How Zach Britton went from middling starter to dominant closer

Britton’s first year at the major league level, 2011, was ... uninspiring. For a rookie starter, a 4.61 ERA with a 1.451 WHIP and 9.4 hits per nine innings in 154⅓ innings pitched didn’t scream success, but it was just the first year. Things would get better. It’s just nerves.

It was, but they weren’t the nerves that you could shake. For Britton, all that talent didn’t mean anything when he couldn’t make two straight solid starts. The next season wasn’t much better, nor the next. The games he started dropped. The games he played at all, faded.

After three seasons with the Orioles, Britton was consistently inconsistent, and his 4.77 ERA, 4.20 FIP, and 9.7 H/9 showed a problem. If Britton was going to improve, a change was needed. His walks per nine had risen to nearly four batters, another sign of instability -- not the recipe for keeping the Orioles in the win column.

“You could see it, (the potential) was there,” O’Day said. “He just couldn’t tap it. He’d have one good game then he’d have a tough game. You could see how much talent he had there, and when the new pitching coaches came to Baltimore I said ‘there’s a guy, you guys. Put some time into him and you’ll be rewarded. This guy is good.’”

The Orioles’ staff did just that. But the team didn’t just work with Britton in the hopes of improving him as a starter. No, they chucked that altogether. Britton became a reliever. During the Orioles’ 2014 spring training, Britton moved from the starting rotation to the bullpen, where O’Day and the other relievers were. But even that was nerve-racking.

Britton eventually relied predominantly on the Orioles’ pitching coaches, but O’Day was who Britton went to first for questions about how to warm up, how to take care of your body as a reliever instead of a starter and how to keep the proper mindset if it came to pitching multiple days in a row.

“Last spring training he didn’t know how to warm up,” O’Day said. “He was so rattled about pitching back-to-back days. ... (But) he took to it, and he believed in it. He wasn’t afraid to ask questions, stupid questions, any kind of questions and he got it just like that. He started just kind of like a long guy and he put up like (11⅓) scoreless innings to start the (2014 season).”

It was only two hits, but with a 6-5 lead going into the bottom of the ninth that day, those two hits blew the save. The Brewers won in walk-off fashion in the 10th inning and, as the Orioles lost the next game, 8-3, Baltimore lost the series.

After blowing his first save, the team was wondering what that would do to Britton, mentally. Particularly O’Day and the pitching staff. But when asked to get a save on May 31, only days after the blown save, Britton got the job done.

“That’s one where you kind of hold your breathe, you’re not sure how a closer’s gonna respond to (blowing a save),” O’Day said. “And now, he’s done just about everything you can do as a closer. It’s pretty awesome to watch a pitcher go out there and throw the same pitch over and over, and guys can’t hit it. There’s only a couple of guys that can do it. Mariano (Rivera) is the only other guy that I can think of immediately. He threw one pitch that you knew was coming and guys still couldn’t hit it.”

Britton has four pitches, but now he uses just two. As a starter, only his curveball sat idle, with his sinker serving as his main pitch. In four months of work in 2013, Britton’s slider became nonexistent, a 180-degree turn from the end of the 2012 season, when it had shot up in October to his most-used pitch. And when the 2014 season came around, only his sinker remained, with the curveball for support, which he rarely uses. Yet, that sinker is nearly untouchable.

Interestingly enough, Britton’s four-seam fastball has recently made a reappearance in small spots -- a sample size so small we’re talking about four pitches in July. But Britton’s command of the strike zone has such pinpoint accuracy that, if anything, the fastball is just something to change the batter’s eye.

That accuracy can be more critical in relief than as a starter, because, as Britton noted, a reliever has to come out of the ‘pen at full force, whereas a starter generally warms up as the game progresses. Britton, as a closer, doesn’t get that extra time. But the adrenaline coming out of the bullpen into a key situation helps with that, Britton remarked, and it doesn’t take long for him to warm up -- about eight pitches generally does it.

Where did that accuracy come from, though?

“I think the biggest thing, for me, was last spring training I just stopped throwing all my other pitches, other than my sinker,” Britton said. “The pitching coaches, they had me focus on commanding it. Throwing it for strikes from both sides of the plate. And they didn’t let me throw any other pitch until I did it. It opened my eyes to how well I could command it, and just doing some drills. And I think that’s why.

“The hitters, they know it’s coming and they’re really good hitters. But if I can execute it, I know the majority of the time they’re not gonna hit it.”

For Britton to do that, it takes unwavering dedication to make sure that he stays sharp. But that dedication paid off in a big way, with an MLB All-Star selection. Now, he’s just trying to enjoy the break, the fun, and the experience for the first time -- along with O’Day, who is also making his first All-Star appearance.

The rest of the season has yet to be written, but this time the blank page isn’t seen as foreboding like it once used to be. For Britton, the second half of the 2015 season is now filled with promise, and the ability to top what he did in the first half. And if he keeps it up, he’ll do just that.