TAMPA — First comes a ball. Not just any ball, but one so far up and out of the strike zone as to associate it with a stumble or slip or a Little Leaguer.
So it is the next one roaring away from the plate and barreling into the dirt that rivets attention; oddity becoming pattern. It is at this moment that Dellin Betances also takes greater note, which turns bad to worse. The mechanical merging with its partner in pitching crime: the mental.
“Every time you don’t think about fastball away, the pitch you are supposed to be executing, and start thinking about other things, it is no good,” Betances said.