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New York Times
7 hours ago
- Sport
- New York Times
How three MLB pitchers, including Spencer Strider, are faring in their returns from injuries
A little over two months into the season, pitchers are returning from injury and working to reestablish themselves in their respective rotations. In this column, I'll focus on three starters — Lance McCullers Jr., Spencer Strider and Tony Gonsolin — who are coming back from surgery. I'll check in to see how they've looked so far and explore what lies ahead for them in 2025. Advertisement McCullers returned to the majors this year for the first time since the end of 2022. He underwent right elbow surgery and experienced a setback in his recovery, delaying his return to the mound. Through six games started this season, he has a 3.93 FIP, 29% strikeout rate, and 11% walk rate. The two major differences I am seeing from McCullers are in his velocity and command. Starting with his velocity, his fastball average has decreased from 93 mph in 2022 to 91-92 mph. His cutter and changeup are back at about 87 mph, and his slider is down from 85 mph to 83 mph. His slider is his primary weapon against right-handed hitters, followed by his sinker. He has not been as effective against righties this season compared to pre-injury (5.31 FIP vs. 3.81 FIP in his career). This is likely due to command inconsistencies, which may be related to mechanical adjustments made after surgery. This has impacted his ability to locate both the sinker and the slider effectively, as well as the results of each pitch, leading to huge reverse splits. McCullers is throwing his slider 6% less against righties so far this season, but it is still his go-to pitch. Despite adding movement on the pitch (+2 inches of depth and sweep), it is getting … To understand why the slider isn't performing as well, we also need to examine McCullers' other major weapon against righties — his sinker. The sinker is getting more chase this season compared to pre-injury results. However, it has resulted in the most damage, with a poor 68% hard-hit rate and a .597 xSLG. One thing McCullers did really well pre-injury was use both sides of the plate. Looking at his heat maps from 2022, he mixed the location of his sinker and focused on the outer edge with the slider. This season, his slider is ending up higher and middle more frequently, and he is not throwing his sinker inside at the same rate. A good sign, however, is that during his June 3 start, he showed better command of his sinker. He was throwing it inside more frequently, like he had pre-injury: An interesting observation from that start is that McCullers also avoided throwing the sinker to the bottom of the zone. Pre-injury, sinkers to the bottom third of the zone resulted in ground balls. However, McCullers has not been generating ground balls at the same rate. The heat map below shows the location of the sinkers that were hard-hit so far this season, most of them being in the lower third: My theory for the reduction of ground balls is that the velocity is impacting the effectiveness of the pitch lower in the zone, allowing hitters to square the ball up better. Adjusting this location based on the results is a step in the right direction for McCullers. His slider command is still a work in progress, but ideally, he'll get it back to the lower, outer edge, as he has in years past. Advertisement Against lefties, he is throwing his knuckle curve 21% less. This is a big change because the knuckle curve was his go-to pitch against lefties pre-injury. It is a strong pitch with above-average movement, above-average velocity and good results throughout his career. Despite its limited usage, McCullers is still doing very well against lefties, with a 2.44 FIP (vs. 2.91 in his career). Additionally, in his June 3 start, McCullers threw the knuckle curve a season-high 40% of the time. This is a good sign that he is starting to feel more confident in the command of this pitch. McCullers still has work to do in terms of regaining his command, but he is showing signs he is on the right track. If he can remain healthy, he can continue to have the same success and return to a reliable mid-rotation starter. Strider missed most of the 2024 season and the beginning of this season due to undergoing arm surgery (UCL) and experiencing a setback. As a result, he's been limited to only four starts so far this season with a 6.39 FIP, 23% strikeout rate and 10% walk rate. Strider's fastball has always been his go-to pitch against both righties and lefties, and that hasn't changed. At 98 mph with plus ride in 2023, the pitch was among the best in baseball. His secondary was the slider to both hands, with an occasional changeup to lefties. He was able to get away with throwing the two pitches the majority of the time due to their exceptional velocity and shape. Post injury, Strider has a lower arm slot (going from high three-quarters to three-quarters), and his pitch shapes look a little different. He's added movement to all of them: He's also added a curveball and has been mixing it in rarely against lefties. The two areas Strider needs to continue working on are his velocity (which has decreased by 2 mph across the board) and his command. As a mainly two-pitch pitcher, command is vital to Strider's success, especially now that he has lost velocity. His game plan this season remains very similar to years past and is predictable. Looking at the tables below, we can see Strider relies on his four-seamer in every count against righties, and most counts against lefties. Data from Baseball Savant Now that the pitches have declined in velocity and he is not commanding them as effectively, he is not getting the same results. His four-seamer is getting 17% less in-zone miss and 6% less chase. His slider is getting 15% less chase and 24% fewer ground balls. Both pitches are also getting hit harder and resulting in more damage. Advertisement His control and command are integral to his future success. In terms of control, his zone rate and first pitch strike rate are at career lows. In terms of command against righties, he is still doing a good job of locating his four-seamer up in the zone, but the same cannot be said for his slider. His slider is missing its location and breaking out of the zone. He is not getting chase on the pitch as a result. He needs to tweak the location and land it in-zone for it to start getting swings again. Against lefties, he is locating the slider well in the lower third of the zone. He is also locating his four-seamer well on the outer edge of the zone, but he is leaving too many over the middle. In 2023, when the pitch was better, he was able to get away with pounding the zone (even the heart) with the pitch, as it would still generate miss. This season, the four-seamer has a poor .571 xSLG allowed. Strider is still in the beginning stages of his return from injury. Looking ahead, he can no longer rely only on dominant stuff to be successful. If he can get the velocity back to where it was, or at least start locating better, there is a path to better results. Gonsolin was placed on the injured list on Saturday, June 7, due to right elbow discomfort, which is likely the reason he has struggled in his past few starts. However, I wrote this section about three days before his injury and still believe it is relevant for why he has not performed as hoped so far. After missing the 2024 season due to Tommy John surgery and having a delayed 2025 start due to a back injury, Gonsolin has a 5.96 FIP, 24% strikeout rate, and 12% walk rate through seven starts. Gonsolin's velocity is back to where it was in 2022, which is great news. He's also added some movement on his pitches. His four-seamer now has more run, his curveball more sweep and his splitter more depth. His primary areas for improvement are in his mechanics/pitch tunneling and his command and control. Starting with his mechanics, Gonsolin's arm slot is down 5 degrees from a high three-quarters slot to his three-quarters slot of 2022. He also threw from this slot in 2023 but struggled that season with an ankle injury and forearm inflammation. Advertisement This slot adjustment is affecting his control and his pitch tunneling. In terms of control, Gonsolin's below-average 12% walk rate is up from his average 7% walk rate in 2022. In terms of tunneling, Gonsolin has not been able to tunnel his pitches as effectively. Tunneling pitches provides deception and makes it more challenging for hitters to read pitches out of hand. This season, we are seeing a greater separation between his pitches on the way to the plate. Looking at the graphics from Baseball Savant below, the pitches had a much tighter tunnel in 2022 (left) before reaching the plate. Diving into his mix, Gonsolin's been throwing his slider less this season against righties and increased the usage of his splitter and curveball. The reduction in the usage of the slider makes sense, as the splitter is proving to be more effective. Looking at the slider location this season compared to 2022, the locations are much more inconsistent, and he is not getting the pitch up as frequently. As a result, the slider is generating 38% fewer ground balls than in 2022, has a poor 50% hard-hit rate and a .539 xSLG. The splitter, on the other hand, is getting 14% more in-zone miss compared to 2022 and has maintained the same ground ball rate. It also has an elite 0.033 xSLG and 47% whiff rate. This is because Gonsolin has been able to command it consistently: This change in pitch usage is helping Gonsolin stay competitive against right-handed batters. His 4.51 FIP this season against righties is very close to his career 4.42 FIP. The same cannot be said against lefties (7.36 FIP this season vs. 3.90 in his career). Looking at his usage, Gonsolin is throwing the four-seamer slightly more and the splitter less against lefties this season. While the four-seamer and curveball are still getting chase, the splitter is being chased 20% less. Many of the splitters are ending up too far below the zone to fool hitters. That being said, the contact quality of all three pitches has been well below average. While the tunneling and command remain components of why these results have not been better, for the most part, the pitch locations have been competitive. After reviewing video of the hard-hit balls Gonsolin has given up to lefties, it becomes clear that they are limited to above-average hitters such as Juan Soto, Ben Rice and Kyle Stowers. While ideally, Gonsolin could get every hitter out, this is not as big of a red flag as the command and tunneling issues discussed earlier. There are some promising pieces here, but reestablishing pitch tunneling and improving control and command are key steps required before Gonsolin returns to his pre-injury success. (Top photo of Spencer Strider: Thearon W. Henderson / Getty Images)
New York Times
26-05-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Giants takeaways: A third of the way through the season, run scoring remains the issue
The Giants have finished exactly one third of the 2025 season, and they're even more confusing than they were at the start. They scored eight runs in four games over the long holiday weekend, but they won two of them. They haven't scored more than four runs any of their last nine games, but they also haven't lost ground in the NL West during that stretch. They're comfortably ahead of preseason expectations, and they're closer to the best record in baseball than they are to the Diamondbacks, but they're still making you say words like 'dunderheads' when there are kids around. They're making you say much worse words when there aren't any around. Advertisement So what did we learn over the holiday weekend, which culminated on Monday with a tepid 3-1 loss to the Tigers? Not much that we didn't already know. The Giants can prevent runs. They often struggle to score runs. Let's use these takeaways to explore larger truths, then, applying them to the season writ large. Here's what we learned over the first third of the season, all of it reinforced over the weekend. There were a lot of reasons for Giants' historically impressive start, and some of them were sustainable. They weren't the best defensive team, but they were a sure-handed one. They weren't the fastest team, but they ran the bases well. They had a staff with so many talented pitchers that legitimate big leaguers were optioned to the minors or moved out of the rotation before the season even started. Then there was the business of how they scored runs. It was fun when Wilmer Flores kept getting perfectly timed late-game hits. It was fun when the telecasts would show an on-screen graphic that demonstrated how productive Giants hitters were with runners in scoring position. As long as it kept going, the Giants were going to be unstoppable. It did not keep going. Now the on-screen graphics are lambasting their efforts with runners in scoring position in May. Whenever a team is winning because of a lopsided record in one-run games, a hilariously high BABIP or disproportionate success with runners in scoring position, wait for the other shoe to drop. Don't just wait. Expect it. Convince your acquaintances and workplace enemies to make a cash wager with you. There will be regression, and it will be mean. When the hits aren't falling with runners in scoring position, the Giants can only be carried by individual hitters in the middle of a hot streak. It was Mike Yastrzemski, Flores and Jung Hoo Lee in the first month of the season, and it's been Heliot Ramos in May, at least until the road trip. It's cheating to write something like, 'If the Giants didn't have any hot hitters, boy, they would be in a real pickle,' because that's true for every team. But it's a legitimate point to make for a team with three starting position players who haven't been hot for more than two or three games in a row. Advertisement Yastrzemski has cooled off. Lee has had a mostly dreadful May, although he currently has a seven-game hitting streak. Flores is still helping quite a bit, but he was never going to be the lineup savior he was in the first two weeks. The Giants' ultra-consistent starting lineups have helped build continuity for the regulars, but it's also put their bench in a tough spot. There are nine starters with 120 PA or more, but that leaves six reserves who aren't seeing more than a few pitches every week. They've hit .193/.262/.300 in 260 PA this season. The Giants are facing a hard truth that shouldn't come as a big surprise to anyone: They aren't a lineup powered by individual greatness. They're a lineup that needs consistent production from most of their nine lineup spots. Right now, they're getting below-replacement-level-production from three spots. Four if you consider 'the bench' to be its own position. The Giants had 1,971 plate appearances going into Monday's game. More than a third (38.6 percent) of those PA have gone to players who are hitting at least 20 percent worse than the league average. That's a group that includes three starters and five reserves, and Willy Adames' .617 OPS is the best among them. You've heard the idiom 'greater than the sum of its parts' to describe lineups before, and that was always the path for the 2025 Giants to make the postseason. Right now, some of those parts are on the fritz. It might be the sort of thing that gets fixed by unplugging them and plugging them back in again. It might not be, which would be a much bigger problem. There's no quick fix. Bryce Eldridge is both too young to drink legally and two levels removed from the majors, and that's ignoring that he's just getting ramped up after an early-season injury. Marco Luciano is making strides with his plate discipline if you inspect his numbers with a magnifying glass, but not so much that he's an immediate answer to any of the team's questions. Jerar Encarnación will likely rejoin the team after the road trip, but it's goofy to expect him to save the entire lineup, and that's coming from one of his biggest boosters. Forget about getting more production out of the catching spot if it's not coming from Patrick Bailey himself. His historically unproductive second half from last season has bled into the first third of this season, and he's hitting .202/.266/.282 over the last 365 days. He just might be a .600-OPS guy who sticks in a lineup because of his Gold Glove defense, and that would still be valuable. The Giants need him to get back to the .600 OPS, though. It's not like there's anyone even remotely close to being ready behind him. Advertisement Forget about getting more production out of the shortstop position if it's not coming from Adames himself. His franchise-record contract is off to a worst-case scenario kind of start, both defensively and offensively, but there's still two-thirds of the season left. The Giants should — and will — stick with him a heckuva lot longer than two months. Any reasonable solution begins with him hitting closer to his career numbers. That leaves LaMonte Wade, Jr. as the lone struggling hitter who isn't entrenched in his position, but it's unfair to put everything on him. More production out of first base — whether it's from him or someone else — is a must, but the problems run much, much deeper than a single position. Answers? Other than 'maybe the struggling hitters should hit better,' I'm fresh out. It's not hard to notice that the Giants have too many pitchers and about 29 teams don't have enough, which means the trade deadline will be a heckuva test for the Buster Posey-Zack Minasian regime, but a deadline addition isn't going to be a panacea, either. You don't always get to go to the Marco Scutaro store and pick out the hottest available hitter to carry a lineup. Everything else seems to be in place. The Giants have a bullpen that's the envy of the baseball world, even with their closer struggling. They have a rotation that's getting better, even as it gets younger. They have continuity and a clubhouse that gets along, by all accounts. That all counts for a lot, but I'll just come right out and say it: The Giants will need to score more runs if they want to make the postseason. The last two-thirds of the 2025 season will depend on how well or poorly the Giants hit. That's right where they were at the start of the season, too. Maybe they're not so confusing after all.
