No major-league pitcher in this century has done what George Kirby did when he was 16 years old.
In 2014, as a sophomore at Rye (N.Y.) High School, Kirby threw 153 pitches in the sectional championship game against Lakeland High. No pitcher in the majors has thrown that many pitches in a game since Colorado’s Pedro Astacio in 1999. Nobody in the last decade has come within 20.
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“We were probably at 115, 120, but his competitiveness was like, ‘I’m not coming out of the game, Coach, I’m winning this game,’ so I sent him back out for the seventh inning,” said Mike Bruno, who has coached at Rye for 16 years. “He gave up a couple of hits and then ended up striking out the side.”
It was reckless, Bruno concedes now. He should have taken Kirby out. But there were no pitch limits then, Kirby’s parents said it was fine — and, well, it was George Kirby. You don’t take the ball from George Kirby.
No matter what he said after a start at Tampa Bay earlier this month.
“To hear those comments and knowing him from high school, it’s like, ‘That’s not George,’” Bruno said. “We had no idea where that came from. He’s just somebody who always wants the ball, never wants to come out, always wants to be the person to win the game. So it’s unfortunate that he’s labeled with that a little bit now. It’s definitely unfair.”
Ah, yes: those comments. Facing the Rays on Sept. 8, Kirby allowed a game-tying home run to René Pinto in the seventh inning of an eventual 7-4 loss for the Mariners, who have gone 8-15 this month as they try to return to the postseason. After the game, he said that he should not have been pitching in the seventh, that 90 pitches through six had been enough.
To many observers, this was proof that the modern game had gone soft. Kirby, 25, was widely mocked, especially by former pitchers on X, the platform previously known as Twitter: Roger Clemens and Curt Schilling, Mark Mulder and Derek Holland, Huston Street and Jered Weaver, on and on. Kirby knew he was wrong, and spoke about it that night with Mariners manager Scott Servais, coaches and teammates. He apologized publicly the next day.
George Kirby talks with pitching coach Pete Woodworth and catcher Cal Raleigh during his Sept. 8 start. His postgame comments drew widespread criticism. (Kim Klement Neitzel / USA Today)
“We found out in that moment that he’s not unflappable — that he’s, in this area, a young player that needs to experience these things and grow,” said Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners’ president of baseball operations. “But that’s not his mindset — ever. This guy truly will fight you in the dugout to go back out there. He’s the one who gets frustrated when we talk about skipping a start or going to a six-man (rotation) for a week so they can get extra rest. He’s the one who’s typically more vocal about, ‘Hey, we don’t need this, let us pitch.’”
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Kirby kept pitching in high school, going 23-0 in his final three years, then becoming a first-round draft choice by the Mariners out of Elon in 2019. He kept pitching last October, capping his rookie season by saving the clincher of the Wild Card Series in Toronto and then blanking Houston for seven innings in the Division Series. Through Sunday, he’d pitched enough this season to rank in the American League top 10 in innings (178 2/3) and ERA (3.58), while establishing himself as the best control pitcher in the sport.
That, more than a regrettable postgame comment, makes Kirby truly stand out. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, no pitcher in major-league history has issued fewer walks over his first 54 starts than Kirby, nor posted a better strikeout-to-walk ratio. Kirby has allowed just 40 walks to go with 294 career strikeouts, an average of one walk for every 7.35 whiffs.
“He’s wired to want to throw strikes,” Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh said. “I just get back there and catch it. He has incredible command, and you don’t see that, especially nowadays. A lot of guys with velo are just trying to max out their best stuff, but he does a great job of hitting his spots.”
Kirby’s fastball averages 96 mph, according to FanGraphs (via Sports Info Solutions), and he throws it 61.4 percent of the time. Only three qualified pitchers in the majors — Justin Steele of the Chicago Cubs, Mariners teammate Luis Castillo and Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler — had relied more heavily on the fastball through Sunday, and nobody had thrown pitches in the strike zone more often than Kirby (57.2 percent, per Statcast).
“When I got here in ’19, the biggest thing that stuck with me was, like, 94 percent of the time when you throw a first-pitch strike, you’re either gonna get the ball back or it’s gonna be an out,” Kirby said before a game at Citi Field in early September.
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“It’s so much in your favor to just be in the zone, so since then I’ve always lived by that. You know, hitting’s hard, so I’m gonna try and beat you in the zone. I don’t want to waste pitches and get deep in counts. I want to finish you, three freakin’ heaters right away.”
“He’s wired to want to throw strikes,” catcher Cal Raleigh said of George Kirby. (Stephen Brashear / USA Today)
At Elon, Dipoto said, Kirby stood out as “the perfect Mariner” prospect; as a junior in 2019, he issued just six walks in 88 1 ⁄ 3 innings. That summer, with the Class-A Everett AquaSox, Kirby walked nobody in 23 innings. When the minor leagues resumed after the canceled 2020 season, it had been almost two calendar years since Kirby’s last walk.
There is a difference, of course, between control and command. Control is simply throwing strikes; command is hitting spots. “I would never try and throw it down the middle,” Kirby said, but the Mariners do preach this in the low minors as something of a starter kit for the pitching style they want to cultivate.
The organization wants prospects to attack with their first pitch, Dipoto said, even if it’s with a fastball down the middle. In time, it becomes a more nuanced message: Use your best pitch and pound the spot where you most frequently throw strikes. But it’s always about strikes.
“It’s easy to talk about it, but you get players’ attention if you hold yourselves accountable to it and you track it,” Servais said. “And we track it daily, and we remind our players about it daily. And not just players, coaches, everybody within the organization, we track it from the first time they put a Mariner uniform on until they get here and play in the big leagues for a while. It’s that important. And that isn’t ever going to change. That’s who we are. That’s our foundation.”
To that end, the Mariners supply their pitchers with a “shove score” after each outing to measure their proficiency in executing pitches. (“You don’t want to feel like you’re feathering it in there,” Dipoto explained. “You’re shoving with your best stuff.”)
Kirby has had several perfect scores, Dipoto said, including the playoff start against the Astros, when he walked none and scattered six singles across seven innings. The score is a point of emphasis for the starters, even if they don’t quite grasp the methodology.
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“They’ve got some really smart guys in there that know what they’re doing and create all these formulas and stuff,” starter Logan Gilbert said. “I don’t even know what goes into it. But I go in there between every start, look back at my last start, the shove score and a bunch of other numbers. I try to simplify it where it’s not just a ton of useless information — What’s concrete? What do I need to fix? What’s the lowest hanging fruit? — and just work with that.”
Seattle manager Scott Servais talks with George Kirby during a start. (Steven Bisig / USA Today)
The Mariners lead the majors in first-pitch strike percentage, at 64.8 through Sunday, with Gilbert also in the AL’s top 10 for lowest walk percentage. Kirby has the best ratio, naturally, at 0.9 walks per nine.
Kirby’s athleticism allows him to repeat his mechanics, the essential ingredient for command. He played multiple sports growing up — football (quarterback), basketball (shooting guard), soccer (defender) and golf — and Bruno said Kirby always had a smooth, fluid delivery that made pitches appear to leap from his hand.
Teammate Robbie Ray taught Kirby a two-seamer last season, and Dipoto said that it essentially gives him eight fastball options: two- and four-seamers to all four corners of the strike zone. Kirby also throws sliders, curveballs, splitters and changeups, shaking his glove before every pitch to conceal his grip.
Not that he cares much about the hitter.
“I’m not worried about who’s in the box,” Kirby said. “I’m gonna pitch to my strengths and I don’t care about his strength or whatever. I know that my stuff is good enough to beat him, so I think it’s just all about confidence, and just not being scared to get hit. Because you’re gonna get hit once in a while — guys who fill up the zone a lot — but the majority of the time you’re gonna go deep in games.”
Nine years ago, Kirby went deeper in a game than any major leaguer would ever be permitted. He’ll never do it again — no big-league pitcher will, it would seem — but his fearless approach to the craft, his instinct to constantly challenge whoever he faces, should someday make Kirby more popular with the old guys.
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“In many ways he is a throwback,” Dipoto said. “And he is as competitive as any of them ever were.”
(Top photo: Brace Hemmelgarn / Minnesota Twins / Getty Images)
Mariners’ George Kirby is the best control pitcher in baseball – and he’s tougher than you think
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