The Astros' slugger seemed unstoppable in the division series -- until Montgomery became the first pitcher ever to strike him out three times. Here's how he did it.
spent his days at Tread Athletics, a performance lab about 10 miles outside of Charlotte, fine-tuning his pitching craft. While the coaches at Tread appreciated almost everything about Montgomery, from his size to his competitiveness to his willingness to learn, what they loved most of all was his curveball. They loved it so much that it earned a nickname:To the naked eye, it looks like a perfectly OK curveball, and based on spin rate and break alone, it's nothing special.
When he was around 12 and growing up in South Carolina, Montgomery learned to throw a curve when his father, Jim, helped him wrap duct tape around Coke cans to give them extra weight. Montgomery would try to spin them into a nearby garbage can. Eventually he got the feel for the pitch, rode it to the University of South Carolina and used it to get to the major leagues with thelast season, and the Cardinals received a bounty from the Rangers in the late-July deal that landed him in Texas.
"We know he likes to get extended, and we were going to make him beat us inside, make him a little uncomfortable," said Rangers catcher, an All-Star who is widely lauded for his game-calling and framing abilities."And when he's kind of squirmy, we try to get him, and the curveball plays. did an amazing job of execution."
Montgomery knows that, and so after getting that first strike against Álvarez, he wasn't throwing anything else. On 2-1, Montgomery threw a curve toward the bottom of the strike zone; Álvarez swung over it. The next pitch was a bouncer, nowhere close to the plate, and it left Álvarez flailing, looking less like one of the best hitters in the world than a guy who was utterly perplexed by what he was seeing.
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