That Orioles starter Chris Tillman has had multiple occasions this season to refute the suggestion that the raw stuff he carried on a given night was his best of 2016 only goes to show how far he has come in a year.
He's not the type to say how good he was, but on Wednesday, the Kansas City Royals batters told him.
Tillman, in striking out nine Royals in 7 1/3 scoreless innings to improve to 8-1 with a 3.01 ERA, induced a career-high 19 swinging strikes. Thirteen of those were on his four-seam fastball, according to MLB Gameday data, a pitch that Tillman did allow was working as well as he could hope.
"Fastball command," he said, "was as good as it has been.
"I think fastball command from the get-go was pretty spot on. I felt pretty good in the bullpen coming in and I was able to carry it over."
Entering Wednesday, he had managed 18 swinging strikes twice in his career — most recently July 18, 2015, and Aug. 29, 2013 before that. He had 16 three other times, and 15 twice. His season high for 2016 was 15 on April 27 at the Tampa Bay Rays.
Plenty goes into this new swing-and-miss stuff, but mostly the ability to keep hitters off-balance and off-time on his fastball. The addition of his slider to complement his softer knuckle-curve and his changeup gives hitters one more thing to think about.
But when it came down to it, his fastball was a two-strike weapon Wednesday. Six of his nine strikeouts came on fastballs, with the other three split evenly between his three secondary pitches.
"I felt early on he was carrying some good stuff," manager Buck Showalter said. "Had some deep counts in the seventh and eighth. I thought he had a chance to finish the game with the assortment of pitches he had going for him tonight. Good, late-life fastball, too."
He also bucked some recent bad trends that had sullied an impressive start to his season. Tillman had allowed eight home runs over his previous four starts, including three in each of the prior two, after allowing one in his first eight starts. The Royals didn't have one all night — or all series, for that matter.
Tillman's eight wins put him among the league leaders, and he's in the top 10 in the American League in strikeouts (75), opponent batting average (.221), wins, ERA, and innings pitched (77 2/3).