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Yahoo
4 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
4 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
28-05-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Starting Pitcher News: Kevin Gausman has found his splitter, has Edward Cabrera found command?
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, I feel like we do this dance every year with Edward Cabrera. We know the raw talent is intriguing, but the lack of refinement on Cabrera's pitches has caused him to constantly walk too many hitters, put himself in bad situations, and torpedo his ratios. Well, perhaps a few mechanical and pitch mix changes have helped to more permanently move the 27-year-old in the right direction. Over his last four starts, Cabrera has posted a 2.53 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, with 23 strikeouts and five walks. Now, three of those starts were against the Angels, Athletics, and White Sox, but Cabrera's start against the Cubs was solid, and the 23/5 K/BB ratio is really what we care most about, and that's lineup agnostic. So what might be leading our latest potential breakout for Cabrera? For starters, if you look at Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below, you can see that Cabrera has dropped his arm angle by six degrees this year. That's a pretty major shift, and has made his arsenal more east-west and less north-south. Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard One of the pitches it has helped is his sinker, which now has more armside run. That's important because his sinker has now also become his most-used fastball. In 2024, Cabrera used the sinker to righties 12% of the time. That's up to 29.3% in 2025. His zone rate has also jumped from 35.6%, with a 57% strike rate, to a 58% zone rate with a 69% strike rate in 2025. Perhaps the lower arm angle is making him feel more confident in his sinker command, but that improvement in zone rate is much needed for Cabrera, and he now has a league-average true first pitch strike rate on the sinker. While league-average may not seem that special to you, it's very special for Edward Cabrera when it comes to a command stat. Cabrera has also been using the sinker more against lefties as well. It gets hit harder than against righties, but he commands it well in the zone against lefties, so that's still a net positive for him. He's still using his four-seam fastball nearly 50% of the time early in counts to lefties, and it remains a below-average pitch, so his future performance against lefties is something we're going to need to keep an eye on. However, his changeup remains a strong pitch and one that should help keep the boat afloat against lefties. The other two major changes are that Cabrera is using his slider more this year, and the lower arm angle has led to far more movement on his curve. The wild part is that, despite its major shift in movement profile, the curve has basically the same zone rate, same strike rate, and same swinging strike rate (SwStr%) as last year. However, it's allowing far less hard contact, and the loopier movement profile has caused a jump in SwStr% to lefties and more success in two-strike counts against opposite handed hitters. That likely ties into his slider usage changing. With a curve that will get swinging strikes to lefties, Cabrera can now focus his slider to get swinging strikes to righties. The pitch has always been solid for Cabrera, but this year he seems less focused on burying it low-and-away from righties and more focused on keeping it in the lower half of the strike zone but not caring if it's on the outside corner or not. The SwStr% against righties has jumped from 14% to 22%, and it's been far more successful in two-strike counts. It may just be a small sample size, but it's worth noting. So this version of Edward Cabrera can get ahead in the zone more often, is limiting hard contact by reducing his four-seam usage, and has a good two-strike pitch for both righties and lefties. That's a version we can work with. The volatility remains, and we know this strong stretch is only four starts against (mostly) mediocre competition, but we have to like what Cabrera is doing under the hood, and that makes him worth a stash in deeper formats. Will Warren has been on quite a run in May, posting a 2.70 ERA, 1.13 WHIP, and 36% strikeout rate over five starts, so I wanted to dig in to see if anything had meaningfully changed that might have led to this success. Obviously, some of it is facing the Rays, Rockies, Athletics, and Mariners in Seattle, which is one of the most pitcher-friendly ballparks in baseball, but there might be something else going on as well. I used the Pitcher List game log to see if Warren's pitch mix had changed, and we can see that he started to shift his curve and sweeper usage to lefties in May. Pitcher List In May, he has used his curveball 14% of the time to lefties, as opposed to 7% in six starts in April, and his sweeper usage has dropped to 15% against lefties from 24% in April. We've also seen his four-seam usage tick up from 39% in April to 49% in May. Those all seem to be meaningful changes, and his curveball on the season has posted a 23% SwStr% to lefties, so using it more often makes sense. Now, it has just a 7% zone rate. Yes, you read that right, so it's not a pitch he's commanding well in the zone, but he does a nice job of burying it under the zone, so if he can get ahead, it's been a great strikeout pitch with a 23% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch ends in a strikeout. In May, Warren is throwing his curve to lefties 76% of the time in two-strike counts, so it's clear he notices this too. On the other hand, the sweeper has not been a good pitch to lefties, which makes sense because sweepers tend to struggle against opposite-handed hitters. On the season, Warren's sweeper has a 5% SwStr% and 47% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) to lefties, so dialing back the usage of it makes sense. He has also changed WHEN he uses it, throwing it 70% of the time early in the count in May, which is a big bump from the 42% mark in April. He has a 42% early called strike rate on the sweeper in May, so limiting it as a surprise called strike pitch, which also allows him to throw some backdoor sweepers on the outside corner, makes some sense. The increased four-seam usage is a bit less logical to me since the pitch has been fairly average against lefties this season, but I did notice that he has kept it lower in the zone in May. On the season, Warren has thrown his four-seamer up in the zone 45% of the time to lefties, but that has been lowered to 34% over his last five starts. That could be matchup dependent, or he could be trying to limit hard contact allowed by keeping the pitch low in the zone, which has worked since he's allowed a .192 average and .267 wOBA on the four-seamer to lefites over his last five starts. Since Warren's sweeper eats up righties and his four-seamer does a good job of limiting hard contact against them, this jump in performance against lefties has made the 25-year-old a bit more stable. There will be ups and downs because he's a rookie pitcher, and it's hard to have sustained success in the big leagues, but this version of Will Warren should pitch deeper into games and be good for an ERA between 3.60 and 4.00 with a solid strikeout rate. That works in pretty much all formats. Listen, I was banging the drum for Gavin Williams incessantly this spring, so I understand that I might be a bit 'in the bag' for the 6'6" right-hander and might not have the most unbiased view. However, Williams put together a really strong three-game stretch before his start on Monday against the Dodgers (more on that later), and I think he is a very different pitcher than he was to start the season. Primarily for one reason: the cutter is back! We waited a few weeks longer than we wanted to, but Gavin Williams finally brought his cutter back into the fold and started to go to it far more often in his recent starts. In the spring, Williams told me that the cutter he was throwing last year was a mistake pitch that came from struggling to find the shape on his slider. However, the cutter is such an important pitch for his arsenal because of how it masks some of Williams' command issues. Williams has tons of juice on his four-seam fastball with a 97 mph average and 12.4% SwStr%, but it's just an average zone rate pitch, and he struggles to get ahead with it. His secondaries are also primarily for swings and missed, so utilizing the cutter allows Williams to get ahead in the count more consistently. In his last two starts, he has pounded the zone early with the cutter, which sets up the sweeper or curve as his swing-and-miss pitches. Or even his four-seam fastball. The Dodgers' start was a struggle for him because the command of his sweeper and curveball was off. He consistently got into two-strike counts, which is great, but he didn't have his breaking balls to finish off hitters, so he got into plenty of long at-bats, and the Dodgers fouled off tons of cutters and four-seamers. While it wasn't a great outing, it was great to see Williams get ahead so consistently, and he racked up 15 whiffs in 4.2 innings, which was also a positive. The version of Williams we saw in April wouldn't have lasted two innings in that start. If he has command or just one of those breaking balls on Monday, it's likely a solid outing overall. The other interesting wrinkle for Williams has been the introduction of a sinker. He threw four on May 21st and seven against the Dodgers, so this isn't a major addition for him; however, it's another fastball variation that he hopes to throw for strikes to keep right-handed hitters off of his four-seam fastball. So far, the pitch averages 95.6 mph with nine inches of vertical break and 16 inches of arm-side run. Of his 11 thrown this season, six have been for strikes, and he has allowed one single off of it. It won't be a swinging strike pitch, but it should give righties yet another fastball variation to think about, which will allow the four-seam fastball to play up and allow him to get ahead in the count more. All in all, these changes raise Williams' floor and bring him closer to the pitcher we hoped he'd be this spring. Trevor Rogers has, sadly, become more remembered for being a part of Baltimore's botched trade deadline and off-season moves this year than for his solid MLB debut with the Marlins back in 2021. However, the left-hander returned to an MLB mound this past weekend after battling an off-season knee injury and looked, well, kind of interesting. For starters, he sat 93.3 mph with his four-seam fastball, which was up from 92.1 mph last year. It's not quite the near-95 mph version of him we saw in 2021, but it's moving in the right direction. As you can see from Kyle Bland's awesome chart below, the pitch registered a 70% zone rate and 28% CSW, with slightly more vertical movement and less arm-side run than before. It has the makings of a pretty solid foundational offering. Rogers also heavily dialed back on the use of his sinker, which he threw 24% of the time last year and 23% of the time to right-handed hitters. In his first start, he threw only eight of them total and two to righties. That's good because the sinker last year had a 3.7% SwStr% to righties with a nearly 50% ICR. It was the worst pitch in his arsenal, and so getting rid of it to right-handed hitters is something we like to see. Another change Rogers seemed to make was to add a new sweeper. Granted, he threw it just three times over the weekend, but two of them were to righties, which is a bit confusing. The sweeper was 77.7 mph with 15 inches of horizontal break and little vertical drop. It got one called strike and was thrown out of the zone twice, but a sweeper like that usually would not be a good idea to opposite-handed hitters, so I have to think he's trying to use it to set up his harder, tighter slider for swings and misses. The added velocity on the four-seamer is nice, and dialing back the usage on the sinker is also good. We also have to think the Orioles will give him another chance soon, given how bad their rotation has been. Still, even if he does get another look, I'm not seeing enough here that makes me think 2021 Trevor Rogers is around the corner. Or even in the same neighborhood. Oh, Kevin Gausman, how you drive me mad. I was a little down on Gausman last year because of the hard contact he has always allowed, but not nearly down on him as much as it turned out that I needed to be. I then spent the early part of spring training buying into a resurgence for Gausman because there were rumors he was adding a sinker or cutter to help protect his four-seam fastball. I took some late shares in early drafts, but then neither of those pitches showed up, and he had a 4.59 ERA and pedestrian 23% strikeout rate in his first nine games. I figured this was going to be 2024 all over again, and I cut Gausman in a shallow league. Then, lo and behold, Gausman happened to 'find' his old splitter after his poor start against the Rays and has now allowed one run on eight hits in his last 15 innings while striking out 15 and walking nobody. Cool. As you can see from the chart above, Gausman's splitter in his start on Monday against the Rangers had 4.5 inches more vertical drop than before with less arm-side break. In essence, it moved more straight down, which is exactly how he had it moving in years past. 'For whatever reason, my fingers want to have a mind of their own,' Gausman told The Athletic. 'Kind of do whatever they want. So, you know, it's just kind of reminding them to stay put.' Kevin Gausman games with at least 11 splitter whiffs: Previous 40 starts through May 15th - Three. Last two starts including today - Two. He's back. I certainly wish he had told them that a few weeks ago, but this version of Kevin Gausman with his long-lost splitter grip feels like it can be close to the 2023 version that posted a 3.16 ERA and 31% strikeout rate. Now, that version still had a 1.18 WHIP and gave up a lot of hard contact, so it's not a perfect pitcher, but it's an infinitely better version than we saw last year. Just keep in mind that splitter movement and location can come and go on a whim, and we've seen over the last year and a half that Gausman simply doesn't have enough to be fantasy relevant if the splitter leaves him. Just cross your fingers for a happy reunion, but don't be afraid to cut bait if the grip wanders away again.
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
15-05-2025
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- NBC Sports
Fantasy Baseball Hitter Targets: Whose process should lead to results?
Today, I'm going to continue my recent stretch of trying to look at hitting process stats to find value in hitters who we can acquire via trade or on the waiver wire. Now that most regular starters have seen 500 pitches or more, we've reached a point in the season where we can look at one of my favorite process stats for hitters, Process+. If you want to learn a little bit more about Process+, then I highly recommend you check out Nate Schwartz's article, which won an FSW Award. The stat, created by Kyle Bland at Pitcher List, is essentially a hitter's version of Stuff+. It's 'a combination of PLV's Decision Value, Contact, and Power metrics formatted into one holistic number' that represents how good a hitter has been at making good swing decisions, making contact on those swings, and making authoritative contact when he does hit the ball. That gives each hitter a Process Value grade as well as a Performance Value grade, which tries to represent how well they've actually done, independent of just the process. For today, I'm going to focus on just the Decision Value and Contact Value portions of Process+ since those stabilize at 400 pitches, while Power Value doesn't stabilize until 800 pitches. Obviously, stabilizing doesn't mean a hitter owns that level forever, but it does mean that it's more meaningful and 'sticky' than it would have been at 200 pitches. By focusing on these categories, I'm hoping to continue identifying hitters who are doing everything right in their approach at the plate and making a good deal of contact and meaningful contact. In the long run, those should be the hitters we want to buy in on the most. You'll find that many of the hitters below are rostered in a lot of leagues, and so maybe they are guys that you can trade for if the surface-level stats haven't yet caught up. However, I hope to also highlight a few hitters who may be underrostered and could still be found of waiver wires in certain leagues. Hitters Who Just Missed the Cut There are a few players who made the cut in terms of their Decision Value or Contact Value but fell too low in some of the other criteria. All of Bo Bichette, Josh Jung, CJ Abrams, Yainer Diaz, Kerry Carpenter, and Salvador Perez had over 100 contact Value, but not a single one of them posted over a 90 Decision Value. Some of this is that players like Bichette are able to make contact on a lot of pitches, so they swing at pitches out of the zone a lot, which will lower their Decision Value scores. We also have some guys like Yainer Diaz and who are struggling to start the year, and this Decision Value score may be a decent hint at why. A few other players I had to remove because their Contact Value is so low. All of Jo Adell, Colt Keith, Andrew Vaughn, Jorge Soler, Kyle Schwarber, Brent Rooker, Rhys Hoskins, Randy Arozarena, Kyle Manzardo, Byron Buxton, and Kyle Stowers had Contact Value scores of 90 or under. Some of these guys, like Adell, Soler, Hoskins, and Stowers, have the power to make up for poor Contact Value scores. I wanted to try and be strict about which hitters truly qualified for this leaderboard, but, for the record, I do think Hoskins, Schwarber, and Rooker are totally fine with their approaches. Lastly, there are a few hitters who posted below-average Strike Zone Judgment scores and needed to be removed from qualification. That included Oneil Cruz, Will Smith, Lars Nootbaar, Ryan Jeffers, and Ryan O'Hearn. Fantasy Baseball Hitter Adds A grade of 100 represents the league average mark for all of these categories. Look at that company that Gleyber Torres is keeping on the Process+ leaderboard. He's well over the 100 grade mark in every category other than Power, where he still remains above-average. When I wrote up Torres for our Rotoworld digital magazine this off-season, I said, 'After a bounce-back 2023, Torres regressed again in 2024 and tension seemed to grow between him and the Yankees. Now that he's in Detroit, perhaps this is a much-needed fresh start.' So far, it seems that may be the case. He is sporting a career-low chase rate and his lowest swing rate since the COVID-shortened 2020 season. His overall contact rate has jumped up to 82%, and the swinging strike rate (SwStr%) has dropped to 7.6%. That more patient approach has allowed him to post the highest Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) of his career with a 9.3% barrel rate. He's not pulling the ball a lot, but that's OK in Comerica Park since his power will be a bit limited there as well. Everything else is saying that the early-season success for Torres is very much warranted. Trent Grisham has both come out of nowhere and not this season. Certainly, nobody expected 12 home runs and a 186 wRC+ by the middle of May. Yet, when he left San Diego after the 2023 season, there were a lot of people who wondered if Grisham, who had posted a 12% barrel rate and a 43% pull rate, might really benefit from playing in Yankee Stadium. It didn't work out last year, but we may have been a year early. The injury to Giancarlo Stanton opened up some opportunities for Grisham, and he has recalibrated his approach a bit to be slightly less pull-happy than he was last season and also less passive. Last season, Grisham cut his swing rate down to just 36% overall, and his called strike rate soared. He is now swinging more often but still not chasing out of the zone, which has led to a lot more contact. It is a profile that's eerily similar to what he did in 2023 with the Padres, but with a 12% higher fly ball rate, which has helped both at Yankee Stadium and on the road. The big issue will be playing time. Jasson Dominguez is starting to heat up a bit, and Giancarlo Stanton is set to return (maybe) in the next few weeks. With Ben Rice also playing well, and none of those guys playing 2B or 3B, how can they get everybody into the lineup? Brendan Donovan is an underrated player in fantasy baseball, but he has a lot of value because of his multi-position eligibility and his strong approach at the plate. He's not doing much differently this year. Perhaps chasing out of the zone slightly less, but it's pretty negligible. Still, this is a profile that worked for him last year and sets him up for another .280, 15 home run season while hitting third in the Cardinals' lineup. That's a player you'd want in most league types. I've written about Adley Rutschman a few times now, but I don't see anything to be alarmed about. He may never develop into the 'best catcher in baseball' like many thought he would be when he was a prospect, but he's not doing anything now as a hitter that makes me think he's as bad as his stats suggest he is. He has the best barrel rate and the highest average exit velocity of his career. He's chasing almost half as much as he did last year and posting an 87% overall contact rate with just a 4.5% SwStr%. I do think he's being a bit too passive, which has led to an elevated called strike rate, but that's really the only issue I can find. His xBA is .275, and his xSLG is .474, and I think those expected stats match the profile I'm looking at more than the surface-level stats do. Yandy Diaz is doing the things he always does, but his batting average and on-base percentage are surprisingly low. He's chasing a little bit more out of the zone than we're used to seeing, which has lowered his contact rate by 2%, but he still has an 85.5% contact rate with just a 6.7% SwStr%. He has the third-highest barrel rate of his career and his highest average exit velocity ever. He's also lifting the ball more than he has since 2022, and perhaps that's a bit of an issue with the winds blowing in at his new home ballpark. Diaz is slashing .227/.283/.427 in 28 games at home, but that's where all six of his home runs have come. Is he selling out for a bit more power at home with a 32% fly ball rate, compared to a 29% mark on the road? It seems like just a small difference, so maybe it's just getting accustomed to the new stadium and environment? I don't see anything in the profile here that worries me, and I do see a .285 xBA that feels like it jives with the profile under the hood. I'd expect the summer to be kind to Diaz. Brandon Nimmo was somebody I covered in an earlier approach article I wrote two weeks ago, and I still feel good about his approach at the plate, so check out that article for more details. Last week, I wrote about Lourdes Gurriel Jr. in my article that focused on hitters who were attacking the first pitch more this season. In that article, I said that Gurriel was expanding the zone slightly more this season but had a solid overall % contact rate and a good swinging strike rate, which made me interested in adding him. The only issue was that his fly ball rate jumped by a lot, which had led to an alarmingly high 13% infield fly ball rate. I wanted Gurriel to keep the same approach but focus more on line drives and less on getting under the ball. Over the two weeks, he has gone 17-for-51 (.333) with three home runs and 10 RBI, so perhaps he is bringing this all back around. Taylor Ward is another veteran hitter whose process and underlying skills are not being accurately reflected by his surface-level stats. He currently has a career-high 13.7% barrel rate and 91.2 mph average exit velocity. He's chasing slightly more outside of the zone but is still under 23% overall, which is good. His zone contact rate is 88%, and his overall contact rate is 80%, while his swinging strike rate is 2% better than last year. There's nothing in his swing decisions that suggests he is setting himself up for failure, which makes sense since he is on this leaderboard. So you have a veteran hitter who is making good swing decisions, making a good amount of contact, and making the hardest contact he's ever made. Could he lower the launch angle a bit? Sure, and maybe that's the trick, but I'd be buying shares here if somebody has moved on. More Fantasy Baseball Hitter Adds I didn't want to give you a list of mostly guys who are already on rosters and won't be traded, so if we knock down the number of pitches faced to 300, there are a few more hitters who emerge. Now, the Decision Value and Contact Value Stats haven't stabilized yet for these hitters, but it at least gives us a sense of a few additional hitters who are putting themselves in the right spots so far. So far this season, Jake Meyers is chasing outside of the zone less often than last year, which has helped him improve his contact rate and cut his swinging strike rate. He's not being more aggressive in the zone, but pitchers are challenging him inside the strike zone 7% more often, which is a massive increase. So Meyers is laying off bad pitches and being challenged more, and simply meeting the challenge. He's also focusing on pulling and lifting the ball less, which has led to an all-fields groundball approach that is really helping his batting average. Considering you have Meyers on your team for his speed, we don't care if he's not producing power numbers. This new approach could allow him to hit .270, which would likely lead to 20 stolen bases while playing most days for the Astros. That's a solid player in a lot of league types. Max Kepler and Alec Bohm appeared in that same article above that I mentioned Brandon Nimmo in, so make sure you check it out for more details, but I'm buying shares of both. It may be hard to get Bohm anymore since he's had a good run of late, but perhaps you can trade for him if somebody in your league wants more power. I still think Bohm will be slightly below average there, but he should be a valuable hitter in the other non-speed categories. I'm not gonna lie, I was fully out on Jonathan India when he signed in Kansas City. I thought the park would hold up under double-digit home runs, and since he rarely steals bases, I thought you might be looking at a 10/10 season from a guy who hits .250. So far, that's kind of been correct. He's slashing .244/.339/.321 with one home run and no steals on the year. However, he's on this list because his process has been good. He has one of the lowest power scores of any hitters on here because his Decision Value and Contact Value are great. So far, in 13 games in May, he's hitting .296/.367/.426 with four doubles and that one home run. He's still not running, but he is hitting leadoff for the Royals, so if you need batting average and runs, India could be a guy for you. I would just limit that to deeper formats. Miguel Andujar just won't go away. He won a starting job at the beginning of the year but then seemed to lose it when the Athletics called up Nick Kurtz. Only now, Andujar has seemingly shifted back to the infield and become the starting third baseman for the A's. On the season, he's slashing .316/.344/.444 with three home runs and one steal. Has you can see from the chart, his Decision Value and Contact Value are above-average, but he has fallen below with his Process+ score. Some of that has to do with his poor power numbers, but it's also because he's swinging at almost everything in the strike zone with a 70% zone swing rate. That means some of the pitches he's making contact on are not pitches that he can do damage on, even if they're strikes. Still, he makes an elite amount of contact and has hit a ball 111.4 mph this season, which is the hardest hit baseball since his rookie year. He puts the ball on the ground a lot and has just a 5% barrel rate, so I don't think you're getting the boost that you want that park to give you, but Andujar could hit .270-.280 in the middle of a solid lineup, and that has value in deeper formats. I spoke with Mark Vientos earlier in the season about how his process had been great, but the results hadn't been there. Not much has changed since then. He is hitting .245/.313/.401 now, so that's a workable batting average if the power was there, but the power has been shockingly absent for Vientos. Yes, his 7% barrel rate isn't bad, and his 91 mph average exit velocity is in line with his career norms, but he's just not capitalizing when he gets his pitch to drive. He's chasing less outside of the zone, swinging more inside of the zone, and making solid contact in the zone. However, his SwStr% is still 13.1%, and he has an overall contact rate under 73%, so I think a lot of this could come down to how he's being pitched. Vientos is seeing more sliders than he ever has and is being pitched away nearly 50% of the time. He's likely trying to go with those pitches, which is why his pull rate has fallen to just 30%. It might make more sense for him to lay off those breaking balls away, even if they are strikes, and wait for something he can do more damage to. There is still a valuable fantasy hitter here, but he just needs to adjust to how MLB pitchers have started to attack him.
