Latest news with #KyleBland
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
MLB Starting Pitcher News: Chris Paddack surging, Brandon Pfaadt and Max Meyer struggling
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch. The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to determine if the recent results are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth investing in or if they're just mirages. Advertisement Each week, I'll try to cover change for at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you'll find it useful, so let's get started. Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he's now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also features a great strike zone plot, which allows you to see how the entire arsenal plays together. I'll also use Alex Chamberlain's awesome work with his Pitch Leaderboard. MLB: Tampa Bay Rays at Arizona Diamondbacks 2025 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani & Bobby Witt Jr. lead Top 300 rest of season ranks Advertisement Jac Caglianone, Camilo Doval and Addison Barger surge in the June 2 rankings update. Chris Paddack - Minnesota Twins (New Slider) It was trendy early in the season to push for Chris Paddack to be sent packing. I get it, I was a part of the crowd calling for him to be pushed aside in order to make room for Zebby Matthews or David Festa. But we may have all been a little too quick in writing the obituary for Paddack's fantasy value. After starting the season with two inconsistent outings, Paddack has pitched to a 2.17 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, and 46/14 K/BB ratio in 58 innings for the Twins. While that strikeout rate is not something to write home about, and the 25.4% CSW and 11.2% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) don't tell the story of a pitcher who's dominating his opponents, we have a 10-game sample size of Paddack producing solid results. It's time we take that seriously and start to look at WHY that might be happening. Advertisement For starters, Paddack's four-seam fastball has traded some horizontal run for vertical movement. In Kyle Bland's awesome chart below, I toggled Paddack's stats from his start on Sunday against the Mariners and set them to compare to his 2024 stats. That means the nearly one-inch increase in Induced Vertical Break (iVB) is from this year to last year. That has made Paddack's four-seamer a bit flatter, and he has responded by throwing it up in the zone a bit more. In particular, Paddack is using the four-seamer up in the zone to lefties over 7% more and has attacked them inside 8% more. While it hasn't led to much improvement in many surface-level numbers, lefties last year had a 30% HR/FB ratio, 8.5% barrel rate, and .365 wOBA off Paddack's four-seamer. In 2025, those numbers are now a 7.1% HR/FB ratio, 2% barrel rate, and .286 wOBA. Paddack Pitch The biggest change that you can see in Paddack from 2024 to 2025 is the shape of his breaking balls. The curveball has a pretty minimal shift, but he's cut over an inch of horizontal movement on the pitch while keeping the vertical break the same. This has drastically improved the zone rate and the quality of contact allowed, but I think the curve was primarily altered as part of a plan to attack lefties. By removing some of the horizontal movement, that means the pitch doesn't break down-and-in to lefties as much. That tends to be a hot spot for left-handed hitters, so this is a change we can get behind. In 2025, the curve has seen a slight improvement in SwStr% to lefties (it's still bad) but has also seen the Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) fall from 44.4% to 30.8%. Since he can command the pitch better, he's using it early in the strike zone more often and has seen his early called strike rate on the curve to lefties jump from 39th percentile to 75th percentile. Advertisement It's OK for both the four-seamer and curve to not miss many bats to lefties because the changes Paddack made to his slider are taking care of that. This year, his slider is almost two mph harder with nearly three inches less horizontal movement and more iVB, which implies it's more of a gyro spin and closer to a cutter than a sweepier slider. He's using this gyro slider up and inside to lefties often, and has seen it get a 15.2% SwStr% and a nearly 29% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout. He has not been as successful getting two-strike swing-and-misses to righties, but the 12.4% SwStr% on the pitch to righties is solid, and it has a league average ICR against them. What this all means is that the minor four-seam and curve shape changes, paired with an approach change, have led to far more soft contact against lefties and decreased the home run issue. His new gyro slider has also added some swing and miss to lefties instead of just having to rely on his changeup, but he still has that solid changeup and four-seam pairing to mitigate damage to lefties. At the end of the day, Paddack is not going to emerge as a major strikeout weapon, but the new shapes and attack plan do make his ratio improvements seem real, and it would not be a shock to see him settle in as a 3.50 ERA type of pitcher with a good WHIP and mediocre strikeouts. Ryan Yarbrough - New York Yankees (New Changeup Grip, New Sweeper, Cutter Usage) One of the guys in my home league said the Yankees signed "prime Jamie Moyer" when they signed Ryan Yarbrough, and we laughed, but Yarbrough has been good this season. The Yankees moved him into the starting rotation in May, and in those five starts, Yarbrough has posted a 2.08 ERA, 0.81 WHIP, and 24/5 K/BB ratio in 26 innings. It wasn't all cupcake opponents either. He faced the Dodgers and Rangers, who I know are slumping, and also had to go to Sacramento to face the A's in an offensive stadium. Advertisement One of the ways Yabrough has had some success is due to some pitch mix tweaks that he's made since joining the rotation. In that span, he has cut his sinker and sweeper usage by over 8% and increased his cutter usage by nearly 14%. Some of that is certainly because he is not facing as many lefties as he did when he was a reliever, so he has to dial back the usage of pitches that are specifically designed to get out lefties, but it also highlights some of the success the Yankees have had with his new pitch shapes. So far this season, the Yankees have made the cutter Yarbrough's most-thrown pitch, upping the usage from 10% last year to 24% this year. They've also added nearly three inches of horizontal break to the cutter and a touch more drop as well as you can see in Kyle Bland's chart below, which is also set up to compare shapes and usage to 2024). Ryan Yarbrough Mix Yarbrough is also throwing the pitch in the zone 23% more often, which has led to more called strikes and a 31.5% CSW, compared to 20% last year. He's primarily throwing the pitch to righties in 2025 and has stopped focusing on jamming hitters up-and-in with it. He's still using it primarily up, but is OK with throwing it more middle, and he's increased his oLOC% (outside location rate) from 19% to 43% against righties this season. While righties aren't swinging and missing much, they have just a 23% ICR on the pitch, so it's getting tons of weak contact. Advertisement The Yankees have also made a tweak to Yarbrough's changeup, adding nearly five inches of vertical movement and over an inch and a half of horizontal run. He uses the pitch almost exclusively to righties and has seen his SwStr% jump from 12% to 19.3% on the season with the added movement. He's commanding it in the zone less effectively, but that appears to be by design since he uses it 40% of the time in two-strike counts to righties and gets a 39% chase rate in those counts with a 76th percentile PutAway Rate. Lastly, Yabrough has added a sweeper this season that he throws to both righties and lefties, but uses 40% of the time to lefties. The pitch is 72 mph with nearly 13 inches of horizontal movement and 5.3 inches of vertical movement, which means the air kind of catches the seams en route to the plate and prevents the pitch from falling as much due to gravity. He uses it 75% of the time early in counts to righties, to steal strikes, and has a 21.6% SwStr% on the pitch to lefties. He does a good job of keeping the pitch low, and while his PutAway Rate to lefties isn't that good, he can piece together some strikeouts with the sweeper, cutter, and sinker. This creates a version of Yarbrough that has more strikeout upside than we've seen from him, maybe ever. The new movement profile on the cutter means that he doesn't need to be as precise with his location in the zone, and he can get ahead to set up the changeup or sweeper. He likely gets bumped from the rotation when Luis Gil is back, and it's unlikely this run of production continues for the left-hander, but he had a 3.19 ERA over nearly 100 innings in relief last year, so he could remain a solid streaming option as long as he stays in this Yankees rotation. 2025 Fantasy Baseball: 60 Undervalued Players, from Jasson Domínguez to Bo Bichette Advertisement 60 undervalued players to help you win your fantasy league. Max Meyer - Miami Marlins (Slider Usage and Performance) I was a big fan of Max Meyer in the off-season, writing about him as one of my favorite late-round draft picks with the upside to be an impactful starting pitcher. In that article, I mentioned that I was intrigued by Meyer's added fastball velocity, his new sweeper, and the sinker that would take some pressure off his four-seam fastball. Through his first five starts, it seemed like everything was going smoothly. Meyer had a 2.10 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 34% strikeout rate. He had faced the Mets, Braves, and Diamondbacks in that stretch as well, and it seemed like things were trending up. However, starting with his last appearance in April, things took a turn for the worse. In seven starts, he has posted a 7.01 ERA, 1.73 WHIP, and 16.5% strikeout rate. BIG YIKES. So what is at the heart of his struggles, and where do we go from here? Advertisement For starters, the usage and execution of his slider have been trending down. In his first five starts, he used his slider nearly 42% of the time; yet, over his last seven starts, that number has fallen to 29%. Meyer Pitch Mix In its place, he has increased his sweeper usage by about 5% and leaned into his sinker more against righties, which is likely part of the reason his overall SwStr% has dropped from 17.4% to 9.5%, and his CSW has gone from 34% to 27%. If we look at the metrics for just the slider, we can see a stark decline in swinging strike rate and PutAway Rate since the calendar has flipped to May. Max Meyer Slider SwStr% CSW Zone% Strike% PAR Early 4/9 - 5/9 25.1 37.5 45.2 66 34.8 44.8 5/16 - 6/2 14 34 54 67 25.6 51 So what could be behind that? Advertisement For starters, it's pretty clear that his feel for the slider is faltering, and I believe that's a key reason we have seen a lack of swinging strikes. Meyer has seen his zone rate on the slider increase a bunch, but the contact rate is also way up, and the chase rate is down by 8%. He's keeping the slider low in the zone to righties 62% of the time, which seems fine, but it was 74% in his first five starts, which hints at some issues with command. He has also thrown 10% of the sliders middle-middle over this last seven-game stretch after doing so just 2% of the time in his first five games. Since Meyer is no longer able to be as precise with the command of his slider, he has stopped using it as much in two-strike counts. That has led to him using the changeup far more often in two-strike counts over the last seven starts, and that has just a 9% PutAway Rate over that stretch. In the same article I referenced above, I also said that Meyer came into this season with a career 19% strikeout rate and didn't have any clear plus pitches other than his slider, so he needed the fastball velocity to hold and sweeper to be effective if he was going to maintain value. The sweeper has posted just a 6% SwStr% on the season, so that has not emerged as a swing-and-miss offering, which means that pressure for strikeouts is still on the struggling slider. What's more, the four-seam velocity has settled in around 95 mph, which is not quite one mph up from last year. It's an improvement, but not one that is causing any meaningful change to Meyer's value. At the end of the day, I think it's time to cut Meyer in all leagues. If you see his slider command come back, you may see the strikeouts follow, but we've seen many young pitchers spend so much time focused on new pitches that they lose feel for their old pitch (Brayan Bello and his changeup). I think we may be seeing the same thing with Meyer here. UPDATE: AFTER THIS ARTICLE WAS SUBMITTED, MAX MEYER WAS PLACED ON THE IL WITH A HIP INJURY. IT'S POSSIBLE THE HIP INJURY WAS CAUSING SOME OF THE ISSUES WITH THE SLIDER COMMAND, BUT IT'S ALSO EQUALLY POSSIBLE THAT'S JUST AN OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE MEYER A BREAK AND A RESET. Brandon Pfaadt - Arizona Diamondbacks (Changeup and Curve Usage, Struggles with Left-Handed Hitters) Much like with Max Meyer, Pfaadt was off to a strong start to the season, posting a 2.78 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, and 29/6 K/BB ratio in his first six starts. I even featured him in this exact column, discussing how he was evolving as a pitcher and getting rid of his biggest weakness, which was allowing hard contact to lefties. Advertisement When the calendar flipped to May, he alternated a bad start against the Phillies with six shutout innings against the Dodgers to give him a 3.28 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and 41/10 K/BB ratio in 46.2 innings. Not a bad way to begin the year through eight starts. However, in the four starts since then, he has allowed 18 runs on 20 hits in 15.2 innings while striking out eight and walking five. YUCK. So what's at the heart of this? I'm gonna go back to the start of May to dig in. In my earlier article on Pfaadt, which I published in April, I talked about the two key changes for Pfaadt being that he was using his changeup more often and "throwing his curveball almost three mph harder, with more vertical break and significantly less horizontal break. The more north-south movement on the pitch makes it a better weapon against lefties." There was still work to be done, but I saw a path forward for Pfaadt against lefties. Then a boulder fell and blocked that path. In his first six starts of the season, Pfaadt threw his changeup to lefties 25.7% and his curve 18% of the time. In his six starts since May 1st, he has thrown the changeup 24.3% to lefties and the curve just 11% of the time. Since the changeup usage has stayed pretty similar, let's see where the numbers stack up. Brandon Pfaadt Changeup versus LHH SwStr% CSW Zone% Strike% ICR PAR Early% 3/25 - 4/30 14.3 24.5 31.6 60.2 43.5 0 71.4 5/1 - 6/2 18.6 32.9 38.6 65.7 53.8 18.8 63 On the surface, we like to see the swinging strike rate and CSW go up, while the zone rate and strike rate have also gone up, so that seems positive. However, the hard contact allowed has exploded to nearly 54%, and it seems that he has stopped using it early in the count as much. When we dig in further, we can see that the locations to lefties are not that much different. He was getting the pitch low in the zone 79% of the time in April, but that's now 73% to lefties. His outside location rate is pretty similar, but he had thrown his changeup middle-middle just 3% of the time to lefties in his first six starts, and that has ballooned to 8.3% in his last six starts. That's part of the reason his groundball rate has dropped 7%, and his hard contact is up. Advertisement It seems like just a bit of a location issue where he is no longer as precise with the location of his changeup to lefties. Yet, considering he doesn't have many other offerings to lefties and has stopped using his curve as much, that small change can have a big impact. But why did he stop using his curveball as much? Brandon Pfaadt Curve versus LHH SwStr% CSW Zone% Strike% ICR PAR Early% 3/25 - 4/30 20.6 27.9 25 62.3 50 21.2 39.7 5/1 - 6/2 9.1 24.2 33.3 48.5 40 22.2 66.7 On the surface, the pitch was a huge swinging strike asset for him, and he seemed to thrive by using it in the zone less often and throwing it primarily in two-strike counts. Yes, it got hit hard, but it was just a two-strike pitch to get lefties out, so it didn't matter as much because it was doing its job as a swinging strike rate pitch. Now, Pfaadt is throwing it in the zone more but also trying to use it early in the count too, I assume, steal some called strikes or get weak contact by fooling hitters. However, even though the pitch is giving up less hard contact, it's not missing any bats and puts him right back in the same spot where he can't seem to get lefties out. As a result, that puts me back in the same spot I was in with Pfaadt coming into this year, where I think he lacks a consistent out pitch to lefties, which will give him major splits issues and limit his strikeout upside. I can see benching him in a 15-team league to see if he can figure this out again, but I'm ready to avoid the headache in 12-team formats and just move on.
NBC Sports
6 days ago
- Health
- NBC Sports
MLB Starting Pitcher News: Chris Paddack surging, Brandon Pfaadt and Max Meyer struggling
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch. The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to determine if the recent results are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth investing in or if they're just mirages. Each week, I'll try to cover change for at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you'll find it useful, so let's get started. Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he's now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also features a great strike zone plot, which allows you to see how the entire arsenal plays together. I'll also use Alex Chamberlain's awesome work with his Pitch Leaderboard. Matthew Pouliot, It was trendy early in the season to push for Chris Paddack to be sent packing. I get it, I was a part of the crowd calling for him to be pushed aside in order to make room for Zebby Matthews or David Festa. But we may have all been a little too quick in writing the obituary for Paddack's fantasy value. After starting the season with two inconsistent outings, Paddack has pitched to a 2.17 ERA, 0.95 WHIP, and 46/14 K/BB ratio in 58 innings for the Twins. While that strikeout rate is not something to write home about, and the 25.4% CSW and 11.2% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) don't tell the story of a pitcher who's dominating his opponents, we have a 10-game sample size of Paddack producing solid results. It's time we take that seriously and start to look at WHY that might be happening. For starters, Paddack's four-seam fastball has traded some horizontal run for vertical movement. In Kyle Bland's awesome chart below, I toggled Paddack's stats from his start on Sunday against the Mariners and set them to compare to his 2024 stats. That means the nearly one-inch increase in Induced Vertical Break (iVB) is from this year to last year. That has made Paddack's four-seamer a bit flatter, and he has responded by throwing it up in the zone a bit more. In particular, Paddack is using the four-seamer up in the zone to lefties over 7% more and has attacked them inside 8% more. While it hasn't led to much improvement in many surface-level numbers, lefties last year had a 30% HR/FB ratio, 8.5% barrel rate, and .365 wOBA off Paddack's four-seamer. In 2025, those numbers are now a 7.1% HR/FB ratio, 2% barrel rate, and .286 wOBA. Pitcher List The biggest change that you can see in Paddack from 2024 to 2025 is the shape of his breaking balls. The curveball has a pretty minimal shift, but he's cut over an inch of horizontal movement on the pitch while keeping the vertical break the same. This has drastically improved the zone rate and the quality of contact allowed, but I think the curve was primarily altered as part of a plan to attack lefties. By removing some of the horizontal movement, that means the pitch doesn't break down-and-in to lefties as much. That tends to be a hot spot for left-handed hitters, so this is a change we can get behind. In 2025, the curve has seen a slight improvement in SwStr% to lefties (it's still bad) but has also seen the Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) fall from 44.4% to 30.8%. Since he can command the pitch better, he's using it early in the strike zone more often and has seen his early called strike rate on the curve to lefties jump from 39th percentile to 75th percentile. It's OK for both the four-seamer and curve to not miss many bats to lefties because the changes Paddack made to his slider are taking care of that. This year, his slider is almost two mph harder with nearly three inches less horizontal movement and more iVB, which implies it's more of a gyro spin and closer to a cutter than a sweepier slider. He's using this gyro slider up and inside to lefties often, and has seen it get a 15.2% SwStr% and a nearly 29% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout. He has not been as successful getting two-strike swing-and-misses to righties, but the 12.4% SwStr% on the pitch to righties is solid, and it has a league average ICR against them. What this all means is that the minor four-seam and curve shape changes, paired with an approach change, have led to far more soft contact against lefties and decreased the home run issue. His new gyro slider has also added some swing and miss to lefties instead of just having to rely on his changeup, but he still has that solid changeup and four-seam pairing to mitigate damage to lefties. At the end of the day, Paddack is not going to emerge as a major strikeout weapon, but the new shapes and attack plan do make his ratio improvements seem real, and it would not be a shock to see him settle in as a 3.50 ERA type of pitcher with a good WHIP and mediocre strikeouts. One of the guys in my home league said the Yankees signed 'prime Jamie Moyer' when they signed Ryan Yarbrough, and we laughed, but Yarbrough has been good this season. The Yankees moved him into the starting rotation in May, and in those five starts, Yarbrough has posted a 2.08 ERA, 0.81 WHIP, and 24/5 K/BB ratio in 26 innings. It wasn't all cupcake opponents either. He faced the Dodgers and Rangers, who I know are slumping, and also had to go to Sacramento to face the A's in an offensive stadium. One of the ways Yabrough has had some success is due to some pitch mix tweaks that he's made since joining the rotation. In that span, he has cut his sinker and sweeper usage by over 8% and increased his cutter usage by nearly 14%. Some of that is certainly because he is not facing as many lefties as he did when he was a reliever, so he has to dial back the usage of pitches that are specifically designed to get out lefties, but it also highlights some of the success the Yankees have had with his new pitch shapes. So far this season, the Yankees have made the cutter Yarbrough's most-thrown pitch, upping the usage from 10% last year to 24% this year. They've also added nearly three inches of horizontal break to the cutter and a touch more drop as well as you can see in Kyle Bland's chart below, which is also set up to compare shapes and usage to 2024). Yarbrough is also throwing the pitch in the zone 23% more often, which has led to more called strikes and a 31.5% CSW, compared to 20% last year. He's primarily throwing the pitch to righties in 2025 and has stopped focusing on jamming hitters up-and-in with it. He's still using it primarily up, but is OK with throwing it more middle, and he's increased his oLOC% (outside location rate) from 19% to 43% against righties this season. While righties aren't swinging and missing much, they have just a 23% ICR on the pitch, so it's getting tons of weak contact. The Yankees have also made a tweak to Yarbrough's changeup, adding nearly five inches of vertical movement and over an inch and a half of horizontal run. He uses the pitch almost exclusively to righties and has seen his SwStr% jump from 12% to 19.3% on the season with the added movement. He's commanding it in the zone less effectively, but that appears to be by design since he uses it 40% of the time in two-strike counts to righties and gets a 39% chase rate in those counts with a 76th percentile PutAway Rate. Lastly, Yabrough has added a sweeper this season that he throws to both righties and lefties, but uses 40% of the time to lefties. The pitch is 72 mph with nearly 13 inches of horizontal movement and 5.3 inches of vertical movement, which means the air kind of catches the seams en route to the plate and prevents the pitch from falling as much due to gravity. He uses it 75% of the time early in counts to righties, to steal strikes, and has a 21.6% SwStr% on the pitch to lefties. He does a good job of keeping the pitch low, and while his PutAway Rate to lefties isn't that good, he can piece together some strikeouts with the sweeper, cutter, and sinker. This creates a version of Yarbrough that has more strikeout upside than we've seen from him, maybe ever. The new movement profile on the cutter means that he doesn't need to be as precise with his location in the zone, and he can get ahead to set up the changeup or sweeper. He likely gets bumped from the rotation when Luis Gil is back, and it's unlikely this run of production continues for the left-hander, but he had a 3.19 ERA over nearly 100 innings in relief last year, so he could remain a solid streaming option as long as he stays in this Yankees rotation. I was a big fan of Max Meyer in the off-season, writing about him as one of my favorite late-round draft picks with the upside to be an impactful starting pitcher. In that article, I mentioned that I was intrigued by Meyer's added fastball velocity, his new sweeper, and the sinker that would take some pressure off his four-seam fastball. Through his first five starts, it seemed like everything was going smoothly. Meyer had a 2.10 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 34% strikeout rate. He had faced the Mets, Braves, and Diamondbacks in that stretch as well, and it seemed like things were trending up. However, starting with his last appearance in April, things took a turn for the worse. In seven starts, he has posted a 7.01 ERA, 1.73 WHIP, and 16.5% strikeout rate. BIG YIKES. So what is at the heart of his struggles, and where do we go from here? For starters, the usage and execution of his slider have been trending down. In his first five starts, he used his slider nearly 42% of the time; yet, over his last seven starts, that number has fallen to 29%. In its place, he has increased his sweeper usage by about 5% and leaned into his sinker more against righties, which is likely part of the reason his overall SwStr% has dropped from 17.4% to 9.5%, and his CSW has gone from 34% to 27%. If we look at the metrics for just the slider, we can see a stark decline in swinging strike rate and PutAway Rate since the calendar has flipped to May. Max Meyer Slider So what could be behind that? For starters, it's pretty clear that his feel for the slider is faltering, and I believe that's a key reason we have seen a lack of swinging strikes. Meyer has seen his zone rate on the slider increase a bunch, but the contact rate is also way up, and the chase rate is down by 8%. He's keeping the slider low in the zone to righties 62% of the time, which seems fine, but it was 74% in his first five starts, which hints at some issues with command. He has also thrown 10% of the sliders middle-middle over this last seven-game stretch after doing so just 2% of the time in his first five games. Since Meyer is no longer able to be as precise with the command of his slider, he has stopped using it as much in two-strike counts. That has led to him using the changeup far more often in two-strike counts over the last seven starts, and that has just a 9% PutAway Rate over that stretch. In the same article I referenced above, I also said that Meyer came into this season with a career 19% strikeout rate and didn't have any clear plus pitches other than his slider, so he needed the fastball velocity to hold and sweeper to be effective if he was going to maintain value. The sweeper has posted just a 6% SwStr% on the season, so that has not emerged as a swing-and-miss offering, which means that pressure for strikeouts is still on the struggling slider. What's more, the four-seam velocity has settled in around 95 mph, which is not quite one mph up from last year. It's an improvement, but not one that is causing any meaningful change to Meyer's value. At the end of the day, I think it's time to cut Meyer in all leagues. If you see his slider command come back, you may see the strikeouts follow, but we've seen many young pitchers spend so much time focused on new pitches that they lose feel for their old pitch (Brayan Bello and his changeup). I think we may be seeing the same thing with Meyer here. UPDATE: AFTER THIS ARTICLE WAS SUBMITTED, MAX MEYER WAS PLACED ON THE IL WITH A HIP INJURY. IT'S POSSIBLE THE HIP INJURY WAS CAUSING SOME OF THE ISSUES WITH THE SLIDER COMMAND, BUT IT'S ALSO EQUALLY POSSIBLE THAT'S JUST AN OPPORTUNITY TO GIVE MEYER A BREAK AND A RESET. Much like with Max Meyer, Pfaadt was off to a strong start to the season, posting a 2.78 ERA, 1.12 WHIP, and 29/6 K/BB ratio in his first six starts. I even featured him in this exact column, discussing how he was evolving as a pitcher and getting rid of his biggest weakness, which was allowing hard contact to lefties. When the calendar flipped to May, he alternated a bad start against the Phillies with six shutout innings against the Dodgers to give him a 3.28 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and 41/10 K/BB ratio in 46.2 innings. Not a bad way to begin the year through eight starts. However, in the four starts since then, he has allowed 18 runs on 20 hits in 15.2 innings while striking out eight and walking five. YUCK. So what's at the heart of this? I'm gonna go back to the start of May to dig in. In my earlier article on Pfaadt, which I published in April, I talked about the two key changes for Pfaadt being that he was using his changeup more often and 'throwing his curveball almost three mph harder, with more vertical break and significantly less horizontal break. The more north-south movement on the pitch makes it a better weapon against lefties.' There was still work to be done, but I saw a path forward for Pfaadt against lefties. Then a boulder fell and blocked that path. In his first six starts of the season, Pfaadt threw his changeup to lefties 25.7% and his curve 18% of the time. In his six starts since May 1st, he has thrown the changeup 24.3% to lefties and the curve just 11% of the time. Since the changeup usage has stayed pretty similar, let's see where the numbers stack up. Brandon Pfaadt Changeup versus LHH On the surface, we like to see the swinging strike rate and CSW go up, while the zone rate and strike rate have also gone up, so that seems positive. However, the hard contact allowed has exploded to nearly 54%, and it seems that he has stopped using it early in the count as much. When we dig in further, we can see that the locations to lefties are not that much different. He was getting the pitch low in the zone 79% of the time in April, but that's now 73% to lefties. His outside location rate is pretty similar, but he had thrown his changeup middle-middle just 3% of the time to lefties in his first six starts, and that has ballooned to 8.3% in his last six starts. That's part of the reason his groundball rate has dropped 7%, and his hard contact is up. It seems like just a bit of a location issue where he is no longer as precise with the location of his changeup to lefties. Yet, considering he doesn't have many other offerings to lefties and has stopped using his curve as much, that small change can have a big impact. But why did he stop using his curveball as much? Brandon Pfaadt Curve versus LHH On the surface, the pitch was a huge swinging strike asset for him, and he seemed to thrive by using it in the zone less often and throwing it primarily in two-strike counts. Yes, it got hit hard, but it was just a two-strike pitch to get lefties out, so it didn't matter as much because it was doing its job as a swinging strike rate pitch. Now, Pfaadt is throwing it in the zone more but also trying to use it early in the count too, I assume, steal some called strikes or get weak contact by fooling hitters. However, even though the pitch is giving up less hard contact, it's not missing any bats and puts him right back in the same spot where he can't seem to get lefties out. As a result, that puts me back in the same spot I was in with Pfaadt coming into this year, where I think he lacks a consistent out pitch to lefties, which will give him major splits issues and limit his strikeout upside. I can see benching him in a 15-team league to see if he can figure this out again, but I'm ready to avoid the headache in 12-team formats and just move on.
NBC Sports
30-04-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Starting Pitcher News: Nick Lodolo's strong start, who is Ben Casparius?
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch. The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to see if the recent results are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth buying into or if they're just mirages. Each week, I'll try to cover change for at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you'll find it useful, so let's get started. Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he's now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also has a great strike zone plot feature, which allows you to see how the whole arsenal plays together. I'll also use Alex Chamberlain's awesome work with his Pitch Leaderboard. Matthew Pouliot, After years of injuries and inconsistencies, are we finally getting the Nick Lodolo that we anticipated back when he was a prospect? Lodolo carved up the minor leagues, with a 2.70 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in 96.2 minor league innings, where he also struck out 149 batters and walked just 22. Yes, a 149:22 K:BB ratio. Yet, due to multiple injuries and some confounding trouble with command, Lodolo has a 4.24 career MLB ERA in 289 innings with 91 walks to 326 strikeouts. This season, however, he has come out like a house on fire, registering a 2.25 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, and 26:4 K:BB ratio in 36 innings through six starts. So, how has he done it? For starters, Lodolo is healthy now, which is great news after pitching just 115.1 innings last year and 34.1 innings the year before that. He has also made some minor shifts in his pitch mix, dialing back the use of his four-seamer and leaning into both the changeup and sinker more. Pitcher List As you can see from Kyle Bland's chart, in Lodolo's last start against the Rockies, he went to his sinker far more than his fastball despite facing all right-handed batters. He keeps the sinker high and outside to righties, which allows it to miss slightly more bats than the average sinker, but it does have a 41% ICR, which is only slightly better than league average. All things considered, it's about a league average pitch, but should set the four-seamer up to miss more bats up in the zone if hitters get used to seeing the sinker and then get the four-seamer upstairs. Lodolo seems to agree, which is why his four-seam fastball has been in the top third of the zone 10% more to righties this year. However, it's not missing many bats, and a lot of that could be that the sinker and four-seamer are basically the same velocity with minimal movement differences, so it's not enough to fool hitters. What has been a nice change for Lodolo this year has been using the changeup more often. Last year, he threw the pitch 16% of the time, but he's using it 23% of the time this year. He also seems to have tightened up the movement on it, taking off some of the horizontal run and adding a touch more drop. That could also be helping him command the pitch better since he has a 40% zone rate and 71% strike rate on the changeup this year after posting a 35% zone rate and 64% strike rate last year. He's also been using it more in two-strike counts and keeping it arm-side almost 10% more, which is helping his PutAway rate on the pitch in those two-strike counts. The pitch models like this new version of the changeup, and so do I. He also seems to have taken off some of the horizontal movement on his curveball as well this season, which had me thinking that there might be a bigger change behind all of this. Turns out, there might be. As you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard, Lodolo has now dropped his arm angle for the third straight season. Perhaps that's simply an angle he feels better pitching from. We talked about how Matthew Boyd changed his arm angle this season to let pitches move more naturally rather than force a movement profile onto them. That might be what Lodolo is doing here too. Perhaps lowering his arm slot allows him to command the changeup and curve more effectively because they move slightly less East-West. What we do know is that Lodolo has a career-high zone rate, is getting ahead of hitters more regularly than he ever has, and has a career-high strike rate. The issue is that increased command has so far come at the expense of strikeouts since he has a career-low swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and strikeout rate. Yet, looking at his approach and his pitch shapes, I think Lodolo still has the arsenal to post a 25% strikeout rate. He just needs to figure out how to optimize this new pitch mix and maybe address the lack of velocity and shape difference between his sinker and four-seamer. Matthew Liberatore is another former well-regarded prospect who has not lived up to expectations but is taking a step forward in 2025. Liberatore was not the level of prospect that Lodolo was, but he debuted with St. Louis at 22 years old, and many people assumed he would be a fixture in their rotation for a while. So far, he's pitched to a 4.73 ERA and 1.36 WHIP in 96 MLB appearances with only 29 starts. Yet, here he is with a 3.19 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, and 23.1% strikeout rate through his first five starts. So what do we make of this? The first change I noticed is that Liberatore has not only changed the shape of his changeup but also doubled the usage to 14.3% from 7.2% last year. He uses the changeup exclusively to righties and has added three inches of horizontal run this season while cutting off two inches of vertical break and also throwing the pitch two mph faster. James Schiano, who co-hosts the Rotoworld Fantasy Baseball Q&A with me on Mondays at Noon ET, speculated that Liberatore could have switched his grip to a kick-change, which would fit with his release point and movement profile. We also know that Liberatore is throwing the pitch in the zone more often, missing slightly more bats, and trying to use the changeup early in the count to righties. This allows him to rely less on his four-seam fastball and sinker to righties since he can get ahead with the changeup, and that's been a nice change for him. Last year, his cutter and sinker got hit hard by righties, and his four-seam fastball didn't miss many bats, so he needed a change in approach there. He has also changed his attack plan to righties with just his locations. In addition to using his changeup more often, he's throwing his four-seam inside to righties 20% more often and his cutter inside to righties 30% more often. His plan appears to be to jam righties inside with his fastballs to offset the changeup away or the slider low in the zone. That approach has led to plenty of weak contact but a drop in SwStr% to righties. Still, that's a change I'll take, especially since Liberatore's swinging strike rate to lefties has climbed to nearly 18%. Part of that is because he's using his slider 7% more often to lefties and getting it glove-side far more often. The other change has been that Liberatore is using his cutter more to lefties as an early-in-the-count offering and doing a better job of keeping it low and away. The cutter is now two inches slower with less drop and more horizontal bite, which makes it a solid pairing with the slower and sweepier slider. Using the cutter more often early in the count has also allowed Liberatore to dial back the usage of his sinker and four-seamer to lefties, and the cutter is grading out as a good pitch for him this season. At the end of the day, I think these changes make a lot of what we're seeing from Liberatore legitimate. I don't think he'll finish with a 3.19 ERA, but he's reducing hard contact to righties and missing more bats to lefties, which means you may get a lot of starts from him where he goes six innings, allows two runs, and strikes out four batters. That's going to be valuable in deeper formats, and I think he has a long leash in this rotation that's collapsing around him. With the Dodgers' rotation banged up and the team beginning a stretch of 10 games in 10 days, Dave Roberts has said a few times that they have discussed stretching Ben Casparius out as a starter. The 26-year-old has thrived in a relief role for the Dodgers this season, but 19 of his 21 appearances in the minors last year came as a starter, so this isn't some major role change. He was also pretty good between Double-A and Triple-A last year, posting a 3.35 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and 28% strikeout rate, even though he was old for the level. Given that he could find himself with a rotation spot on one of the best teams in baseball, I thought it was smart to look into who Casparius is and what he's doing this year that might be working for him. Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard Right here, we have our first hint from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard. Casparius raised his arm angle over four degrees from last year, and we can see how drastically that has changed the horizontal movement (H-Mov) profile of his pitch mix. Coming from that higher arm angle has allowed his slider and cutter to pick up significant horizontal movement. His four-seam fastball also jumped in vertical movement from 14.8 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB), according to Pitcher List's metrics, to 18.1 inches this year. That has improved the PLV and Stuff+ grades on almost all of his offerings, but what does that mean for him as a pitcher? We do need to highlight that Casparius' longest outing this season was 3.1 innings, so there are a lot of things you can do in your pitch mix when you don't have to go through the order two or three times. For instance, you can heavily dial back the usage of your four-seam fastball, as Casparius has done. That being said, I do love that Casparius has leaned into his cutter more this season. He uses it primarily to lefties - 28% of the time - but he also mixes it in 13% of the time to righties as a go-between for his four-seam fastball and slider. This season, the cutter has more horizontal movement, as we covered above, and he's using it up in the zone more often against lefties. It's only up in the zone 38% of the time, but that's still an improvement from last year, and he throws it inside to lefties almost 50% of the time. He has also been using it a lot more in two-strike counts against lefties, and it is getting plenty of whiffs at the top of the zone as one of his best two-strike offerings. That's important for him because he doesn't throw his slider much to lefties, and his curve, which he uses exclusively to lefties, is more of a pitch he tries to steal strikes with early in the count. He gets league-average swing and miss on the pitch, but it doesn't give up a lot of hard contact, so it's a fine but not great offering, which means he needs that cutter to miss bats against lefites if he's going to have a true out pitch for opposite-handed hitters. Other than occasionally going to the four-seamer upstairs. Overall, I see that the pitch models like Casparius, and I see why he's been an impactful multi-inning reliever, but I'm not as convinced about him as a starter. One of the biggest reasons has to do with his locations. If you look at Kyle Bland's plot chart above, you can see that nothing Casparius throws moves down-and-in to righties, and the only pitch that even moves in to righties at all is his four-seam fastball. Yet, he throws his four-seam fastball inside just 25% of the time to righties, and, as is typical of the Dodgers, uses it up in the zone just 44% of the time despite adding vertical movement to it and making it a flatter fastball than in years past. (WHY DO YOU HATE HIGH FASTBALLS SO MUCH!?) I think this arsenal, which almost exclusively attacks away to righties, is why his SwStr% is 5% better against lefties this season. The cutter and slider are good pitches, but we also saw Graham Ashcraft struggle for years against righties because both of his best pitches moved similarly and attacked the same part of the strike zone. I'm not saying Casparius is Ashacraft, but I'm just saying that while I like the IDEA of his pitch mix as a starter, I don't know if I love the attack plan, and so I'd need to see that change before I can buy into him being a reliable starter for fantasy baseball. ARTICLE WAS DRAFTED AND SUBMITTED BEFORE TUESDAY NIGHT'S START When I added Heaney to this article, I thought I was going to dig into what he was doing and tell you that this was the same old Heaney. Now, I'm not sure that's true. Yes, the velocity is the same, and there is no brand-new pitch (or is there?), but Heaney is attacking hitters much differently in 2025. One of the first major changes we can see is that he's dialed back the use of his slider a lot and is using the curveball way more. Heaney threw his slider 28% of the time in 2024, using it 35% to lefties and 26% to righties. So far in 2025, he's using it 17% of the time overall, 20.5% of the time to lefites and 15% to righties. At first, that may seem confusing to you since we've associated Heaney with a slider for a while now, but his Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) on the pitch has been getting worse in every season since 2021. Last year, he allowed a 43% ICR on the pitch, which suggests that, despite it having a great swinging strike rate, it wasn't a pitch that he needed to use as often as he was. So far, he's been using the pitch early in the counts less often and using it as more of a two-strike pitch, even to righties. Even though it's giving up a similar ICR, since he's using it less often, it's not hurting him as much, and he's still getting a lot of swings and misses on it. The slider also appears to be slower this season, coming in at 80 mph and with more horizontal break and drop, which has helped it to grade better on most pitch models. This could be because, much like Lodolo above, Heaney dropped his arm angle this season. Heaney is now throwing from a four-degree lower arm slot, which has taken away some of the vertical movement from his arsenal and added horizontal break overall. We see that on the slider, but also on the curve, which he has leaned on far more often this season. Last year, Heaney threw the curve just 3.6% of the time, but he's up to 10% usage this year and throwing it to both righties and lefties after rarely throwing any to lefties last year. That could be because he has more horizontal break on the pitch and felt more comfortable using it as a strike pitch to lefties, with a 60% zone rate, as he doesn't need to focus only on burying it low-and-away. We should acknowledge that Statcast has Heaney throwing a slider, a curve, and a 'slow curve,' but none of Pitcher List, Brooks Baseball, or Alex Chamberlain have that same classification, which is why the curveball and slider metrics are a bit all over the place. Has Heaney truly added a new curve, or is he manipulating the spin on it like we know Seth Lugo does to throw different versions depending on the count and the handedness of the hitter? Whatever he's doing there, it has been working. He's also using the sinker far more to left-handed hitters and using the changeup more to both righties and lefties, which means he's less reliant on his four-seam fastball, which is a good thing. His strikeout rate and swinging strike rate are the highest they've been since 2022, and his Ideal Contact Rate is the lowest it's ever been, so the new approach is certainly working. However, I'd be lying to you if I said I believed this would last the full season. His sinker is getting hit hard, so I'm not sure using it more is good, and the fastball is still an average pitch. The slider is giving up a decent amount of hard contact, and his changeup appears to be a slightly above-average pitch that's actually underperforming last year. At the end of the day, I think Heaney's new pitch mix and approach raise his floor just a bit, but I don't believe it leads to this kind of ceiling. I think he's in the middle of one of the hot stretches we've seen him go on before, and he now pitches his home games in a park that suppresses home runs, which has been a major weakness of his. That may mean he pitches well enough to stay on deep league rosters all year long, but I don't believe he's going to be somebody you start regardless of who the opponent is.
NBC Sports
16-04-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Starting Pitcher News: Edward Cabrera debuts, Yuseki Kikuchi makes changes
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch. The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to see if the recent results we're seeing are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth buying into or if they're just mirages. Each week, I'll try and cover at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you'll find it useful, so let's get started. Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he's now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also has a great strike zone plot feature, which allows you to see how the whole arsenal plays together. Matthew Pouliot, Am I really going to do this again? Every year, I talk myself into Edward Cabrera, repeating in my head, 'If he can just throw strikes with the fastball, we'll be OK.' It's the same logic that led me to Jose Soriano in many drafts, and that's worked swimmingly so far, so why not Cabrera? Maybe 2025 is the year? Cabrera made his season debut last week after missing the beginning of the season with a blister that landed him on the IL. However, that blister may have been a blessing in disguise. Cabrera struggled during spring training, and the time on the injured list allowed him to take a break and continue to throw bullpens without the pressure of a game situation. That's important because when we saw Cabrera pitch against the Nationals last week, we saw a different version of the 27-year-old. Perhaps he just needed more time to continue to implement the changes that the new coaching staff was working with him on. After all, this is a Marlins staff with a new manager, a new pitching coach, a new assistant pitching coach, and a new performance and data integration strategist, which means plenty of changes in the philosophy of the pitching staff. So, what did we see from Cabrera that was different? For starters, Cabrera has shifted his attack plan pretty dramatically. It was only one start, but he cut his four-seam usage more than in half and led with his breaking balls, particularly leaning into his slider far more than he did in 2024. On the surface, I like those changes because the biggest issue we had with Cabrera was that his four-seam fastball command was poor. He had below-average zone rates on it, and when he did get it in the zone, it was mainly down the middle with almost a 10% mistake rate and nearly 50% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), which is a Pitcher List stat that measures barrels and solid contact and hard groundballs allowed. The four-seamer has consistently graded out as Cabrera's worst pitch, so throwing it less is something we should be happy about. Provided he can get strikes with his other pitches. Interestingly, that early strike pitch, particularly for right-handed hitters, turned out to be his slider. Cabrera tightened up his slider this season, keeping the same velocity and vertical movement but dialing back the horizontal break. That could be a one-game small sample size, or it could be a concerted effort to make it a pitch he can command in the zone. In his season debut, Cabrera used the pitch early in the count 75% of the time to righties, and it had a 75% first-pitch strike rate. Overall, the pitch had an above-average 50% zone rate and 69% strike rate, so the one-game sample seems to suggest that it is a pitch he can command and is a pitch he feels confident in throwing for strikes. He also has the sinker, which he can command in the zone better than his four-seamer, so he has two pitches now to righties that he can use to pound the zone early and get ahead in the count without relying on his four-seam fastball. That sinker is going to be less useful to lefties, and the new usage of the slider means it's not missing many bats, but that's where the other new wrinkle comes in. Cabrera drastically changed his curveball in the offseason. In his first start, his new curveball was one mph slower than the one he threw last year but featured nearly double the amount of vertical and horizontal break. He went from eight inches of horizontal break and just over seven inches of vertical break on an 85 mph curve to over 11" of horizontal break and 14" of vertical break. It's a wild change. Yet, it was an incredibly impactful one in that first start, getting three whiffs and a 35.3% CSW. We can also see a usage plan shaping up here. Against lefties, he threw the curveball in the zone at almost double the rate he did against righties, and he kept it in the lower third of the strike zone 64% of the time to lefties while doing so 83% of the time to righties. To me, that suggests the curve could be his early-strike breaking ball to lefties and more of a swing-and-miss pitch to righties; yet, it missed bats to hitters of both handedness in the first start. Using the curve and sporadic four-seam fastball to get ahead of lefties sets up his elite changeup, which he leaned into far more in his first start. The usage rate was 29.1% overall, but 42% against lefties after being 32% last year. Cabrera has never thrown over 100 innings in an MLB season, and the Marlins are not a great team, which will hurt his potential win totals, but I'm loving these changes for him. Who knows if they'll last into the next few starts, but if this is the version of Edward Cabrera that we get in 2025, I'll have to do a lot fewer mental gymnastics to talk myself into rostering him. I wanted to talk about Ben Brown quickly because I know there is a lot of buzz around him after his start against the Dodgers, where he went six shutout innings and allowed five hits while walking five and striking out five. I hate to be here to pour cold water on that performance, but it's what I have to do. First of all, on the season, Brown has a 5.09 ERA, with 22 hits and a 20:9 K:BB ratio in 17.2 innings, which gives him a 10.7% walk rate to go along with a 23.8% strikeout rate. His 12.9% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) is above average, but he's also giving up a lot of hard contact, so the case for Brown is simply: he pitched well against the Dodgers, he has a good curveball, and he's locked into a rotation spot. After seeing how he did what he did against the Dodgers, that's not just enough for me. Pitcher List For starters, Brown ended the illusion that he throws three pitches by not throwing the changeup at all against the Dodgers. He's only thrown eight changeups in three starts, and while it might be a pitch he feels confident in using down the stretch, it's simply not there right now. The main driving factor behind his success against the Dodgers was his ability to fill up the zone for strikes. He had his highest zone rate and strike rate of the season, and while that's generally a good thing, it's not enough in and of itself. In that start against the Dodgers, Brown threw the four-seam fastball more often, but threw it in the middle of the zone more often. In fact, he threw 14.3% of his fastballs middle-middle. The MLB average for four-seam fastballs thrown middle-middle last year was 7.4%. So Brown essentially threw double the percentage of middle-middle fastballs that a starting pitcher typically did last year and did it against the best team in baseball. I know it worked, but that, uh, doesn't seem like a great strategy long-term. He also had just a 5.4% SwStr% on his four-seam fastball against the Dodgers. So he was throwing middle-middle fastballs, and they weren't missing bats. The Dodgers had a 90% zone contact rate on his fastball with a .333 average and a 50% ICR. None of that is good. What is good is that he located his curveball well against them, with a much higher zone rate and strike rate than he's had in any other start this season. It has just a 10.7% SwStr%, but it didn't give up much hard contact and earned six called strikes. So, to wrap that up, Brown succeeded by only throwing two pitches, throwing his fastball over the middle of the plate far more often, and missing fewer bats but getting more outs in play. All while featuring a below-average fastball and a good curveball. That's just not enough for me. I know he's likely going to be in the starting rotation for a while with Justin Steele out for the year, but I can't trust a two-pitch pitcher with one good pitch. I know it might seem weird to say that after what he just did against the Dodgers, but I think that statline is entirely misleading. Also, Javier Assad is starting a rehab assignment, so don't be surprised if Brown loses his rotation spot if he struggles in his next few starts. Another pitcher who may have 'gotten away with it' in his last start was Shane Smith. However, Smith has also allowed just four earned runs on nine hits in 17.2 innings this season, so it's probably time we look into how he's doing what he's doing. Smith leads off his arsenal with a four-seam fastball that averages 94.4 mph and is used to both righties and lefties. Through three starts, it's far more effective to lefties, as righties post a 60% ICR against it and Smith does a far worse job getting it inside (more on that later). He also throws a lot of fastballs down the middle to both hitters, with a 12.5% middle-middle rate to righties and a nearly 19% mark to lefties. That supports what I saw about the Red Sox, with the Boston hitters simply getting under plenty of fastballs that were over the heart of the plate. Smith doesn't have great shape or elite velocity on his fastball, so I don't love his attack plan or reliance on that pitch so much. However, he also leans heavily on a slider to righties and a change-up to lefties. On the season, he has only used the changeup 9.5% of the time to righties and only used the slider 10% of the time to lefties, so these are pretty much matchup pitches to hitters of a certain handedness. Not that that's a bad thing. The slider is not giving up any hard contact to righties, and he throws it in the zone often, but it doesn't miss many bats with just a 10.5% SwStr% to righties this season. Meanwhile, the changeup has been a strong pitch to lefties, but weirdly is giving up a lot of hard contact and doesn't miss as many bats as I think it should with its movement profile. Shane Smith, Disgusting 92mph Changeup. 🤮 1st MLB K. And absolutely filthy. Part of that could simply be that he uses it mainly early in the count to lefties, so he wants it in the zone for groundouts rather than out of the zone for swinging strikes, but I think that movement profile at 92 mph is a pitch that he can use more as a two-strike pitch and more often against righties as well. If he keeps it low in the zone, it could easily operate like a splitfinger and miss plenty of bats, which is kind of what he needs against righties because the slider isn't that pitch and his curve is seldom used and also doesn't miss bats. The last piece of the puzzle is a new pitch we saw against the Red Sox: the sinker. Smith threw four sinkers in that outing, which is intriguing because, as I said above, his four-seam fastball gets hit hard by righties. Yet, the four-seam does have a well-above-average swinging strike rate to righties, so if he can use another fastball for strikes to righties and then get chases up and out of the zone with the four-seamer, that could be the missing piece to right-handed hitters. Using the sinker inside to righties, which he doesn't do enough with his four-seam fastball, could also set up the slider low and away, so I kind of dig this new addition if he can lean into it more. At the end of the day, I think Smith is an intriguing pitcher with one truly elite pitch and a collection of other offerings that could easily set him up for success. His overall location needs to improve, and the sinker needs to bring more swing-and-miss to righties, but this is a Rule 5 pick who the Brewers moved from the bullpen to the rotation just last year. There will be some growing pains, but it wouldn't shock me if Smith became a far more dynamic pitcher in the second half of this season. Yusei Kikuchi seemed to unlock a new level in the second half of 2024, pitching to a 3.49 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, and 31% strikeout rate in 69.2 innings with the Astros. A huge component of that was him leaning into his slider more, throwing it 31% of the time in the second half after using it just 17% of the time in the first half. The slider posted a nearly 16% swinging strike rate in the second half of the season and allowed him to put his less reliable curveball on the back burner. It seemed like an easy plan for him to replicate in 2025, but when he signed with the Angels, I worried that he was with an organization that couldn't stay out of its own way with pitcher development and would either change him for the worse or not be able to identify why Kickuhi was going through a tough stretch, as he has been proned to do in his MLB career. Perhaps both of those are true so far. Through his first three appearances, Kikcuhi is off to a disappointing start, allowing 10 earned runs on 15 hits in 18 innings while striking out 16 and walking eight. The 5.00 ERA and 21.6% strikeout rate are far worse than anything we've seen from him in years, so I wanted to dig in to see if anything was different. not good news. Alex Chamberlain This chart from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard shows a few things that stand out to me. For starters, Kikuchi has dropped his arm angle significantly. The lower the arm angle, the more sidearm the release, so Kikuchi has dropped his arm angle almost 10 degrees, which has led to an overall shift in the movement profile of his pitches, as you can see above. He has lost some of his vertical attack angles and movement in favor of horizontal movement, especially on both his four-seamer and slider. Now, much of that could simply be a result of releasing his pitches from a lower arm angle, but why he lowered his arm angle in the first place is the question. A 10-degree difference is not just a small sample size difference, so this has to be a conscious change, but was it his decision or the Angels? Overall, he's not allowing as much hard contact, with a strong 32% Ideal Contact Rate, but his SwStr% is the lowest it's been since 2019, and his strike rate is at a career low mark, which could also be why he has a nearly 11% walk rate. Additionally, he's getting fewer chases out of the zone than he ever has since coming over from Japan. Maybe he's struggling to adjust to the new arm angle or the new action on his pitches, but they're not missing bats and not being commanded for strikes, which is a major problem. However, my biggest concern is that the slider has a new movement profile and has also been performing poorly. This year, he is throwing his slider nearly two mph slower and has more than doubled the vertical break to 4.3 inches. The pitch is in the strike zone more often than last year and getting more called strikes, but it has just a 7.7% SwStr% and a well below-average PutAway Rate, which measures how often a pitch thrown in a two-strike count leads to a strikeout. He has also only thrown the slider in two-strike counts 19% of the time this year, after using it 39% of the time in two-strike counts last year. So, in summary, Kikuchi has changed the shape of his slider, which was the pitch that drove his success last year. He has made it more hittable and started to use it more often early in the count for called strikes and stopped using it late in the count for swings and misses. He has also added a sweeper, which feels entirely unnecessary and may also be the reason why he wants more vertical movement on his slider. At the end of the day, I'm not sure who suggested these changes, but I don't like them, and they give me real pause about rostering Kikcuhi in most formats right now. WEDNESDAY MORNING ADDENDUM: Oh, would you look at that. Yusei Kikuchi had a solid start on Tuesday night against the Rangers and did it by leading with his slider 47% of the time. He also didn't have the same drop on his slider, posting a vertical movement profile much closer to what we saw last year. Perhaps those first three starts were just a 'figuring it out' process for Kikuchi with this new arm angle. I still don't love the change, and I remain a bit skeptical. Now, it's important to note that Kikychi threw 11 total pitches against lefties in this game because Texas stacked their lineup with righties. That could impact why his pitch mix looks different in this game. Also, four whiffs and a 21.6% CSW on the slider isn't that good in the grand scheme of things, and his four-seam fastball still has less vertical movement and velocity from last year. This still feels like a pitcher I'd rather not have on my roster. Oh, Luis L. Ortiz. There is a lot to say here, so I'm going to do my best to be brief. I know Ortiz struggled in spring training and was terrible in his first start of the season, but I think it's prudent to remember that Ortiz is in his first year with the Guardians, and I spoke to Guardians pitching coach Carl Willis this off-season about the changes they were making to Ortiz's arsenal, attack plan, and grips. Changes like that don't simply click overnight, so it's entirely possible that Ortiz's early struggles were connected to getting a feel for who Cleveland wants him to be, and his last strong start is an indication that he's beginning to get more comfortable. Before we get into his last start specifically, we should talk about the changes Ortiz has made overall this year. The biggest change is in how he attacks lefties. Last year, Ortiz used his four-seamer 31.5% of the time to lefties, his slider 24%, his cutter 22%, and his sinker 21%. That led to a pretty pedestrian 9.5% K-BB% and 9.1% SwStr%, even though he didn't give up a lot of hard contact. He responded to that this season by adding back his changeup at 17.5% usage to lefties, dialing back his sinker to just 6% usage, and slider to 13% while throwing the four-seam fastball almost 42% of the time. So far, that has led to a 14.7% SwStr% to lefties and a 19.3% K-BB%. Yeah, that's nice. The changeup itself is a fine pitch, thrown at 89 mph with little vertical break and 16.5' arm-side run. PLV grades it out as a slightly above-average offering because he commands it in the zone well and does a good job of keeping it low, with an 81% low location. However, I think the bigger driver of his success against lefties has been the decision to mix up the locations of his cutter and slider. Last year, he threw the cutter inside to lefties 54% of the time, but threw it in the upper third of the strike zone 39% of the time. This season, he's throwing the cutter inside just 27% of the time (literally cut in half) while using it up in the zone 65% of the time. Same with the slider, which he threw inside to lefties 49% of the time last year and is throwing inside 19% of the time this year. That jives with exactly what Carl Willis said to me this spring about Ortiz: 'What we're trying to work towards is more consistency with [the cutter], particularly more consistency with the location of that pitch. It is a newer pitch for him. That's part of the reason it played last year because the guys hadn't seen it. Now we're just trying to refine it a little bit to show him what zones it's actually successful in, and where he should hone in on commanding that particular pitch, and now that it's not a surprise, not making mistakes with it in other areas of the strike zone.' In 2025, Ortiz's cutter has a 38.5% called strike rate to lefties, up from 21% last year, as he works it more on the outside part of the plate as a backdoor pitch. The slider has also seen a jump in swinging strike rate and doubled its called strike rate. Being able to locate those pitches over the plate for strikes and not only pound them inside for weak contact has set up the other big change for Ortiz: four-seam fastball location. As Nick Pollack pointed out on our last episode of 'On the Corner,' Ortiz used the four-seamer up in the zone 60% of the time against the Royals, up from a combined 29% of the time in his first two starts. The four-seam fastball had a 24% SwStr% for Ortiz overall in that start and has an 18% mark against lefties so far in 2025 after posting an 8.3% mark in 2024. So Ortiz is locking his cutter and slider in the strike zone more and then getting the four-seamer up in the zone over it. That's not only allowing him to get ahead but also shifting the batter's eye level down in the zone or down and away in the zone and then coming upstairs with a 96 mph four-seamer with solid extension. That's a recipe for success and one I think will make Ortiz far more likely to finish as the pitcher we saw in his last start than the one we saw in his first start.
NBC Sports
09-04-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Starting Pitcher News: Brandon Pfaadt evolving, Jackson Jobe concerning
It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch. The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to see if the recent results we're seeing are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth buying into or if they're just mirages. Each week, I'll try and cover at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you'll find it useful, so let's get started. Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he's now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also has a great strike zone plot feature, which allows you to see how the whole arsenal plays together. Matthew Pouliot, Coming into this season, I had Pfaadt ranked lower than many other people because I was concerned about his approach against lefties. In 2024, he allowed a .294/.339/.472 slash line to lefties with just a 19% strikeout rate. Much of that is because he's essentially just a four-seam/sweeper pitcher with a sinker that he mixes in to righties. He did throw the sinker 14% of the time to lefties last year, but it performed poorly against them, so the only effective pitch he had to lefties is his changeup, which took a step forward in 2024. Pfaadt's sweeper has a better-than-league-average swinging strike rate to lefties but a gross 50% ICR and 33.3% HR/FB ratio, so it's not a pitch he should throw to them often. However, we're starting to see Pfaadt address this issue in multiple ways. In addition to using the changeup more often, one of the biggest changes I've seen from Pfaadt this year is his curveball shape and usage, which you can see from Kyle Bland's chart below. Pitcher List First, we can see that Pfaadt is throwing his curveball almost three mph harder, with more vertical break and significantly less horizontal break. The more north-south movement on the pitch makes it a better weapon against lefties since he doesn't need to throw it down-and-in, which is typically a hot zone for lefty swings. Pfaadt seems able to command the pitch well, with a 74% strike rate in his last start and five whiffs with a 36.8% CSW. He seems confident in using it to lefties, and the pitch has a 33.3% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and 33% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) against lefties so far this season. Of course, he's also still given up a .281/.303/.688 slash line to lefties this season with four home runs, so there is still work to be done. However, for the first time in a long time, I can see a path forward where Pfaadt can mitigate some of the damage lefties do to him and raise the floor of his fantasy upside. Early in spring training, I wrote about Hayden Wesneski as one of my favorite late-round picks because he was getting a chance with a new and better organization for pitching development. However, I didn't like him nearly as much as some of the other late-round starting pitchers, and I wound up with zero shares after my drafts. Following his strong performance on Monday, I'm wondering if I might regret that, but I'm not yet sure how much FOMO I'll have. In the article linked above, I mentioned that Wesneski had the foundation for success against right-handed hitters but, after two years in the bullpen, needed to show some evolution against left-handed hitters in order to have success as a starter: 'In 2022, Wesneski had a cutter that posted a 21.2% SwStr% to lefties when he threw it 22% of the time, and he also used a changeup 19.3% of the time to lefties with an 18.2% SwStr% and 16.7% ICR so he has shown those skills, but we need to get one of them back now.' Well, so far, we're seeing that cutter come into play more with Wesneski throwing it 27% of the time to lefties, and he used it almost 30% of the time to lefties in his start against Seattle. Last year, Wesneski threw his four-seamer over 40% of the time to lefties, so leaning into the cutter more often allows him to dial that back closer to 30%. But what I also love to see is that Wesneski is now throwing his four-seamer up in the zone 71% of the time to lefties, after doing so just 51% last season. His four-seamer still has bad shape and a poor approach angle, but he has good extension, so I think this newer attack location helps to cover up some of the deficiencies in the pitch. Just know that there remain deficiencies in the pitch; it's not a great four-seamer, so the fact that he's using it 53% of the time to righties after using it 29% against them last year is not ideal for me. Another change worth discussing, which you can see in the chart above, is that Wesneski added a curveball that he's using primarily to lefties. Now, a 17% usage to lefties is not a significant amount, but this change is more about how Wesneski is now able to use the sweeper 11.5% of the time to lefties in a game after throwing it nearly 30% of the time to them last year. The results on his sweeper to lefties last year were fine, but as a reliever, his sample size against lefties wasn't particularly high, and sweepers to opposite-handed hitters have a long track record of not being strong offerings (see Brandon Pfaadt above). The fact that Wesneski can go four-seam, cutter, curve, change, sweeper to lefties will make it harder for them to sit on any of his offerings, despite none of them being truly a plus pitch. Important context here is that Wesneski faced a mediocre Seattle lineup in Seattle, which is one of the worst parks for offense in baseball. That's not to diminish what he did for your fantasy team on Monday, but it is to say that we want to be cautious about extrapolating that out over the remainder of the season. Wesneski is improving against lefties, and we love to see that, but he also doesn't truly have an elite offering for them. His sweeper remains his bread-and-butter pitch, and his four-seam remains below average, so even if he has a better approach with it, it still makes me a little nervous in tougher matchups. I'm officially concerned about Jackson Jobe in redraft formats. After the talented 22-year-old made his MLB debut as a reliever last year, it seemed likely that he would start this year as a member of the starting rotation and have a chance to blossom into the next young star in the Tigers' rotation. However, his first two starts have illuminated a much larger concern I have in Jobe's ability to miss bats. As you can see from Kyle Bland's chart below, which showcases Jobe's pitch mix against the White Sox last week, he was able to induce just six whiffs while producing an above-average CSW on just one pitch: his cutter. Jobe has been utilizing a three-fastball approach to righties and then removing the sinker from the equation against left-handed hitters. His four-seam fastball has good velocity at 96 mph in addition to a solid 17.4" of iVB (Induced Vertical Break - or 'rise') that helped him create a Height Adjusted Vertical Approach Angle (HAVAA) of 1.2. All of which is to say that Jobe has a flat fastball that seems to rise against gravity and should perform well when thrown upstairs. However, despite Jobe's fastball being thrown upstairs 57% of the time this season, he has just a 5.2% swinging strike rate (SwStr%), which is substantially below average. Some of that could be because he has really poor extension, or it could be connected to poor location or pitch sequencing, but the larger issue is that Jobe has never really generated swing-and-miss at any level above High-A. Jobe had just a 9.5% SwStr% in Triple-A last year and has an 8.5% rate in his MLB innings this year. His 12.7% mark in 73 2/3 innings at Double-A last year is fine, but that's not really a mark you tend to see from high upside strikeout prospects. For example, Zebby Matthews had a 14.8% mark in 55 1/3 innings at Double-A, and Jared Jones had a 14% mark in 44 1/3 innings at Double-A. Jobe seems to have dialed back the usage of his changeup and sweeper, and he has struggled to throw the curveball for strikes, so there isn't really a dynamic pitch in his arsenal other than the cutter. Maybe he can sequence his pitches better to have the cutter thrive as a PutAway pitch, but he'll still likely need more pitches to generate swinging strikes so that he can get into two-strike counts. I'm not saying he won't get there; he remains a high-upside starting pitcher. I'm just coming around to the idea that he's more of a work-in-progress than we anticipated, and he may not reach the heights we were hoping for in 2025. If another manager in your league is bullish on Jobe's upside, it might be time to try and swing a trade. Matthew Boyd has tantalized us in the past with solid fantasy upside in the seasons where he has added some juice to his four-seam fastball; however, injuries have prevented him from throwing over 79 innings in any season since 2019, and the fantasy goodness had seemingly died with it. Until Boyd showed up this season with a new approach to get back to the pitcher he was before. As he said in this article from The Athletic, 'I had a long time to reflect on who I am as a pitcher and who I want to be when I come back. The changeup I throw now is not driving pronation, I stay very flat-wristed on it. I try to use the seam-shifted wake to make it move more. Little stuff like that has led to a better understanding.' If you look at the chart below from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard, you can see that Boyd's changeup is now two mph slower with a little bit more drop and less horizontal movement while approaching batters from a different angle. In a limited sample size in 2025, the pitch has posted a 22.5% SwStr% to righties, up from 18% in 2024, and has limited hard contact. He's locating it away much better to righties as well, which may just be his feel for the pitch or it may have something to do with his ability to be more precise with location now that he's not pronating his wrist and the pitch lacks some run. Alex Chamberlain Pitch Leaderboard However, the other note we can pick up from Alex's chart above is the change in Boyd's arm angle. This could be a result of him trying to pronate less, as he mentioned above, or could simply be a focus on throwing from an arm slot that feels more natural to him and letting the pitches move how they will naturally. If an arm angle of 0 degrees is sidearm, then we can see from the chart that Boyd has dropped his arm angle three degrees. This has led to different attack angles on all of his pitches while adding more movement overall to his arsenal as well. While nothing jumps out as being drastically different, slight changes in release point and movement profile can throw off a hitter's timing or contact point just enough for a batted ball to move from the barrel of the bat to the end of the bat. If Boyd can pitch from an arm angle that feels more naturally (and less painful) while creating a movement profile that limits hard contact, then he should be able to continue to do what he did in his first two starts of the season against two good offenses: prevent hard contact, produce solid ratios, and give himself a chance for wins. Considering where you drafted him in your fantasy leagues, that would be a major victory. At the end of the season, I was super excited by what Tylor Megill was doing and even wrote him up as one of my favorite late-round draft targets because of the introduction of his cutter. In that article, I mentioned that 'Megill has a four-seam fastball with elite extension, but he can't command it, so he added a sinker last season, which has a 73% strike rate. He uses it primarily as a strike pitch to righties, which is crucial for him. He also added a cutter in 2024, and despite it having above-average swinging strike rate marks to righties and lefties, it's also a pitch he can command for strikes with league-average zone and strike rates.' I felt like the addition of the sinker and cutter would allow Megill to command the zone better than he had previously, which would enable him to pitch deeper into games and set up his secondary offerings to miss bats. Yet, here I was looking at his pitch mix for his first two starts and seeing not one cutter. So where did the pitch go? As you can see from Kyle Bland's chart below, Megill has continued to use his sinker primarily to righties, which we like to see, but he has made a big tweak to his slider which perhaps made the cutter no longer relevant. In that same article from spring training, I mentioned that Megill's slider was great as a two-strike pitch, with him using it 47% of the time in two-strike counts and producing a 70th-percentile chase rate, which made it an above-average putaway pitch. However, the slider struggled when he used it often because it had just a 36% zone rate and it had a lot of horizontal break, which caused it to move low-and-in on lefties, right into their sweet spot. As a result, lefties had a 50% ICR on the slider in 2024 and he rarely ever threw it to them. In 2025, Megill has dialed back on the velocity of the slider but added tons of depth to the pitch with over six inches more drop so far this season. The slider playing as more of a north-south pitch has given him more confidence to throw it to lefties, and he has used it 35% of the time to lefties so far this season after throwing it just 4% of the time to them last year. He'll now use the pitch early in the count against righties and then also use it as a putaway pitch to hitters of both handedness. Considering he also has the sinker and four-seam fastball to righties, that approach can work for him. Yet, what has also helped him against lefties this year is a tweak in his four-seam fastball approach. Megill gets elite extension on his fastball at 7.1 feet and has solid vertical movement with a 17.4" iVB (which is up from last year), which, as we discussed with Jobe, gives him a flat fastball that will perform well up in the strike zone. Yet, last year, he threw the four-seam fastball up in the zone just 45% of the time overall and just 47% of the time to lefties. So far in 2025, Megill is using the four-seam upstairs 59% of the time overall and 76% of the time to lefties, which is a huge change. That approach, paired with the increased iVB on the fastball should work for him over the long run. He just needs to keep throwing strikes.
