ALLENTOWN, Pa. — All of a sudden, Jesse Biddle is a different pitcher.
Take away his first start for Triple A Lehigh Valley and the Phillies’ first-round pick from the 2010 draft out of Germantown Friends appears to be knocking on the door. On Wednesday night he allowed a run on four hits and four walks over 5⅔ innings in a 7-4 win.
That outing followed a gem on July 17 in which he gave up just three hits and a walk with seven whiffs in seven innings. Not only was it Biddle’s first outing of seven scoreless since April 23, 2014, but it also was enough to get him International League pitcher of the week honors.
Add those outings up and that’s two straight wins and one run allowed on seven hits and five walks with 12 strikeouts in his last 12⅔ innings.
That’s quite a turnaround from the disastrous Triple A debut in which he didn’t get out of the third inning (2⅓, seven runs, five hits, six walks).
So, how can a guy go from barely being able to get an out to barely allowing a run over two games?
“It took me one to settle in and I put a lot of emphasis on this level. It’s been such a long wait for me, and I think when I finally got out here I was way too jacked up for it and I was way too amped up,” the loquacious lefty said. “That’s not who I am on the mound — I like to let the game come to me and relax instead of forcing it.”
MLB
The excitement mixed with Biddle’s other demon proved to be too much to overcome in that debut. That demon? Overthinking. Sometimes, Biddle says, he’s prone to think too much when he’s on the mound.
Actually, Biddle says, he thinks too much all the time.
“You can probably, ask my coaches and they’ll tell you that,” Biddle said. “Some people say that and I definitely have the tendency to overthink — I err on the side of overthinking than under-thinking — but that’s how I work and that’s how my brain is, and I think I just have to embrace it.”
But sometimes that old line from Bull Durham when Crash Davis advises the hotshot prospect Nuke LaLoosh, “Don’t think, it will only hurt the ball club,” rings true. Biddle caught himself overthinking things before his second Triple A start. What was there to worry about when he had already played with and against most of the guys at Triple A when he was at Double A?
Nothing had changed that much with a short drive up Route 222, had it?
“I was putting too much pressure on myself, and at the end of the day, I realized I’m still 60 feet, six inches away and I faced most of these hitters anyway,” Biddle said. “Nothing has changed. Just because they’re wearing a different uniform doesn’t mean they’re different. It doesn’t mean I have to approach them different.”
Perhaps Biddle will come to that realization if he’s pitching for the Phillies this season. Though he is a combined 9-2 with a 4.33 ERA with 45 walks and 70 strikeouts in 95⅔ innings at two levels this season, Biddle has pitched better than the numbers indicate. He had a six-game stretch for Reading in which he went 4-0 with a 2.36 ERA and then the two-game hot streak he’s riding now.
The problem is that three-game stretch sandwiched in there when Biddle allowed 17 earned runs on 21 hits and 10 walks over 13⅓ innings.
Those stretches have to go.
“I’ve had some ups and downs this year and it’s not really about the competition,” Biddle said. “It’s about me defeating myself, battling the mentality on the mound.”
In other words, keep the overthinking at a healthy level.