The key to Hader's dominance this postseason

The Padres need to find a way to get the ball back into Josh Hader's hands. Hader has found his fastball, and it's made him the postseason's most dominant closer.

The left-hander has closed out five of San Diego's six postseason wins -- earning the save in four of them -- and the Padres now need three wins in a row to make it to the World Series. But the Phillies have kept Hader off the mound since Game 2 of the National League Championship Series.

The way Hader's pitching, San Diego has to create the late-game situations to get him to the mound in Games 5, 6 and 7. Hader has allowed zero runs and just two baserunners in the postseason, with 10 strikeouts in his 5 1/3 innings.

Hader's heater is the key to everything. He's throwing it harder. He's throwing it more often. He's throwing it where it's the most untouchable.

"When you're commanding your best pitch, you live and die by that," Hader said. "I feel like that's what got me here."

That's the truth. Hader's slider is a great strikeout pitch -- hitters swing and miss at it over half the time -- but his fastball is the pitch. It's the pitch that makes makes him elite, and it's more elite than ever.

Here's why.

Hader is throwing almost 80% fastballs in the postseason. That's more like the Hader of 2017, '18 and '19 -- and, importantly, the Hader who was lights-out down the stretch in the regular season -- than the Hader who relied more on his slider over the last few seasons and was throwing sliders nearly a third of the time through August this year.

Hader's fastball usage by season
2017: 82%
2018: 79%
2019: 84%

2020: 68%
2021: 65%
2022 (through Aug.): 68%

2022 (Sept./Oct.): 79%
2022 postseason: 78%

He's also throwing those fastballs at a career-high velocity.

Hader's average fastball velocity by season
2017: 94.3 mph
2018: 94.5 mph
2019: 95.5 mph
2020: 94.5 mph
2021: 96.4 mph
2022 regular season: 97.4 mph
2022 postseason: 98.8 mph

Add the extra postseason juice to what was already a career-high velo, and all of a sudden Hader is sitting at 99 mph and pushing into the 100s. His fastball was already one of the most explosive in baseball when he was sitting 95. Now, it's like he's stolen Aroldis Chapman's.

Entering the 2022 postseason, Hader had never thrown a 100 mph fastball in his career. Not once. This postseason, he's done it six times.

Hader's 100+ mph fastballs
NL WCS Game 3 vs. Tomás Nido -- 100.0 mph
NL WCS Game 3 vs. Starling Marte -- 100.8 mph
NL WCS Game 3 vs. Starling Marte -- 100.3 mph
NLDS Game 3 vs. Chris Taylor -- 100.3 mph
NLDS Game 3 vs. Trayce Thompson -- 100.0 mph
NLCS Game 2 vs. Alec Bohm -- 100.0 mph (strikeout)

"Obviously, with the velocity jump, it's been able to help me get hitters off the offspeeds," Hader said. "Because you have to sit one pitch, which then allows the secondaries to play a little bit better."

Nine of Hader's 10 fastest career pitches, and 20 of his top 25, have come in the 2022 postseason … and so have four of his five fastest career strikeouts, including all of his top three -- 100 on the dot to blow away Bohm, 99.9 to get Nido in the Wild Card Series and 99.8 to ring up Jean Segura right after Bohm. That might make you want to throw your fastball, too.

But it took the mechanical adjustments Hader made after a horrific July and August to make this power-pitching approach possible in the postseason. Hader can attack hitters so aggressively now because he harnessed his fastball command.

This summer, Hader was already starting to tick up his fastball usage. But that's when his delivery fell out of sync. He wasn't staying even through his toe and heel as he drove off the mound, and the inconsistency was causing his arm slot to leak too high. Hader had a 12.54 ERA with the Brewers in July, and a 19.06 ERA with the Padres in August.

In the middle of that month, he got to work resetting his mechanics with Padres pitching coach Ruben Niebla. He got back in tune, and his command came back. Hader didn't allow an earned run in the last 10 of his 11 outings in September, and with five scoreless appearances to start the postseason, he has a 0.00 ERA in his last 15 games.

"Being able to be A-1 in my mechanics is going to give me the best results on my fastball, and on all my other pitches," Hader said.

There are two key areas that show you the sharpness of Hader's command in the postseason.

1) He's getting ahead of everyone.

• Over 40% of Hader's pitches have been thrown while ahead in the count, top five among pitchers this postseason.
• He's started over 75% of the batters he's faced with Strike 1 -- not a ball in play, but a called strike, swinging strike or foul ball that puts the count in his favor at 0-1. That's second best in the postseason. (He's started 17 of those 18 batters with a fastball.)
• Over 60% of his plate appearances have been decided in a pitcher's count, also top five. Hader's not letting those hitters back into the count, either.

Highest % of pitches thrown ahead in the count, 2022 postseason
50+ total pitches
Robert Suarez, Padres -- 43%
Julio Urías, Dodgers -- 43%
Emmanuel Clase, Guardians -- 43%
Ryan Pressly, Astros -- 42%
Josh Hader, Padres -- 41%

Once he uses his fastball to get ahead, he can bury a hitter with his slider or changeup. Or he can go with more high heat ...

2) He's been able to elevate his fastball consistently

Hader's been attacking hitters relentlessly with fastballs at the top of the strike zone. Four out of every five fastballs he's thrown -- which means nearly two-thirds of his total pitches -- are elevated fastballs, in the upper third of the zone or higher.

He's elevating more than any pitcher in the postseason, and in a way he wasn't doing in the regular season.

Highest % of elevated fastballs, 2022 postseason
50+ fastballs thrown
Josh Hader, Padres -- 79%
Rafael Montero, Astros -- 65%
Triston McKenzie, Guardians -- 62%
George Kirby, Mariners -- 62%
Luis Severino, Yankees -- 60%
Elevated: Upper third of the zone or higher

Hader's % of fastballs elevated by month, 2022
April: 51%
May: 65%
June: 60%
July: 54%
August: 51%
September: 57%
Postseason: 79%

If Hader's throwing the ball where he wants to, he's going to go upstairs, since his fastball has so much ride. In the postseason, it's dropping less than 10 inches on its way to the plate. That's a big part of what makes it such a swing-and-miss pitch -- Hader's fastball is generating a 31% whiff rate in the postseason. He's gotten more swings-and-misses with his fastball than any reliever in the postseason.

"I would say [in terms of] velocity, it's probably the best [ever]," Hader said of his fastball. "The playoffs is just a different beast. When you get in front of these fans, you get into this atmosphere where it's do or die, you need to win these games, the adrenaline bumps up a little bit and takes you to a new level.

"This is the reason why we play this game, right? To be in this moment, to bring out the best, whatever you've got."