Is Brandon Backe a liar or just a bad pitcher?
I can understand him getting a little upset because it was so high. But I didn’t try to hit him by any means. I’m trying to get in there. Part of the scouting report against him is to throw the ball inside on him and jam him.
– Brandon Backe on his high-and-tight pitch to Yadier Molina
I wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting that pitch that close, right in my face. If you’re going to try to hit somebody, you’ve got to do it in the body. You can’t throw it in the head. That’s not professional. That’s not baseball. That’s not human.
– Yadier Molina
For all the bench-clearing this weekend during the Astros-Cardinals series, only one batter was hit with a pitch. Yet as accusations met with denials, fans are left with the question of whom to believe: Adam Wainwright or Brad Ausmus, Brandon Backe or Yadier Molina?
Happily, we have data these days to help us come to a conclusion. In the Backe-Molina kerfuffle, we have Molina claiming that Backe "tried to hurt" him, with the predictable response from Backe that he "didn’t try to hit him." Perhaps Backe is using the defense that our kid brother once used after winging a robin in our family’s back yard after taking possession of a bee-bee gun: After running into the house, tears in his eyes, he confessed that "I didn’t think I’d actually hit him!"
Backe actually went further in his alibi, claiming that he was trying to pitch inside to Molina, according to the scouting report. Let’s turn to the Gameday Pitch FX data to see how Backe, who once took advice from noted headhunter Roger Clemens, actually pitched in the three plate appearances in which Molina faced him in Sunday’s tilt, in the second, fourth and fifth innings (from the umpire’s point of view):
If Backe’s claim were true, we would expect that Backe had thrown more than one pitch on the inside part of the plate. Yet every pitch to Molina — except for the chin music (highlighted in red) — was low and away (by the way, the lone high-and-tight pitch was 91.3 mph, the second-fastest pitch Backe threw to YaMo).
Now it very well may be that the scouting report that Backe and JR Towles were working from said to jam Molina. But of the nine pitches Backe threw, only one was anywhere but the lower outside part of the plate. Which begs the question: Is Brandon Backe a liar or just a bad pitcher? Or, with a 5.34 xFIP this year following two seasons of 6.00+ xFIP, perhaps he’s both.