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Yahoo
5 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
5 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
21-05-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Starting Pitcher News: Young starting pitchers get their shot, why is Shane Baz 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 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 dominating Triple-A to the tune of a 1.93 ERA, 1.19 WHIP, and 38:9 K:BB ratio in 32.2 innings, Zebby Matthews finally got a shot in the big leagues in 2025. It did not go as planned. On Sunday, he allowed four runs on five hits in three innings against the Brewers while walking three and striking out five. However, before we get into his pitch mix analysis, we should point out that he got squeezed in the third inning. At least three pitches that were called balls were actually strikes, including a ball four to Christian Yelich that was a really nice backdoor cutter. That's not to say Zebby was good on Sunday, but it's just pointing out that his command wasn't nearly as bad as it seems from the box score. So what is Zebby doing differently this year that led to that kind of success in Triple-A? The most obvious thing is that is four-seam fastball is sitting 96.5 mph this year after sitting 94.9 mph last year. That's a big jump for him, and considering he is 6'5" and gets 6.7 feet of extension on the release of his fastball, that added velocity makes a big difference. Depending on where you look, he has about 16 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB), which means the fastball seems to 'rise' as it approaches home plate, and you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below, that Zebby's four-seamer has significantly more vertical movement than average for his release point (VAA AA - Vertical Approach Angle Above Average). Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard Considering Zebby also keeps the fastball up in the zone about 60% of the time, that movement profile and velocity should lead to plenty of success on his four-seam fastball. But he also has four other pitches that round out his arsenal. He threw the slider just 10% of the time to lefties in his debut but almost 22% of the time to righties. One of the biggest changes we saw from Zebby in his debut was flipping the use of his cutter and slider. Much of that is probably because the Brewers trotted out five lefties or switch-hitters, and Zebby struggled with the slider to lefties in 2024. Against lefties, he went to the cutter nearly 21% of the time in his debut and also mixed in the curve and changeup. This season, as you can see from the chart above, Zebby has also added over one mph of velocity to his cutter, which has changed the shape of the pitch a bit as well. It has a little bit more vertical and horizontal break and has increased its movement over the average cutter from its particular release point. He used it inside to lefties two-thirds of the time in his debut, and I think that's going to be a good pitch to mitigate hard contact for him. It will also allow him to reserve the slider for two-strike counts against lefties, which is what he did in his debut. He threw only three sliders to lefties, but two of them were with two strikes, and one of those two-strike sliders netted him a strikeout. The slider itself is slightly harder than last year, tied to his overall velocity bump, and that has cut some of the horizontal bite on the pitch, so we'll need to see if that matters much. Right now, it's movement profile is more similar to the cutter than it was last year, but he doesn't really throw the cutter to righties, so he's not relying on tunneling or deception with those two pitches. At the end of the day, I think the added velocity and added cutter-focus to lefties is a plus for Zebby. He has been a strong command pitcher for his entire professional career, and I'm not going to let one start overshadow that. I think he has the pitch mix and the control to be a solid MLB starting pitcher, but I have some fears that, unless the curve or changeup takes a step forward, he won't miss many bats against lefties, which will keep his strikeout numbers down a bit. He also has the added risk of playing for a Twins team that will remove him at the first sign of trouble. That being said, I'll still take a chance against the Royals this week. Logan Henderson is another young starting pitcher getting a shot in the starting rotation thanks to Jose Quintana landing on the IL. Through three starts, Henderson has been great, allowing just three runs on nine hits in 16 innings while striking out 23 and walking four. So, how realistic is this? When I first dug into Henderson, I didn't expect to like what I saw so much. He seemed like a changeup-first pitcher, similar to Gunnar Hoglund, and, in some ways, he is. Henderson is primarily a two-pitch pitcher, using his four-seam fastball and changeup 86% of the time. He will mix in his slider to righties about 8% of the time and throw a few sinkers, and he throws his cutter about 9% of the time to lefties while also mixing in a few sinkers, but the four-seam and changeup are the bread and butter. That's not such a bad combination, though. It's led by the changeup, which is a pretty strong offering, posting an 18.8% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) in those three starts with about equal numbers to both righties and lefties. He does a good job of keeping it in the zone, so it also gets a fair amount of called strikes. He uses it early in the count more often to righties and will often throw it middle-in to try and tie them up, but he throws it 39% of the time in two-strike counts to lefties. However, against lefties, it has a below-average 13.8% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout, which is not really what you want to see. It also gets below-average chase out of the zone against lefties in two-strike counts, which feels odd considering how good a pitch it is. For example, against Baltimore, Henderson had a 20.5% SwStr% overall on his changeup, but it had just a 22% strikeout rate and induced only two strikeouts despite being thrown 14 times to lefties in a two-strike count. I think its lack of success in two-strike situations against lefties could be connected to the rest of his arsenal. Pitcher List As you can see from Kyle Bland's chart above, Henderson got just one whiff combined from his sinker, cutter, and slider in his start last week against the Guardians. He doesn't throw his cutter or slider to lefties at all in two-strike counts, which means when a lefty gets into a two-strike count, they can sit on a four-seamer or changeup and adjust to the other offering. He will throw his changeup up in the zone to lefties, which can lead to some deception, but he doesn't get chases out of the zone on that pitch in two-strike counts because when a left-handed hitter sees a two-strike pitch low in the zone, they assume a changeup and can account for the movement. However, we also mentioned that Henderson has that other pitch to rely on: his four-seam fastball. It doesn't have elite velocity, but it's a strong offering with nearly 17 inches of iVB, which creates an exceptionally flat fastball from his release point. He keeps it in the upper half of the strike zone about 70% of the time, so that makes the best use of that shape and is why he gets a lot of chases up and out of the zone because the pitch seems to keep 'rising' as it approaches the plate. The four-seamer has been a good two-strike pitch for him against lefties, with a 25% PutAway Rate, but has been even better against righties with a 50% PutAway Rate. Those two main pitches will be enough for Henderson against a lot of teams, and we saw last night what it can do to a left-handed-heavy team like Baltimore. Yet, I do have some concerns that there's little else in his arsenal. He mixes in his slider to righties, but it has not registered a single swing-and-miss in his three MLB starts. Same with the sinker, which he rarely uses. That means he's basically just a four-seam/changeup pitcher to righties, and four-seam/changeup with a dash of cutter to lefties. That's an approach that can work, but it's not one that generally dominates the way Henderson has seemed to early on. Yet, we should note that he upped his cutter usage on Tuesday against the Orioles, throwing it 13% of the time while getting three whiffs and posting a 44% CSW. He had not gotten a single swinging strike on his cutter in his first two starts. What's funny is that he had success by throwing the cutter down the middle more often. He reduced his high location rate and threw five of his nine cutters in the middle third of the strike zone. Maybe it worked because hitters were looking for the four-seamer up. Maybe it worked because the Orioles are not good right now. To sum up, Henderson has a solid two-pitch mix, but his best pitch struggles more than you'd like in two-strike counts versus lefties, and none of his other three pitches have stepped up so far. That hasn't hurt him against the Orioles, Guardians, and Athletics, but maybe it will against better offenses or teams with more right-handed hitters. There are some things to like here, and I'd be happy to take more gambles on Henderson, but when you also add in that Aaron Civale, Brandon Woodruff, and Jose Quintana are likely back in the Brewers' rotation in the next two weeks, it seems unlikely Henderson will be in the rotation full-time until the Brewers drop out of the playoff race and think about making some trades. With Ben Lively headed to the injured list, Slade Cecconi made his Guardians debut this week and has a chance to stick in the rotation for an extended period if he can pitch well. Overall, I was pleased with a lot of what I saw from him in his debut this weekend. When I spoke to Guardians pitching coach Carl Willis during spring training, he mentioned some of the tweaks they were looking to make with Cecconi after acquiring him in a trade. One of those was 'working with him to recapture that height on his back leg and torso,' which led to a higher release point in spring training and carried over in his debut. As you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below, Cecconi's release point changed from 5.6 feet to 5.9 feet, and his arm angle rose by three degrees. All of that is tied back to Willis' point about fixing Cecconi's back leg on his delivery to keep him from buckling as much. That also can often add some stability and power for pitchers, which might be why Cecconi sat 95.4 mph on his four-seam fastball after being 94.4 mph last year. The mechanical change also cut almost three inches of horizontal movement on Cecconi's four-seam fastball, which is good because he added in a sinker this year, so we want his four-seamer to be 'straighter' to create more deception with the sinker, which will ride in on righties. Cecconi also kept his fastball up in the zone well in his debut, but the command of the pitch was worse than we saw in 2024, with just a 48% zone rate. Perhaps that was adrenaline getting the best of him or him still shaking off some rust, but it's worth keeping an eye on. You can also see from the chart above that he dropped his four-seam fastball usage overall by about 15%. A lot of that is the result of him deepening his arsenal, adding in the sinker and a cutter, but it's also an approach change. Last year, Cecconi threw his four-seamer 56% of the time to lefties. In his season debut, that dropped to 34.5% while he threw his changeup nearly 28% of the time, his curveball 24% of the time, and mixed in his slider 7% of the time. His four-seamer got hit hard by lefties last year and didn't miss many bats with an 8.3% SwStr%, so I like the idea of going away from it against lefties. Additionally, he only used his curveball 14.6% of the time to lefties last year, so that jump to 24% is a big one and jives with what Carl Willis told me in the off-season: 'When you look at his entire arsenal, [the curve] does create separation in terms of velocity and the back and forth with the hitter,' said Willis. 'We feel like he could throw his curve more than he threw it last year. He relied heavily on the slider. We think the curveball is good enough that he could up the usage and create a little bit of that separation while also creating a whole different profile.' In his season debut, his curveball had a 30% SwStr%, primarily because it was chased out of the zone a lot. He used it primarily as a two-strike pitch and saw a lot of success with it, so that's a change we can look to continue as the year goes on. Cecconi also added in a cutter this season, but is primarily using it against righties. The pitch is 86.5 mph with just half an inch of drop and 1.5 inches of horizontal run. That's a small contrast from his slider, which is 85 mph with almost equal drop but four inches of horizontal movement. He throws both pitches primarily on the outside corner to righties, and so the inclusion of the cutter seems to be about creating deception with the slider and taking some of the pressure off the four-seam fastball. He used the slider 73% of the time early in counts to righties in his debut, while throwing four of his eight cutters in two-strike counts. It's unclear if that usage will continue, but Cecconi can go to the cutter, four-seam, or curve in two-strike counts to righties, and that should increase his strikeout upside even though none of them are truly a wipe-out offering. Overall, I like the changes we're seeing from Cecconi. The added velocity is always good, as is deepening his pitch mix. The increased use of the curve is something the Guardians wanted from the start, and it worked well early on. Cecconi has now entered that Chris Bassitt territory that Eno Sarris talks about with a pitcher who has six pitches and can often succeed even if the Stuff+ numbers appear average. His command will need to improve, but we don't want to read too much into that after one start. I'd be adding Cecconi in deeper formats just to see what his next few starts look like. There could be something interesting here. Noah Cameron rounds out our grouping of young pitchers getting a chance at a starting rotation spot, and that might make sense because he's probably the pitcher I like the least, from a fantasy perspective. In two MLB starts, Cameron has allowed just one run on three hits in 12.2 innings while striking out six and walking five. Yes, a 6:5 K:BB ratio in 12.2 innings is not particularly strong, and neither is posting a SwStr% of 0.0% on your fastball. Yes, Cameron has not gotten a single swinging strike on his four-seam fastball in his two starts. That should be concerning to you, and I think it's backed up by a pitch mix that seems to be largely created for weak contact and called strikes. Cameron's best pitch is his slider, which has 3.5 inches of drop and 3.3 inches of horizontal run at 83.5 mph. He has really good command of the pitch with a 54% zone rate and 70% strike rate, and keeps it in the lower third of the strike zone and away often against lefties. It's his primary offering to lefties, and his best one, so it makes sense that he leans on it often. Interestingly, against righties, Cameron uses the slider 16% of the time but throws it UP in the zone a lot. That could be a plan to create some deception with a cutter that he also throws 18% of the time to righties, but is 87 mph with two inches more horizontal movement. He throws that cutter middle or up in the zone 90% of the time to righties, so using his slider up in the zone might make sense to get hitters out in front of the slider if they're thinking cutter or just keep them off the barrel. He uses the cutter early in counts and the slider later in counts to righties, and that makes some sense since his slider is a better swing-and-miss pitch. The issue is that the rest of his arsenal is fairly average. His four-seam fastball has poor velocity, mediocre extension, and doesn't have much horizontal movement, which is odd for a left-hander. His changeup is a pitch he primarily uses to righties, but his command of it is questionable, and it has just an 8% SwStr% to righties on the season. He rounds out the arsenal with a mediocre curve that he tries to sneak for called strikes early in the count against lefties and later in the count against righties. To me, the big reason Cameron has succeeded is because of how his arsenal works together. As you can see from the chart below, his cutter (brown), slider (purple), and curve (blue) all attack hitters from a similar angle with slightly different velocity and movement profiles. That creates deception, which has led to weak contact and just a .059 BABIP so far this season. My concern is that Cameron doesn't have a pitch that makes me think he can beat an MLB hitter if they know it's coming. No pitch has too much velocity or too much movement to make up for mediocre command or sequencing. That means Cameron has to be perfect with how he mixes and matches and locates his pitches to succeed. That may be easier when hitters have never faced you before, but as they start to have more footage of you or have faced you before, it's going to be continuously harder to fool them. That makes me question the long-term viability of Cameron for fantasy purposes. Baz got off to a strong start to the season, posting a 3.86 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and 37:12 K:BB ratio in 35 innings over his first six starts. However, since the calendar flipped to May, Baz has been brutal. He has a 9.61 ERA, 2.03 WHIP, 12:10 K:BB ratio in 19.2 innings across four starts, including two against the Marlins and Royals, who have fairly mediocre offenses so far this season. I have Baz on quite a few teams, so I wanted to try and figure out what was going on, and I went to Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard. We can see that Baz's arm angle has dropped a little from April to May, particularly on his four-seamer and curveball. However, those changes seem negligible. I'm not sure a 1.5-degree drop in arm angle impacts the movement of the four-seamer and curve, but it is worth noting that his curve has seemingly lost 1.5 inches of vertical movement, and both pitches have performed much worse in May. In particular, Baz's curve has just an 8.7% SwStr% in May with a 50% zone rate, 24.3% CSW, and 39% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) allowed. In his first six starts, the curve had a 13.2% SwStr%, 48.1% zone rate, 31.7% CSW, and 29% ICR. So, Baz is throwing the pitch in the zone more often, which means it's not his command of the pitch. The shocking change has been that hitters are making far more contact on the pitch outside of the zone. In March/April, Baz had a 37% contact rate on curveballs out of the zone. That has skyrocketed to 63% in May. How are hitters making that much more contact on curveballs that are OUTSIDE of the strike zone? Does it have to do with that slight change in vertical movement? Are hitters able to see that the curve is coming because Baz is tipping his pitch? It's the primary concern that he needs to solve. And Baz knows that because he has reduced the usage of his curve in his last two starts and started to use the slider more instead. The issue there is that the slider isn't that good. The pitch that used to be his 'destroyer of worlds' has just a 10% SwStr% on the year, with a slightly below average strike rate and league average ICR allowed. It's not a pitch that's going to miss bats to righties, and the four-seamer has not been that pitch this year either, so he needs that curveball to come back if he's going to continue to have fantasy success. Earlier, we also mentioned that Baz's arm angle has dropped a bit on his four-seam fastball, which has caused him to lose horizontal movement on the pitch. The changes seem minuscule, but Baz has seen his CSW on the fastball drop from 28.4% in his first six starts to 23.2% in his next four. It's not that the pitch is missing fewer bats; it's actually missing more bats. The issue seems to be that hitters are being way more aggressive on Baz's fastball. Despite him throwing it in the zone 5% less often, hitters are swinging at fastballs in the zone over 10% more, up to 76.3%. That has led to a 7% increase in zone contact and an ICR up to 46.4%. So why are hitters all of a sudden swinging at his four-seam fastball more, even though Baz is throwing it in the zone less often? It can't be because they're just spitting on his curveball, since we also established that hitters are swinging and hitting that pitch more than before as well. Could the change in arm angle not be connected to a movement shift, but connected to something that is tipping pitches? Maybe hitters are simply able to tell when the curve or fastball is coming? That would seem to answer why they are swinging at those pitches more often than before and making more and better contact off of them. If Baz were to be tipping his pitches, that would be a best-case scenario for fantasy owners because it's an easier fix. If the answer is that his curveball has simply become more hittable as hitters are seeing it more, then his fantasy value would take a huge hit.
NBC Sports
07-05-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Starting Pitcher News: MacKenzie Gore's breakout, who is Gunnar Hoglund?
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. MacKenzie Gore - Washington Nationals (New Cutter, New Slider Shape) Are you experiencing deja vu, or is this actually a MacKenzie Gore breakout? Last season, Gore had a tremendous first two months of the season, posting a 2.91 ERA, 1.28 WHIP, and 29.1% strikeout rate in 58.2 innings over his first 11 starts. Then the wheels started to wobble, and Gore posted a 4.43 ERA, 1.50 WHIP, and 22.5% strikeout rate over 107.2 innings in his final 21 starts. So now that the 26-year-old has posted a 3.33 ERA, 1.15 WHIP, and 36.4% strikeout rate in his first eight starts, you might be wondering if you're about to get hurt again. The truth is that this seems like a new version of Gore. He may still hurt you (that appears to be in his nature from a fantasy baseball perspective), but this isn't the same MacKenzie Gore we saw last year. A big clue as to why can be found in his splits. Last year, Gore had issues with lefties. He allowed a .282/.368/.466 triple slash overall, but even in the strong starts at the beginning of the season, you could see the cracks in the foundation. In those first eight starts, he had a 30% strikeout rate to righties, which dropped to 26% against lefties. His walk rate in those first eight starts was just 5.3% against right-handed hitters but ballooned to 12.3% against lefties. When things got bad in the last four months of the season, they were worse against lefties. He had a 24% strikeout rate to righties in the tough stretch, but just a 19.5% mark to lefties. Over those final 21 starts, his Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) allowed was a whopping 50% to left-handed hitters, compared to a 36% ICR to righties. So if Gore was going to truly break out, he needed to do something different, particularly against lefties. Turns out, he did two things: changed the shape of his slider and added a new cutter. Last year, Gore's slider was a much harder pitch, averaging 91.1 mph with just 1.5 inches of horizontal movement and 7.3 inches of vertical break. He used it 28.5% of the time to lefties and 9.7% of the time to righties, which was an issue because it ate righties alive. The slider had a 22.6% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and a 29.6% ICR to righties with a .182 batting average against, while posting an 11.6% SwStr% and 50% ICR to lefites with a .317 batting average against. Yikes. His curveball did post a slightly above-average swinging strike rate to lefites, but he didn't use it that often against them, instead throwing either a four-seamer or slider to lefties 81% of the time. Being that two-pitch focused against lefties and having one of those pitches get destroyed regularly is a recipe for disaster. This year, he turned his old slider into more of a cutter and added in a slower slider. The new cutter is 90 mph with a little over 6 inches of vertical movement and just under one inch of horizontal break. That means it's a slightly tighter version of the pitch he threw last year. The new cutter grades out poorly on Picher List's PLV metric, but that's mainly because Gore is throwing it in the zone just 35% of the time, so his command of it is not elite. Yet, he's also posting a 26.5% SwStr% on it, and it has become a solid fourth offering to righties to go along with his four-seamer, curve, and changeup. Gore uses the cutter inside to righties almost 70% of the time, which is nice because he doesn't go inside with his four-seam fastball nearly as much. The cutter has not just acted as a pitch to jam righties, but is a pitch that Gore will intentionally miss up with or run off the inside of the plate for a swinging strike. He's using it in two-strike counts 44% of the time to righties, and it's posted a 40% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a pitch thrown in a two-strike count leads to a strikeout. The cutter has, therefore, been an awesome offering to miss with a righty's timing and get whiffs. But that doesn't help with the lefty problem. That's what the new slider is for. Gore's slider in 2025 is 86.5 mph with just 2.5 inches of horizontal movement but essentially no drop. Considering he gets huge vertical break on his curveball, having the slider be a more horizontal pitch with less bite is a nice change, and you can see how it feels like a different movement profile to lefties from looking at Kyle Bland's chart below. The slider dots, in purple, are now more of a middle ground between the cutter (brown) and the curve (blue). He doesn't use all three to the same type of hitters, but he has created a more unique movement profile on his secondary pitches, which is nice. So far on the season, Gore is using the new slider 42.5% of the time to lefties, still mixing in the curve but dialing back on the four-seamer a lot versus lefties. He's able to pound the zone with the pitch at an 85th percentile rate and also has a 26.4% SwStr% on it against lefties. The pitch is getting hit harder than we'd like to see, but he's using it almost 40% of the time in two-strike counts with an elite 34% PutAway rate, so the high ICR marks are on the rare occasions that hitters make contact. It's a new offering for Gore, so he does miss over the middle of the plate with it a bit more than we'd like to see, but you'd expect that to be corrected as the season goes on. What we have right now is a pitcher who fixed his worst pitch against lefties, which was his biggest weakness. He also added a new pitch to prop up his strikeout rate against righties. There are still some overall command and consistency issues here, which could lead to some tough starts ahead against good opponents, but this version of MacKenzie Gore seems like a safer bet than the one we got last year. Gunnar Hoglund - Athletics (Who is he?) We had an intriguing rookie debut over the weekend when Gunnar Hoglund took the mound for the Athletics against the Marlins. The 25-year-old posted a 2.43 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, and 30:7 K:BB ratio in 29.2 innings at Triple-A this season. He has a five-pitch arsenal that features a four-seam fastball, sinker, and changeup as its foundation, and a slider and sweeper pairing that he mixes in as a fourth offering to lefties and righties, respectively. It was just one MLB appearance for Hogund against a below-average opponent, so we don't want to overreact too much, but we got a sense of his approach, and I came away more or less sold on it. I expect Hoglund to have more success against lefties, where he uses his four-seam fastball 46% of the time and his changeup 28% of the time. He also tosses his slider 23% and mixes in the odd sweeper here and there. The four-seam fastball itself is a solid pitch. It has solid 6.8 feet of extension and elite 18.9 inches of induced vertical movement. It's a relatively flat fastball that he uses middle and up the vast majority of the time and pounds the zone with at a 64% clip. Those are all things we like to see. The changeup is the standout pitch, though. It has 17 inches of arm-side and tumbles out of the zone. It's why Hoglund throws the pitch in the lower third 73% of the time and has no problem using it as a two-strike offering. Even though he threw it early in the count nearly 73% of the time against lefties in his MLB debut, he only used it in two-strike counts against righties, getting two whiffs and two strikeouts on four pitches. It's because Hoglund uses his sinker 40.5% of the time to righties that the changeup works. The sinker also has 17 inches of arm-side run but comes in at 93 mph instead of 87 mph and has far less drop. He loves to jam righties inside with the sinker, so when they start looking for it, he mixes in a changeup, which drops out of the zone and gets a swing-and-miss. The only issue is that he can't do that too often and continue to fool hitters, which means he's going to be about 84% four-seamer and sinker to right-handed hitters. Those pitches are fine, and he's not likely to give up lots of hard contact given the pitch shape on the four-seam and impressive run on the sinker, but he's also not likely to miss many bats. In the one start we saw, the sweeper wasn't commanded well and didn't get a single whiff. It was the same for the slider (which is more of a cutter) against lefties. He commands that pitch better, but it got zero whiffs on the day. What that means is that Hoglund profiles as more of a strike-thrower who will get some strikeouts against left-handed-heavy teams but be susceptible to giving up lots of contact. That might not always be hard contact, but he also plays his home games in a minor league ballpark that is going to see the ball start flying when the summer humidity sets in. That makes Hoglund an intriguing streamer who might be better used on the road. Lucas Giolito - Boston Red Sox (Season Debut, Fastball Shape, New Slider Shape) (THIS ARTICLE WAS SUBMITTED BEFORE TUESDAY'S START. IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT TUESDAY'S GAME FEATURED A RAIN DELAY AND RAIN DURING THE START, AND GIOLITO SAW HIS FASTBALL VELOCITY DIP TO 91 MPH. HE MADE IT THROUGH THE ORDER ONCE, ALLOWING 1 ER, 3H IN 3 IP BEFORE THE WHEELS FELL OFF IN THE FOURTH. HOPEFULLY THE 2.5 MPH VELOCITY DIP WAS CONNECTED TO WEATHER) Lucas Giolito pitched on a MLB mound for the first time since 2023 last week when he took the ball on Wednesday against the Blue Jays. What we saw was an impressive first performance that had me trying to add him in leagues where I didn't have him stashed. There were two things I saw that I liked. The first was that Giolito averaged 93.3 mph with his four-seam fastball, and that velocity has been important for him on that pitch over his career. When Giolito dips down under 92 mph, he's a completely different pitcher and a far less effective one. He also had elite 7.3 feet of extension with 17 inches of iVB, which gave him a flat attack angle on the pitch. It's possible that he also added some arm-side run to the pitch, but it could also be a small sample size blip. What we do know is that the fastball had juice, which we love to see, and, frankly, we need to see from him if he's going to be fantasy-relevant. We also saw him lean into the changeup, throwing it 36% of the time in his debut (and 38% of the time to righties) after averaging 28% usage in 2023 with only 23.5% usage to righties. The pitch has slightly more movement this season, and he did a good job of keeping it low in the zone, so it can be a pitch that succeeds against hitters of both handedness. In fact, when Giolito has been running hot in his career, that changeup has been impactful to all hitters, so it's nice to see him go to it so often. It's also clear that the Red Sox are working to reshape Giolito's slider. He said as much last year at spring training before he got hurt. In his debut, we saw a pitch that had over two inches more horizontal break and nearly four inches less vertical break. Giolito had talked before last season about how his previous slider had gotten too similar to a curveball in its movement profile, so adding the horizontal movement and cutting drop is a good thing for him. He threw just five in his debut, and it wasn't overly impactful, but I'm generally a fan of the direction the pitch is going. At the end of the day, Giolito with that four-seam/changeup pairing is likely a Top-50 starting pitcher, and if Boston can figure out his slider, we could see a Top-40 season from him. We will need to see his fastball velocity hold if he's not going to take a big step forward with the slider, but after one start, he's certainly worth an add in any leagues where he's available, if only to keep on your bench and see how this plays out after another start or two. Colin Rea - Chicago Cubs (New Arm Angle, New Slider, Pitch Mix Change) THIS ARTICLE WAS SUBMITTED BEFORE REA'S TUESDAY NIGHT PERFORMANCE. THE STATS HAVE BEEN UPDATED, BUT THE ANALYSIS HAS REMAINED THE SAME. Colin Rea has been one of the surprises of the early season, posting a 2.43 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, and 25:7 K:BB ratio in 29.2 innings for the Cubs across five starts and three relief appearances. The 34-year-old had put together two decent seasons for the Brewers as a primary starter over the last two years but nothing close to this level. So is he doing something different or just off to a fast start? When digging into why Rea has been so successful early on in the season, there's not a lot that pops out. His arm angle is down almost four degrees, which has shifted his overall movement profile a bit, adding vertical movement to his arsenal overall. We can see this in particular on his splitter, curve, and four-seam fastball. While the four-seamer itself has just a bit more induced vertical break, given the lower arm slot, the pitch has a flatter vertical attack angle in 2025 and has also gained one mph, which has caused it to have better grades of stuff models. Rea is also leaning on the pitch way more, throwing his four-seamer 51% of the time after using it just 19% last year. Yet, doesn't stand out as a pitch he needed to throw more. Last year, his four-seam fastball had a solid 13.6% swinging strike rate but a 45% ICR and was more of a two-strike offering, with Rea throwing it 49% of the time in two-strike counts. This year, Rea is no longer just using it up in the zone, but is filling up the strikezone with it and throwing it early in the count over 63% of the time, using it in two-strike counts only 22% of the time. The pitch is missing fewer bats and still giving up a 47% ICR, so the approach is a bit confusing to me. My best guess is that the Cubs like how Rea can use the four-seamer to pound the zone for strikes and then use a deep arsenal of six other offerings to play off the four-seamer for weak contact. Kind of like what Milwaukee did with Tobias Myers last year. As you can see from his pitch plot from his last start against the Pirates (chart courtesy of Kyle Bland at Pitcher List), Rea has plenty of pitches that can attack all areas of the strike zone once he gets ahead in the count. To righties, he will primarily rely on a sweeper, cutter, and slider trio, and also mix in the sinker. As you can imagine, the sinker has a similar velocity to the four-seamer but more arm-side run, which should create minor deception. Only, it's not really a good pitch and gets hit hard. The slider, cutter, and sweeper range between 82-87 mph with varying amounts of horizontal movement, but all are designed to attack righties away. If Rea can get ahead with the four-seam fastball, it will be hard for hitters to identify which of the three pitches they're seeing out of his hand as he begins to attack them away. That's likely a big part of why he has a 13.4% SwStr% and 35% ICR against righties this season. However, Rea has struggled more against lefties this season, primarily because he doesn't throw the sweeper or slider to them, or really the sinker either. That means Rea gets ahead with the four-seam fastball and then works in a curveball, splitter, and cutter that don't tunnel well or play off one another well. That's part of the reason he has just a 20% strikeout rate and 47% ICR against lefties. There is far less deception here. All of this is to say that what Rea is doing is not overly impressive, but it does make sense that he's succeeding against righties. If his four-seamer continues to have the added velocity and movement, he can get ahead in the count and confuse hitters with six potential secondary offerings. However, since he relies so much on deception, I would avoid him against good teams or teams loaded with left-handed hitters. JP Sears - Athletics (New Arm Angle, New Pitch Mix) I've been talking a lot about arm angles so far this season since the guys mentioned it on the 'Rates and Barrels' podcast, and Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard update now allows us to see exactly who has shifted their arm angles the most. It's been fun to dig in. One of the pitchers who has made a significant change is JP Sears, who has raised his arm angle over four degrees and cut horizontal movement from his arsenal while adding to his vertical attack angle. Perhaps that's part of the reason he has a 2.93 ERA and 32 strikeouts in his first 40 innings this season. Against righties, it seems like the biggest change has been leaning into his two slider variations more often. The sweeper has a little bit of added depth this season, but Sears is using it far more early in the count and not focusing as much on burying it down in the strike zone, which is good because sweepers down and in to opposite handed hitters tend to be a recipe for disaster. He has a 97th-percentile zone rate on the sweeper when using it to righties, and I think a big reason for that is because he uses it to set up his slider, which is tighter and flatter this season and has thrived as a two-strike pitch. Sears uses it 66% of the time with two-strikes against righties, and has a solid 16.4% SwStr on it. He has also turned to the changeup more often earlier in the count, using it 81.5% of the time early in counts to righties. All of which is to say that Sears' shift to pitch backwards against righties has been successful. He can get ahead with his sweeper or change, and then go to the tighter slider or four-seam to try and steal strikes. It's still not an approach that seems to lead to lots of strikeout upside, but it has worked in limiting hard contact. He's doing similar things against lefties, throwing his sweeper 65% of the time overall, using it early in the count 60% of the time, and registering a 59% zone rate on it against lefties. He's able to throw it in the strike zone against lefties and then shift it farther outside to have it break off the plate in two-strike counts. When he doesn't do that, he tries to spot a four-seam fastball away from lefties, using it 24% of the time to them and throwing it on the outside part of the plate 80% of the time. It's essentially a two-pitch mix to lefties, with the slider mixed in, but he has a 20.6% SwStr% and 33% ICR on the young season, so it's working. I just don't know how much longer it will work, especially against right-handed hitters. The overall swinging strike rate is still poor, and it feels like hitters will start adjusting to Sears once they figure out his plan for attacking them backwards and get a better read on the slightly new shapes of his pitches, thanks to his new arm angle.
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30-04-2025
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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. 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 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. MLB: New York Yankees at Cleveland Guardians 2025 Fantasy Baseball Rankings: Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani & Bobby Witt Jr. lead Top 300 rest of season ranks Advertisement There's a new No. 1 in Judge, and Roman Anthony makes his Top 300 debut. Nick Lodolo - Cincinnati Reds (Pitch Mix Change, Arm Angle Change, New Slider Shape) 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? Advertisement 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. Nick Lodolo pitch mix 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. Advertisement 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. Lodolo arm angle 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 - St. Louis Cardinals (Changeup shape, Cutter Shape, Attack Plan Change) 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? Advertisement 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. Liberatore 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%. Advertisement 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. 2025 Fantasy Baseball: 60 Undervalued Players, from Jasson Domínguez to Bo Bichette Advertisement 60 undervalued players to help you win your fantasy league. Ben Casparius - Los Angeles Dodgers (New Cutter, Arm Slot Change, New Changeup Shape) 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. Ben Casparius 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? Advertisement 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. Ben Casparius Pitch Plot 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!?) Advertisement 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. Andrew Heaney - Pittsburgh Pirates (New Curve, Slider Shape, Pitch Mix Change) 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. Advertisement 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. Andrew Heaney 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. Advertisement 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.
