The other day, Craig Kimbrel blew a save for the first time in — I don’t know — awhile. He was given a two-run lead and he retired the first two batters he faced, but then he unraveled. In a pinch, the game was off to extras. Kimbrel is one of those relievers for whom any hiccup is notable. And when you notice Kimbrel’s blown save, you notice something else. Kimbrel, in a tiny sample, is sitting on a 5.68 ERA. If you add up the ERAs from his first five seasons in the majors, you get a sum of 6.37. Something’s a little wonky. Or nothing’s wonky at all, and this is just early-season randomness. Regardless, Kimbrel catches your eye with a 5-something ERA. He’d catch your eye with a 3-something ERA.

Is there anything going on we should know about? Kimbrel’s pitch velocities are fine. Kimbrel’s pitch mix is normal. His arm slot hasn’t changed. So there’s no easy conclusion, but Ken Rosenthal spoke to somebody with something to say:

The report from one uniformed observer: “His command was terrible. He threw three pitches that almost hit guys in the head. He even threw a pickoff to first with no first baseman there. And on the pitch that was hit for a double to tie the game, he missed by three feet.”

Is it that simple? Is Kimbrel just missing his command? Is that why his strikeout rate is down? The source was talking about Kimbrel’s blown save in Arizona. So I decided to investigate Kimbrel’s blown save in Arizona.

The idea is to evaluate Kimbrel’s command. What we’ve been told is “his command was terrible.” What did he really look like, though? Below, you’ll see all the pitches. But you’re not going to see .gifs of all of the pitches, because that would be crazy. You’ll see screenshots. You’ll see pitch targets and red dots where the pitches actually went. In addition, a bit of commentary. Let’s get started!

Pitch No. 1: fastball

Right on! Perfectly accurate. Impressively accurate.

Pitch No. 2: fastball

Nailed it again. Good location doesn’t require exactly hitting the target. There’s always a margin of error. Even Greg Maddux missed around the target on his best days.

Pitch No. 3: fastball

Good job! Craig!

Pitch No. 4: curveball

I assume this was good location. The dot is away from the glove, but in this case, it was a breaking ball. I assume Kimbrel was aiming for the glove, which would cause the ball to break down and away from the hitter. That’s impossible to actually know, from where I sit, but it’s how most pitchers tend to operate.

Pitch No. 5: fastball

Ehh. Not a bad spot, but Kimbrel would consider this a miss. An acceptable miss, but still a miss.

Pitch No. 6: curveball

Decent breaking ball. Maybe a bit too wild, but it drew a checked swing that nearly got a strikeout. Good area to miss.

Pitch No. 7: curveball

Perfect. Next batter!

Pitch No. 8: fastball

Another medium miss. Kimbrel did miss his spot high, but he stayed on the edge of the zone. It’s not like this was a mistake. Or, I guess you could say it was a mistake, but it was a mistake — like dropping your keys. Not a mistake, like dropping your keys off a boat.

Pitch No. 9: fastball

Somewhat similar to the previous fastball, but this time Kimbrel also pushed the ball a few more inches. Not a hittable mistake — just a ball.

Pitch No. 10: fastball

This is just the first pitch of the at bat again. Right on the edge. A little up.

Pitch No. 11: curveball

A perfect breaking ball, in a 1-and-2 count. Somehow, the batter laid off. This is a batter who would walk, thereby extending the inning. But that same batter very easily could’ve gone down swinging right here, and then nothing else would’ve happened. Kimbrel would’ve had a 1-2-3 save conversion, with a pair of strikeouts.

Pitch No. 12: fastball

Now the bad sequence. Maybe, I don’t know, Kimbrel was frustrated by the previous pitch not ending the game. But this fastball wound up close to the mouth. Is this a miss by four feet?

Pitch No. 13: fastball

Not any better. Big miss.

Pitch No. 14: fastball

Three of these in a row. None of them, granted, missed in a hittable spot. No meatballs. But significant mistakes nonetheless. That bit about almost hitting guys in the head? Yeah.

Pitch No. 15: fastball

We’re almost back. Certainly, we’re better. This is a close pitch, but it misses a bit away, and the catcher didn’t receive it well. The announcer thought Kimbrel over-compensated for the previous pitches getting away from him in the other direction.

Pitch No. 16: fastball

A miss up and across the plate. But! This still got a called strike. And as I’ve noted before, though this was a miss, it wasn’t a miss in a hittable area. A high, inside fastball in the upper 90s? It’s a quality pitch, as a result.

Pitch No. 17: fastball

Pretty good. This went for a hit, but perhaps that was just good hitting.

Pitch No. 18: curveball

I think this was pretty good. Even though with previous curveballs, we’ve looked for the pitch to end up lower than the glove, this was a first-pitch breaking ball and it caught the lower bit of the zone. I think it was a good pitch to keep the hitter off balance. Reasonable idea for a way to steal a strike.

Pitch No. 19: fastball

Fine enough for me. A bit of elevation, but still right on the edge.

Pitch No. 20: fastball

And here we have the blown save. This low, outside fastball became a low, inside fastball, and the hitter pulled it down the right-field line for a two-run double. This isn’t the pitch you want to throw 0-and-2. With that said, the pitch still hugged a corner of the zone, and it wasn’t at all floating around in the middle of it. There are many worse 0-and-2 pitches.

Pitch No. 21: curveball

Perfect!

Pitch No. 22: fastball

Perfect!

Pitch No. 23: curveball

Perfect!

So went Craig Kimbrel’s ninth inning, in which he was charged with two runs and a blown save. With one whiff on one good curveball, Kimbrel would’ve ended with a simple 1-2-3. But a walk, a single, and a double later, Kimbrel needed a strikeout to avoid getting the loss. It was an inning in which he made good pitches. It was an inning in which he made mistakes.

Was this Craig Kimbrel with “terrible” command? I can’t answer that without knowing how Kimbrel usually looks. Yet my hunch would be that this wasn’t particularly bad. Remember, there’s no such thing as a pitcher who executes every single one of his pitches. Of Kimbrel’s 23 observed pitches, 12 were basically right on. Another seven missed by a little bit. There were four big misses. Three happened in a row, and they were each well out of the zone. One just missed to the opposite side of the plate. Kimbrel wasn’t putting pitches right down the pipe. He wasn’t bouncing every curve. And he’s never been known for his pinpoint location, which hasn’t mattered, because of the raw quality of his stuff.

The stuff that’s still very much there. From Rosenthal:

“His stuff is fine,” Padres manager Bud Black said in a text message Sunday. “Everybody has an off-day.”

Seems like just an off-day. Seems like one of those things that’s more noticeable because it’s the start of the season. The past eight games, Kimbrel’s allowed a .911 OPS. Over an eight-game stretch in April and May 2013, Kimbrel allowed a 1.050 OPS. From that point on, his OPS against was .418.

If you want a sign of something being different, there’s this: Kimbrel has thrown nearly two-thirds of his fastballs in or below the lower half. Last year, he was at 41%. The year before, 51%. So Kimbrel’s worked a bit lower than usual, and maybe that’s somehow making him a little bit more hittable.

Yet I just can’t find reason to worry. Faster stuff. Slightly more pitcher-friendly counts. And Kimbrel has allowed 61% contact. That’s lower than his career mark, and even with the year he struck out half the batters he saw. So what’s going on that’s made Kimbrel more hittable? That might not be even a valid question.