In one of the most memorable moments of an otherwise disappointing Friday evening in Denver, Angels reliever Mike Mayers unleashed a 96-mph fastball to a Colorado Rockies hitter and watched the pitch defy gravity.
The heater hurtled toward the upper right corner of the strike zone on a straight line. At the final second, it rose a few inches until it was about level with the shoulders of Colorado's Tony Wolters.
And Wolters, deceived, swung through the pitch just as catcher Anthony Bemboom popped out of his crouch to safely corral it.
Mayers strolled off the mound with a wide smile, seemingly in disbelief that he had retired Wolters with a magical aid.
Asked about the sequence in a videoconference call the next day, Mayers played it off.
"Nothing in Colorado is surprising," Mayers said before Saturday's game, which the Angels won 5-2 in 11 innings after first baseman Jared Walsh crushed a three-run moonshot 424 feet to right field. "In any capacity."
The emergence of Mayers, however, is something of a revelation.
Joe Maddon raved about Mayers during spring training, when the right-hander held opponents scoreless in four of six outings, and again in the team's July summer camp. But the 28-year-old had a career major league earned-run average of 7.03 over parts of four seasons with the St. Louis Cardinals when the Angels claimed him off waivers in November. Maddon's enthusiasm didn't seem warranted.
The Angels' manager might have had a point. Mayers entered Saturday with a 2.60 ERA and 27 strikeouts over 21 games. His 14.02 strikeouts per nine innings ranked 10th among relievers who had thrown at least 12-1/3 innings.
Mayers was summoned out of the bullpen Saturday to pitch for a third consecutive day and looked no worse for wear. He retired all six batters he faced and lowered his ERA to 2.33.
The cut fastball Mayers added to his arsenal after an injury-plagued 2019 has been instrumental. He spent the offseason perfecting the pitch after first seeing a demonstration of it on social media. An Instagram post showed Hall of Fame closer Mariano Rivera teaching pitcher Roy Halladay, who was posthumously inducted into baseball's Cooperstown, N.Y., institution last summer, to throw his famous cutter. Rivera marked the baseball they used with his grip.
Mayers adopted the technique immediately.
"It was a pretty simple grip," he said. "And I felt like it really just kind of went with my mentality of just throw it and let the grip do the work."
Opponents are faring poorly against the pitch. Mayers has given up a .182 average on the cutter, which runs slightly away from right-handers but towards left-handers. It has served as a good complement to his fastball, which moves in the opposite direction.
The pitch combination has helped Mayers become a specialist at retiring left-handers, to whom he has given up only three hits over 33 at-bats.
Mayers' success stands in contrast to the seasons of relievers Ty Buttrey and Hansel Robles. Both started as the Angels' most reliable late-inning options. Neither has impressed. Robles, who collected 25 saves in 2019, is trying to rehab an 11.20 ERA in low-leverage appearances. Buttrey has blown four of nine save opportunities, including in Friday's 8-4 loss to the Rockies.
But Mayers is not likely to supplant Buttrey in the ninth inning any time soon. Maddon prefers to use him against a team's toughest left-handed batters.
"Part of Mike's success is that we're putting him on the right guys, too," Maddon said. "And I think he's that kind of guy that if you match him up well, you're gonna get that kind of performance pretty consistently."
