THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Another spin on spin rate of M's pitchers

You don’t always get what you deserve.

In life, certainly.

Or in baseball, for that matter.

I’ll explain in a minute or two, but the subject is on the table today because quite a few of you seemed fascinated by the column on Mariners rookie Bryce Miller — and specifically, about the almost obscene spin rate on his four-seam fastball.

The most common questions via email were …

What exactly IS Miller’s spin rate?

In other words, how many revolutions can he put on a baseball that’s headed toward home plate?

And the obvious follow-up …

What is the average spin rate for major league pitchers?

We can handle that second question right away, because there’s no precise answer.

According to most of the sites which chart such things, pitchers generally fall somewhere between 2,100 and 2,400 revolutions on their four-seam fastballs.

Miller, however, is definitely a cut above.

Bear in mind that these numbers only reflect his first five starts (prior to Monday's start vs. the Yankees), but in those games …

He worked 25 1/3 innings, allowed just 13 baserunners, averaged 95.3 mph on his four-seamer — and that pitch zoomed at hitters while spinning at 2,605 revolutions, the highest figure for any starting pitcher in MLB.

CLEARLY, Miller was getting the results he’d earned, as he threw his four-seamer slightly more than 70 percent of the time, yet hitters (who knew exactly what was coming) managed to scrape just a .117 average off that pitch.

That notion of actions getting the proper results has hit my mind today because of two other Mariner pitchers.

Let’s start with George Kirby, one of the team’s unquestioned aces and almost a certain All-Star.

Kirby gave up four home runs to the Pirates last Friday night, and walked off the mound totally perplexed after being touched for a career-worst seven runs.

“I thought they were pretty good pitches,” Kirby said in the clubhouse after the game.

Sometimes you hear that from guys who’ve been lit up, and it turns out the pitches they claim were “pretty good” actually were speeded-up batting practice tosses.

You just roll your eyes, nod in false agreement and move on to something else.

Kirby, though, is a master of the strike zone — as proven by his tiny walk totals and his ability to execute money pitches in tough situations.

He knows what he’s throwing.

That nightmare against Pittsburgh proved it — as a heat map displaying the four home run pitches showed a fastball, a slider and two sinkers, each just barely nicking the edge of the strike zone.

Kirby should not have watched those four pitches get bombed off the premises, but it happened.

Sometimes, you just have to give credit to the hitters — who are also major leaguers, after all.

“They just got to them and put the barrel on them,” Kirby said.

The Pirates, for their part, said afterward that they knew Kirby would be throwing mostly all strikes — and a hitter’s best strategy was to be aggressive.

“Doing that (four homers) off any starter is really an accomplishment,” said Pittsburgh outfielder Bryan Reynolds, “but managing to do it off a pitcher like (Kirby) was really unusual.

“It definitely won’t happen to him a lot.”

NEXT UP, we need to look at reliever Matt Brash, whose pitches and results so far this year are …

Well …

Preposterous.

Brash has been so unlucky, he’s probably fortunate no one has stolen his car during a game.

Consider …

The very basic numbers show that Brash (through Sunday) has pitched 21 innings – manager Scott Servais most often uses him to get out of an inning in which there’s big trouble — but he’s given up 26 hits to go with nine walks.

That adds up to a sky-high WHIP (walks and hits to innings pitched) of 1.67, along with an ERA of 4.71.

You could look at those stats and think that Brash, who has something of a violent delivery, has lost his command.

Not so.

According to advanced metrics (in this case, I’m using the excellent site Savant), the barrel rate on those 26 hits — in other words, how many were actually hit hard — was an incredible TWO PERCENT.

That works out to (checks calculator on phone) just a tick over one-half of a hit.

Mariners fans already know that Brash is to breaking pitches what Miller is to four-seam fastballs …

He’s a guy who can put almost unbelievable spin on the ball. It often touches 3,000 revolutions on his curve.

Savant tells us that Brash has been victimized by a number of bloops, infield dribblers, and weak grounders that found holes — and that it’s happened at the worst possible times.

THERE’S a fairly common stat called BABIP that even hard-care metrics fans respect.

The letters stand for “Batting Average on Balls in Play.”

In other words, for our exercise involving Matt Brash, what success are batters having when they actually hit the ball — especially since he has 40 strikeouts in those 21 innings?

The latest overall BABIP against Brash was .513.

That number looks like some sort of misprint when you’re considering a pitcher who strikes out an average of two per inning.

In other words, that otherworldly breaking stuff, plus a 98 mph four-seamer, is almost unhittable.

And yet …

More than HALF the batters who have managed to get some piece of the wood on a pitch from Brash have found themselves with base hits — 26 in those 21 innings, remember?

Servais, by the way, has said he won’t stop using Brash in high-leverage situations.

Easy call.

Baseball, remember, is the sport that most rewards performance over the long haul.

Conclusion: Brash has a lot of easy outs coming to him.

There’s a bottom line to all this peering at numbers and metrics.

Sometimes what you see in a box score isn’t quite the whole truth.

But sometimes, yeah …

There’s Bryce Miller.

Email: scameron@cdapress.com

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens.

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”