Grant: How 'completely predictable' Derek Holland's reliance on sinker sank Rangers in 12-2 loss to Blue Jays

TORONTO - A good philosophy for a pitcher's approach: Predictable to life, unpredictable to hitters.

Derek Holland apparently has it backwards.

You never know when he's going to spring a Harry Caray impersonation on you, jokingly wipe his buttocks with a rally towel on the opponents' home field or, well, who knows. He's unpredictable, after all.

On the mound, though: Completely predictable. First pitch: It's a sinker. Two strikes: sinker.

Always the sinker.

It's almost like the Toronto Blue Jays read the scouting report on him and followed it to the letter Thursday night in a 12-2 thrashing of the Rangers. Toronto rapped out 11 hits, nine of them on sinkers, four of them on first-pitch sinkers. He made 17 pitches with two strikes; 11 of them were sinkers.

"Derek is what he is," Rangers manager Jeff Banister said. "He's a fastball pitcher with a hard breaking ball and a changeup. Typically, he works better East to West than he does vertically. He just couldn't get the pitches where he wanted to tonight."

Put another way, somebody asked what was up with Holland.

Banister: "Well, his pitches."

OK, here is the deal: Holland has thrown the third-highest number of sinkers in the majors this year, according to MLB.com's statcast database. Hitters look for it first. His velocity has dipped to about 92 mph from almost 94 before his 2014 knee surgery. So, he's no longer on the verge of overpowering hitters, but more of a pitch-to-contact type of starter. It's also dropped the fastball within about 10 mph of his hard slider, which makes it more possible for a hitter to gear up for the fastball and fight off the slider. In addition, the statcast data base shows that 69.6 percent of his sinkers are middle of the zone inward to right-handed hitters.

It allowed the fastball-hunting Blue Jays to pick a pitch, a spot (up and in) and sit on it.

The game's first hitter, Kevin Pillar got a sinker to start for a ball. Holland fell behind 3-1. Sinker for a foul. And two more after that. Pillar singled on the seventh pitch of the at-bat, also a sinker. Behind Jose Bautista, 3-1, he tried to get back in the count with a sinker, Bautista fouled it off, then took a slider for a walk. Edwin Encarnacion followed with a ringing double up the alley in right center on ... wait for it... a sinker. It was 4-1. There were no outs.

"Nothing was happening for me," Holland said. "I didn't execute, didn't hit my spots. I left balls over the middle. And it just continued to ball up. All in all, just a terrible performance."

Said Banister: "They were on most all of his pitches. There wasn't a lot of separation between the two. Derek is smart enough to do [adjust]. We just couldn't get them off anything. It was an early-count attack; that was their M.O. At one point, he was at 22 pitches and the damage was just about done."

Toronto, of course, did more damage in the inning, adding another run and scored six more in the third, capped by an Encarnacion three-run homer.

It's not an anomaly.

The Blue Jays pounded him for six runs, including three homers, in two innings the last time they saw him, last year in the AL Division Series. He hasn't struck anybody out in either of those games.

Small sample? OK, go back further, to 2013. In the last four starts against Toronto, he's allowed 25 runs in 16.2 innings in four consecutive losses. In those four games, he's allowed as many home runs (nine) as he has strike outs.

Holland will always be fun-loving and attention-seeking and will always be the life of the room because you never know what's going to come out of his mouth next.

Where is arm is concerned, though, it seems to be getting more predictable by the start.

That's not a fun way to go through life on the mound.

Twitter: @EvanPGrant