‘Baseball Gods’ Aid Pirates’ Adam Frazier Against Former Teams

Pirates’ infielder Adam Frazier hit a home run during the sixth inning of Pittsburgh’s Friday, May 2 loss to the San Diego Padres, continuing a trend of success at the plate against his former teams: the homer marked the third time in the past two seasons he managed to clear the fences against a team he once suited up for. He has six home runs overall in that span.

The Pirates traded Frazier to the Padres at the 2021 trade deadline, and he homered against Pittsburgh and the Seattle Mariners (where he spent 2022) last season.

Does Frazier have a chip on his shoulder when playing against his former teams?

“No, I think that’s just how the baseball gods work. If you look around the league, a lot of guys end up homering against former teams, and I’ve been on a few now,” Frazier said. “It’s good, good to get the homer, but I wouldn’t say it’s anything like that. I think it’s just the baseball gods.”

Sitting On the Slider

Frazier went 1-for-2 on the day with the home run and a hit by pitch. He described the unique challenge of facing Padres’ right-hander Dylan Cease, who throws his slider 44.5 percent of the time: in 2024, the offering earned a run value of 25, making it one of the best individual pitches in Major League Baseball.

Pirates’ manager Derek Shelton said that his batters needed to prepare for Cease to make a mistake with the slider, knowing he’d throw it a plurality of the time.

“He throws more sliders than anyone in the game. He throws more first-pitch sliders than anyone in the game,” Shelton said. “When you get the ones up, you can’t miss them, because the ones he gets away and gets them against his arm-side, it’s why he’s a really good Major League pitcher. You have to take advantage of his misses.”

Instead, Cease threw Frazier a (metaphorical) curve, working backwards and leading with his fastball. The approach worked: Frazier’s home run came against reliever Alek Jacob.

“He blew me up the first at-bat with the heater. The slider’s his pitch, so, just try to stay on the heater and react to the slider,” Frazier said. “But he was kinda mixing tonight. He wasn’t going according to the report. To me tonight, he threw more heaters.”

Frazier also gave credit to Padres catcher Martín Maldonado, a 15 year MLB veteran behind the plate, for the surprising approach. Cease did end up making a mistake, leaving a slider near the middle of the plate, but Frazier wasn’t expecting a slider after the fastball-heavy approach.

“Maldonado’s an experienced catcher back there. He’s really good, so a lot of times you’re playing against the catcher,” Frazier said. “You’ve gotta be ready for the next at-bat, try to get on time for that, and then still cover the slider. The second at-bat he dropped a slider in there: if I’d been ready to hit that pitch, he gave me one to hit. But that’s the cat and mouse game. He’s a really good pitcher, you try to hit his mistakes.”