MLB Starting Pitcher News: Chris Paddack surging, Brandon Pfaadt and Max Meyer struggling

NBC Sports

04-06-2025

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.