Were it not for one bad pitch to Mark Trumbo, Jordan Lyles would have had himself quite a game. As it was, he still recorded his first win of the season and encouragingly recovered from that one bad first inning. Brian Smith had some wonderfully insightful tweets on how Lyles has tweaked his approach to the strike zone. Follow him at @ChronAstros, but here are his tweets combined in one easy-to-read paragraph:
Jordan Lyles started working on his posture toward end of ST run. Continued at OKC. Initially, he tried to overpower fastball. Now, he's throwing taller and using full 6-foot-4 frame. Allows him to get more downward movement on ball and stay low in strike zone. Lyles has also worked with OKC/Astros catchers to set up an imaginary strike zone. He's throwing to bottom of it. So, if Lyles misses on a pitch, he's missing low instead of high. Was always a confident pitcher. Now, he's just pitching better and smarter.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
