time.

“Normally I have the grip and throw it as hard as I can, and now I have to find that grip,” he said. “It’s feeling weird. It’s my best pitch and if I don’t have my best pitch, it is tough to go out there – even if my other pitches are good, you just feel like you don’t go out there with your best weapon.”

The metrics on the pitch, however, are not far off what they were a year ago. Mariners pitching strategist and coach Trent Blank pointed out the velocity and shape of Muñoz’s slider have been where they want it to be.

“I’ll say he’s always had variance with that pitch, but truthfully, I don’t see maybe the same things he’s seeing,” Blank said. “But yeah, at the beginning of the season, I think all our players are still finding their way a little bit with what they’re feeling on the mound or in bullpens and catch play. So just working through that. Looking at most players, there’s normal variance, and we’re seeing normal variance with Muni right now, but truthfully it’s trending up in my opinion.”

Blank saw the outing as an improvement from the previous two when Muñoz walked two batters with two outs in tightrope performances against the Astros. Wednesday night there was just one walk, which unfortunately came against the first batter. The door was opened, and with a very contact-oriented Padres team on the other side, there was opportunity that came in the form of some well-placed soft contact which, coupled with them not offering at sliders well out of the zone, led to what had to be very frustrating runs for Muñoz.

“His movement profile, he does have some big misses here and there,” said Blank. “But yeah, sometimes I think these results create like a different image in your head versus what’s actually happening, and we’re going to help him separate through that noise.”

Four years ago, what the Mariners saw in a young Muñoz was a pitcher who wasn’t aggressive as he should be. The grip-it-and-rip-it closer you see now didn’t have the trust in his stuff to let it fly. What he was seeing was not what the Mariners were seeing. In an effort to help him understand just how nasty he could be at times, they had him stand in against himself in the Trajekt pitching machine, which simulates individual pitchers and their stuff out of hand. In facing himself, Muñoz saw what his coaches had been seeing. It was a creative way to him move him forward without having him take a step back in order to get practice or lower-leverage reps, something Blank believes Muñoz does not need at this time.

“There’s other ways to attack it other than just physically going about it and practicing,” said Blank. “You can show him video, you can show him how he’s been locating his pitches. We can talk about targeting, we talk about changing the strategy a little bit. So there’s a lot of ways other than just straight practice that can improve the results on the field.”

First and foremost, Muñoz says he feels fine physically. Mentally, however, he’s taken a beating. It’s impossible not to in the role he is in. The Mariners’ pitching group will go to work on all aspects of his game, but ultimately Blank feels Muñoz is not that far off.

“We always emphasize with him being super athletic,” Blank said. “He’s a really good athlete, so (it’s) just trusting his work and really the results he’s had year over year and letting that play out a little bit more versus magnifying things in the beginning of the year. I think getting him back over the plate and making sure that he’s just focused on being aggressive and be in a good spot.”

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