"Excited" Corbin has something to prove

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – The sentiment wasn’t unusual for a ballplayer during the first week of spring training. The ballplayer who uttered it, however, wasn’t one you’d expect.

“I’m as excited as I’ve ever been,” Patrick Corbin said Saturday afternoon inside the Nationals clubhouse.

Excited? On the heels of the worst of three consecutive subpar seasons that statistically have turned him into the worst starting pitcher in baseball? More excited than he was for his first big-league camp in Arizona? Or his first spring after signing a $140 million contract with the Nats? Or his first time back in West Palm Beach since he won Game 7 of the World Series?

Yes, Corbin insists. He’s more excited now than he ever was then.

Where does that feeling come from?

“I don’t know, maybe trying to just prove something,” he said. “I know I can still go out there and be the pitcher that I was, and I’m as confident as I’ve ever been.”

It’s possible Corbin has no choice but to convince himself of this. How else could he press on after a three-year stretch that has seen him go 17-42 with a 5.82 ERA and 1.574 WHIP, each successive season worse than the previous one?

Or maybe the 33-year-old lefty really does feel better about the state of things now than he has before. He remains healthy. His velocity remains high. He believes he’s made some minor mechanical tweaks that could help get him back on track. And the Nationals believe he’ll benefit greatly from better defense behind him, with CJ Abrams now the everyday shortstop and Jeimer Candelario, Luis García and Dominic Smith rounding out the rest of the infield.

On that last point: There is actual evidence Corbin was victimized by poor infield defense last year. His 6.31 ERA, obviously, was awful. But his 4.83 FIP (Fielding Independent Pitching, which essentially represents what a pitcher’s ERA would be if you take all batted balls in play out of the equation) was dramatically better.

No, a 4.83 ERA still would be subpar for a big league pitcher. But for Corbin it would be a massive improvement.

“You have an infield that is reliable and can pick the ball up; I think that will help him,” general manager Mike Rizzo said. “But the onus is on him to pitch better, and to utilize his stuff and trust his stuff again like when he was in Cy Young voting a couple years in a row.”

The biggest difference for Corbin from his peak in 2018-19 to the depths of 2020-22 was his inability to make hitters swing and miss. During those peak two seasons, he allowed only 7.4 hits per nine innings while striking out 10.8. During the most recent three seasons, those rates flip-flopped to 11.2 hits and 7.6 strikeouts.

The question is: Can he return to his old form, missing more bats, or is his only hope to induce more weak contact and trust his defense to make plays?

“I think he can do a little bit of both,” manager Davey Martinez said. “If the spin on his slider comes back to what we think it can be, yeah he can strike guys out. But early contact with him … as we all know, they swing a lot. So those first couple pitches (of an at-bat) are important to him. And mostly keeping the ball down. When he gets the ball up, that’s when he got in trouble on his first pitches. So he’s got to work down in the zone.”

Along those lines, Corbin believes he has made a mechanical tweak that will help. He believes he allowed his arm slot to rise too high beginning in 2020, leading to less tilt on his trademark slider, which opponents crushed last season to the tune of a .309 batting average and .571 slugging percentage.

With his arm slot a bit lower now, he hopes he can get more whiffs off that slider, which opponents hit just .158 and slugged just .266 against in 2019.

“I thought at times it was good, and at times not so much,” Corbin said of his arm slot last season. “So I feel just repeating the delivery, trying to keep that arm slot the same and keeping the ball down, I think will be some keys for me.”

It all sounds good in mid-February, but of course it won’t mean much if Corbin takes the mound in early-April and gets crushed the same way he did last season.

He’s not going anywhere, not with two years and $60 million still remaining on his contract, and not with three young starters who have yet to prove themselves in the majors (Cade Cavalli, MacKenzie Gore, Josiah Gray) joining him in the Nationals rotation.

But the bar has now been set as low as it ever has for Corbin. If he merely reaches it and becomes an average big-league pitcher again, the Nats will consider it a huge success.

“I give him credit: He takes the ball every game, sits at his locker to answer questions from you guys every day. He’s a true pro,” Rizzo said. “He’s giving to the young players, and that’s all on the plus side for him. But he’s got to perform better.”