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NBC Sports
11 hours ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
MLB Starting Pitcher News: Yusei Kikuchi turns it around, Jack Flaherty slips
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, Earlier in the season, I wrote about Yusei Kikuchi's confusing start to his tenure with the Angels, which included movement changes on his slider and a new arm slot. He wasn't bad in the early going, posting a 3.06 ERA in his first 12 starts; however, that came with a 12.3% walk rate that led to a 1.52 WHIP and just 58 strikeouts in 64.2 innings. That made him borderline unusable in fantasy leagues despite the good ERA. Then came this report from Jeff Fletcher at the beginning of June: Something to watch tonight: Yusei Kikuchi has seen his BB rate go up and K rate go down this year. Pitching coach Barry Enright told me they realized his grip on his slider and FB had changed from last year. Will be interesting to see if going back to the old grip helps. In five starts in June, Kikuchi has posted a 2.25 ERA and 1.06 WHIP. He has seen his walk rate shrink down to 7.1% while his strikeout rate has exploded to 32.3%. So has it all just been the grip change on the slider and fastball? The easy answer is no. Kikuchi's fastball has been a bit harder in June with just 0.5 inches more Induced Vertical Break (iVB) and an almost identical vertical approach angle to May. His swinging strike rate (SwStr%) is down on the pitch in June, as is his CSW, and his barrel rate allowed is the highest it's been at any point in the season. In truth, it seems like Kikuchi's fastball has actually been worse after this tweet. Similarly, as you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below, Kikuchi's slider hasn't changed much in June either. Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard The vertical and horizontal movement is essentially the same as it was in May. The same goes for the velocity. The approach angles have shifted a little bit, but that might have more to do with Kikuchi raising his arm angle over two degrees in June. In fact, overall, Kikuchi has a 36-degree arm angle at release in June, which is up from 33 degrees in May. That's notable because his arm angle was 42 degrees last year, so he had dropped it considerably at the start of the season and may be working to get it back closer to last year. The biggest reason, in my opinion, for Kikuchi's success has been his reliance on the curveball. He threw the pitch 9% of the time in May but is now up to 21% usage in June. In his five starts this month, the curve has a 16.8% SwStr% and 38.3% CSW with just a 23.8% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR). It has been, unquestionably, his best pitch. Over this stretch in June, he has used it just 7.2% of the time to lefties and 25.3% of the time to righties, which makes some sense since he's throwing his slider to lefties nearly 53% of the time in June while posting a 19% SwStr%, so he doesn't really need the curveball to lefties. In June, Kikuchi is using the curve to righties both early in the count and late. It has a 66.7% early count usage but also a 29.3% two-strike usage. It's early called strike rate of 27.3% is fine but just barely above-average; yet, it's 31% PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch leads to a strikeout, is excellent. He has a solid 70% strike rate on the curve this month to righties, which means he's either getting it over the plate early in the count for weak contact or having them chase off the plate in two-strike counts for swings and misses. This has been crucial for him because, on the season, his slider has just a 10% SwStr% to righties and only a slightly above-average PutAway Rate, so he has needed the curve to pick up the slack. The curve has been his most-used early count pitch to righties in June, with the changeup being his second most-used early count pitch this month. Kikuchi has a 67% strike rate on the changeup to righties with a 16.4% SwStr% and 44% ICR, so going changeup/curve heavy early in the count to righties has helped and has also allowed him to save his four-seam fastball more for two-strike counts. In June, he used his four-seamer 38% of the time in two-strike counts to righties; however, it has just a 6.3% PutAway Rate, which is much lower than the 31% PutAway Rate it's had to lefties this past month. At the end of the day, this feels very similar to what Kikuchi did last year in the second half, but with him leaning on his curve this year instead of his slider. He has always been a streaky pitcher, so we know to use him during his hot streaks, but he doesn't feel fundamentally different here. He's using his slider aggressively against lefties and then turning to the four-seamer later in counts, and is using his curve and changeup early against righties while mixing in the four-seamer and slider later. It can work, and it has. But this doesn't feel like a new Yusei Kikuchi. If you look at Fangraph's leaderboard for June, you'll see Wrobleski among the leaders in SIERA. Over 26.1 innings in five appearances, Wrobleski has allowed eight earned runs on 22 hits with 26 strikeouts and six walks. That's a 2.73 ERA with a 1.06 WHIP and 3.00 SIERA. I felt that was worth investigating. Nick Pollack first put me onto some of Wrobleski's changes during an episode of our 'On the Corner' podcast. Nick's first point was the increase in fastball velocity. The left-hander averaged 95.1 mph on his four-seam fastball, but that's up to 96.6 mph over his five performances in June. That has also come with slightly more extension, but his 5.5-foot mark is well below league average with below-average raw movement. He does have a great Height Adjusted Vertical Approach Angle, which means that, from his release point, his four-seamer stays up more than most and almost seems to 'rise' as it approaches the plate. That's why it's nice that he uses it 60% of the time in the upper-third of the strike zone. He does a better job of getting it up and inside to lefties than to righties, but that's also to be expected. Another big change, as you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below, is that Wrobleski has lowered his arm angle almost five degrees from last season. That's a pretty substantial difference. The lower arm slot may have contributed to his increased extension and velocity, but we do know that it has likely impacted the change in his overall slider movement. Last year, he threw the pitch 87.4 mph with 2.6 inches of gloveside movement and 32.8 inches of drop, including gravity. This season, the pitch is slightly harder, with 3.2 inches of gloveside movement and nearly 35 inches of drop. As you'd expect, the lower arm slot has also altered the horizontal approach angle, which has led to far more groundballs and much weaker contact, in addition to a slight increase in swinging strike rate. In June, he threw the slider 30% of the time to lefties and nearly 18% of the time to righties. Righties see it primarily as a two-strike offering, with a 47% usage rate in those counts, and the pitch has a solid 27% PutAway Rate. Lefties get the pitch in all counts, with a 58% early count rate and a 39% two-strike rate, but it has just an 8.3% PutAway Rate against lefties in June, which is not ideal. That leads to the biggest issue with Wrobleski still. He has just a 6% SwStr% and 13.8% strikeout rate against lefties during this strong June run. He's primarily slider/sinker to lefties and mixes in his four-seam and curve, but none of those miss a ton of bats. He could perhaps get more swings and misses if he turns to the four-seamer more in two-strike counts, but it remains to be seen if he will. There has been marked improvement against righties this season. Some of that has to do with him getting rid of his sweeper and adding in a cutter. The cutter sits at 92.1 mph with just 1.2 inches of horizontal movement and 8.3 inches of 'rise' if you were to remove the effects of gravity. In June, Wrobleski used the cutter 73% of the time early in the count against righties. The pitch has an 85% true first-pitch strike rate but also a 40% chase rate in two-strike counts when he does choose to use it. The pitch has a 14.5% SwStr% and 30.6% CSW against righties in June with a 36% ICR. Using the cutter early in the count has set up the slider in two-strike counts, in addition to the four-seamer fastball, which he used 53% of the time in two-strike counts to righties in June. It also had a nearly 21% PutAway Rate, so that combination has been useful for him in two-strike situations. Another development for Wrobleski has been a revamped changeup, which is almost three mph harder with nearly six inches more vertical movement, when accounting for gravity, and less armside movement. The pitch has a lower zone rate but a slightly higher swinging strike rate. It's his fifth most-used pitch against righties, so it won't make or break him, but it's nice to see him possess such a deep arsenal against righties. It's unclear what role the Dodgers envision for Wrobleski, and I don't love his profile against lefties, but if he's going to stay in this piggyback role, he could be a useful option against right-handed-heavy lineups with a good chance of earning wins. This is more of a full-on pitch mix analysis for Burrows, which was inspired by the fact that he's 22nd in SIERA among all starting pitchers with at least 20 innings in June. In 26.1 innings last month, he had a 2.73 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and 3.18 SIERA, with a 22% K-BB% that ranked 18th among that same leaderboard of starting pitchers. So is this something we can believe in? Well, for starters, Burrow has a 95 mph four-seamer with 16.5 inches of iVB. It's not a particularly flat fastball, so it doesn't miss many bats, but he throws it in the zone often and doesn't allow much hard contact. That's a good start. It is interesting to note that the graphic above shows that Burrows has lowered his arm angle quite significantly after his two appearances in May. It doesn't seem to have done much to the overall shape of his pitches, but it has shifted the attack angle on his pitches. His slider and changeup, in particular, have lost some of their vertical attack in place of horizontal attack angle with that lower arm angle. What's interesting is that both the slider and changeup are performing worse since the lower arm angle. The four-seamer is performing better, and that might be why he's going to it more often, upping his usage by 11% overall. In June, Burrows has gone to the four-seamer 45% of the time to righties while using the slider 34% of the time, the changeup 14% of the time, and the curve just over 7% of the time. The four-seamer is primarily his early count pitch, and we established that it's a solid one. The slider has also been used 72% of the time early in counts to righties. Considering it has just a 39% zone rate and 57% strike rate, I don't love him using it early in the count and would rather he use it late, considering it has a 33% PutAway Rate. However, I think that may have something to do with setting it up early. Overall, it's a fairly mediocre pitch. The changeup is better with a 12% SwStr% to righties in June, to go along with a 67% strike rate and a 44% ICR. He also uses it early in the count 63% of the time to righties but mixes it in 23.4% in two-strike counts, where it has a 31.4% chase rate and 37.3% PutAway Rate. Overall, it's a really solid offering, but it's not quite an ideal swing-and-miss pitch to righties, so Burrows is still missing that. However, his approach of four-seam and changeup over 80% of the time to lefties is one I can get behind. The changeup gets plenty of called strikes early against lefties but can also miss bats with two strikes. His curve has been used mostly early in the count to lefties, but it has just a 15% zone rate and 26% strike rate to lefties in June. It also doesn't miss many bats in two-strike counts, so it's just a show-me third pitch. At the end of the day, Burrows has a solid fastball and a good changeup that form a good foundation, but until he gets a two-strike whiff pitch and righties, he's going to be limited to being used primarily as a streamer against teams who aren't loaded with right-handed hitters who can hurt him. Back in April, I noted the changes that the Red Sox had made to Quinn Priester's arsenal and how I thought it would lead to some Tobias Myers-type of success in Milwaukee. ⚾️Quinn Priester trade returned lots of value for Boston, but they revamped his arsenal and then shipped him off to succeed elsewhere. They added a cutter, tightened up his SL and narrowed the wide movement gaps. It has a real Tobias Myers feel for MIL. It may have taken a bit of time, but Priester has been really good since the middle of May, posting a 2.42 ERA, 0.99 WHIP, and 38/7 K/BB ratio in 44.2 innings. While some of that has to do with matchups against Colorado, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, and Minnesota, he also faced the Cardinals, Braves, and Phillies, and that Reds matchup was in Cincinnati. So what else could be the cause of his recent success? The first thing that stands out is that his cutter usage jumped back up in June, in addition to ticking back up in velocity. This was a new pitch that Boston added in the offseason, so it makes some sense that his usage of the pitch would fluctuate as the year went on. He has used the pitch just 13% of the time against righties during those last eight starts, but 27% of the time against lefties. It's not an elite pitch, registering just 91 mph with one inch of glove-side movement and more lift than the average cutter at that speed. However, he has tremendous control of the pitch, posting a 56% zone rate and 67% strike rate against lefties. He keeps it up in the zone often but doesn't just bury it inside, with a 43% outside rate against lefites over this stretch. However, that has also led to plenty of groundballs but a little bit more hard contact than I'd like to see, with a 60% ICR against lefties. Priester uses the cutter and sinker early in the count to lefties, which sets up a slider and curve as the two-strike offerings. He doesn't throw the curve often, but it has a 15.2% usage against lefties over his last eight starts with a 20% SwStr% and 29% PutAway Rate. I think he might be able to turn to that pitch more often to get swings-and-misses against lefties. However, that won't help him against righties. He rarely throws the curve to righties, so he often relies on the slider and cutter in two-strike counts. The cutter has a 6% PutAway rate against righties over his last eight starts, and the slider is also below average with an 11.3% mark. What the Brewers have done is narrow Priester's arsenal, getting rid of the changeup, and trying to get him to focus more on the cutter, slider, and sinker working off of one another to keep hitters off the barrel and induce weak contact. As I said in my tweet above, this strikes me as a similar path to what they did with Tobias Myers, but with fewer pitches. I think that makes Priester a fine option in deeper formats, but he's not going to miss enough bats to have huge fantasy appeal, and the high contact rates make him risky against good offenses. The last three starts of June were not kind to Jack Flaherty, who allowed 18 earned runs on 16 hits in 13 innings with 12 walks and 15 strikeouts. That's a 12.46 ERA, 2.15 WHIP, 22.4% strikeout rate, and 17.9% walk rate. Yikes! My first thought was to check and see if Flaherty was doing anything differently in June that might have led to this. If you just look at pitch usage and shapes, not much stands out as being different. He's leaned into his four-seam fastball more, but that has more to do with the lack of success of his breaking pitches (more on that later). We can see some difference in the shape of his curveball, which seems to have lost both vertical and horizontal break in June. Not much, but enough that it attracts our attention. The curve still had a 23.6% SwStr% in June, which is right in line with its usual numbers, and the barrel rate allowed was better than what the curve allowed in May. Yet, that change in curve shape may be connected to another option, which Nick Pollack suggested during one of our podcasts, that Flaherty may have simply been tipping his pitches. I discussed this earlier this year with Shane Baz, and he has since had a solid run of production. During these last three starts when we saw the change in shape on Flaherty's curve, the pitch had a 31% zone rate and 59% strike rate with a 50% swing rate against, an 87.5% zone contact rate, and an absurd 62.5% ICR. It still has a 22% SwStr%, but this is worth exploring. On the season, Flaherty's curve has a 30% zone rate and 60% strike rate with a 50% swing rate against, so those are basically the same numbers we're seeing in this three-game stretch. However, for the year, the curve has a 74% zone contact rate allowed and a 38.6% ICR. So the curve was in the zone as often and swung at as often, but hit far more often and much harder. Huh. Was it locations? Throughout the season, Flaherty's curve has been 60% gloveside to righties and 86.4% LoLoc% (Low location, meaning the bottom third of the strike zone). He's used it 48% of the time in two-strike counts to righties with a 31.6% PutAway Rate. Over this last three-game stretch, the PutAway Rate fell to 30%, so essentially the same, and he used it in two-strike counts just 36% of the time, but that may have just had to do with a lack of confidence. The pitch to righties was gloveside 68% of the time over that small sample and low 86% of the time, so the locations were pretty identical. To lefties, Flaherty has used the curve armside 45% of the time and gloveside 34% of the time, while keeping it low 84.5%. He's used it 52% of the time early in counts, and it has a 25% early called strike rate and 23% PutAway Rate. Over the last three-game stretch, the curve to lefies was armside 40% of the time and gloveside 33% of the time, while being low in the zone 77.5%. Perhaps you could argue that he hasn't been burying the curve to lefties as much, but the rest of the location profile is similar. He's still using it early in counts 57% of the time, with a 22% early called strike rate, and 21% PutAway Rate, so another instance where there doesn't seem to be a huge change in location and usage. All of that tells me that something was off with the curveball. Perhaps it was a minor change in shape. Perhaps hitters were able to spot something out of the hand and sit on the curve more effectively. However, nothing stands out to me as being a major red flag. The issue is just that Flaherty's slider has been struggling a bit since the start of May, so he can't afford his curve to get hit like this. Since May 3rd, Flaherty's slider has a 11% SwStr%, which is well below the 13.8% MLB average for a slider. It also has a 37% zone rate, 58% strike rate, and 44% ICR. All of those are about 5% below average or more. So if Flaherty's slider has been mediocre for 10 starts, and his fastball is an average pitch to begin with, that puts a lot of pressure on his curve to carry him. I don't think the curve is as bad as we've seen it recently, so I still think Flaherty can have some use as a streamer in good matchups, and I wouldn't outright cut him. However, I don't think you should feel that you need to hold Flaherty in shallower leagues if there are intriguing options on the wire.
NBC Sports
18-06-2025
- Sport
- NBC Sports
MLB Starting Pitcher News: Jacob Misiorowski debuts, Brayan Bello makes a change
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, Brewers starting pitching prospect Jacob Misiorowski made one of the most anticipated MLB debuts of the season last week when he tossed five hitless innings against the Cardinals on Thursday. Part of the intrigue for Misiorowski is his 6'7" frame and also the triple-digit fastball that he can still pump with high velocity deep into starts. His command had taken a step forward in the minors, and so there was a palpable feeling that we might be witnessing a true breakout. So, how did he look in that MLB debut? Pitcher List We'll start with the fastball because he sat 99 mph with it last week with 7.5 feet of extension, and that's just absurd. That kind of extension will make a 99 mph fastball look like a 102-103 mph pitch and comes with a 1.7 Height Adjusted Vertical Approach Angle, which means it's a flat fastball that fights gravity and seems to rise as it approaches home plate. A pitch with that velocity that also seems to rise is incredibly hard to hit and immediately becomes one of the best fastballs in all of baseball. However, this is where the command comes into play. A pitch that electric is often hard to control, and Misiorowski had just a 44% zone rate on it during his debut, which is well below the 52.4% mark that's MLB league average for a starting pitcher. Some of that might be due to nerves, but having just a 9% called strike rate is not great for your four-seam fastball, which is supposed to be a foundational pitch that Misiorowski can also use to get ahead in the count with. Yet, it seems like Misiorowski has another pitch for that, which is his slider/cutter. It's classified as a slider right now, but it's 94.3 mph with just 1.7 inches of horizontal movement and feels an awful lot like a cutter. He had a 48% zone rate on that pitch despite a below-average 56% strike rate. He used it early in the count 70% of the time to righties, which also suggests that he views it as a strike pitch that he can get ahead with. He threw 23 of his 25 cutters to righties, and only threw his four-seam early in the count 33% of the time to righties, so we're seeing a clear approach here. Misiorowski will use the cutter to get ahead on righties and then have the four-seamer as a two-strike pitch, but will use the four-seamer early in the count to lefties and then go to his curveball. He threw seven of his 11 curveballs to lefties and used it in two-strike counts 85.7% of the time, so the plan is pretty clear. It's an 88 mph pitch with nearly 11 inches of drop and six inches of horizontal run and can be downright filthy at times. It's incredibly rare to find a curve that's nearly 90 mph that drops as much as Misiorowski's does, but that could also be why he struggles to command it. All four of his curves to righties were thrown for strikes because it's just a 'get me over pitch' against right-handed hitters. However, just two of his seven curves to lefties were for strikes. He missed up and away a handful of times, which indicates he was over-throwing it, and had a below-average PutAway Rate on the pitch, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout. He also threw two nasty changeups to lefties at 91 mph, so maybe that will become a bigger offering for him, but right now we have a three-pitch mix and a pretty clear and narrow arsenal for all hitters. If righties know they're going to get a cutter early and a four-seam late in the count, will they adapt to that plan quickly? If lefties know the two pitches Misiorowski throws to them are two pitches he struggles to command, will they just wait him out? When you pair that with Misiorowski already being 29 innings away from matching his career high, there are some risks with him as a rest-of-season starter. I think he needs to be rostered in all formats, and I can easily see a low ERA with plenty of strikeouts the rest of the way. However, I also think there's a chance his WHIP can hurt your ratios, and the Brewers may shut him down in the middle or end of August if they fall out of playoff contention, which I expect them to do. But for now, enjoy the ride. Eury Pérez made his long-awaited return to an MLB mound this month after missing all of last season following Tommy John surgery. The 22-year-old is one of the most exciting young pitchers in baseball, but has struggled in his first two appearances, allowing five runs on eight hits in seven innings with five strikeouts and five walks. We've also seen some interesting changes to his pitch mix and mechanics that are worth exploring. For starters, Pérez dropped his arm angle almost five degrees, which you can see in Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below. His teammate, Edward Cabrera, also dropped his arm angle significantly this season, so you have to wonder if this is an organizational shift for the Marlins. The new arm angle has, obviously, changed the shape of some of Pérez's offerings. His four-seam arm angle has dropped almost seven inches, which has cost him over an inch of Induced Vertical Break (iVB) but added over two inches of arm-side run. Even with that change in shape, he has the same Height Adjusted Vertical Approach angle, so it's still a flat fastball that will succeed up in the zone. Pérez is just not yet locating it there consistently early on, which is to be expected after surgery. Perhaps the new movement profile on the four-seamer will lead to less hard contact when he misses his spot, but sitting 98.1 mph with the pitch is nice to see. Pérez also added a sinker this season, which might make some sense when paired with this new four-seam shape. Pérez's sinker is 96.6 mph with over 17 inches of horizontal break, so even though the four-seamer now rides in on righties a bit, the sinker will still bore in on their hands far more. That could create some nice deception and soft contact, but he has been using the sinker more to lefties so far, which is a bit odd to me. Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard The change in arm angle and a reported change in grip have also given his curveball over eight inches more horizontal break and nearly six inches more drop. It comes in about one mph slower than it used to, but he seems to, so far, have an easier time commanding the pitch. That pitch has morphed into his primary secondary offering to lefties, but he has yet to induce a single swinging strike on it against them. Some of that is simply that the pitch is catching too much of the plate, which is something he'll need to iron out as he gets more starts. Righties are still seeing his slider as the primary secondary offering, and that pitch has gotten a bit flatter with the new arm angle. However, the slider has not induced a single swinging strike to righties so far. It's a pretty wild stat between that and the curve to lefties. However, we should note that Pérez has faced FAR more lefties so far in his first two appearances, so we'll take those numbers with a grain of salt. However, the slider has graded out REALLY poorly by PLV so far this season. Lastly, we saw a minor change with Pérez's change-up this season, coming in nearly one mph harder and with more arm-side run. However, he's only thrown five, and not one of them has been for a strike. At the end of the day, I don't see this as a package I'm pursuing right now in shallower redraft leagues. If you have the bench space and you want to stash him to see how the next few starts go, I have no issue with that, but Pérez is going to need to figure out his curveball and/or slider this season before he starts racking up strikeouts. The Marlins also have no reason to push him beyond 80-ish pitches per game in his first season back from injury. I'll be heavily invested in Pérez for next season, but I'm only taking low-cost shares for 2025. Bello is evolving before our eyes and is turning into a type of pitcher none of us ever expected him to be. When he debuted, Bello had an elite changeup but lacked a plus fastball or a great swing-and-miss breaking pitch. He has since developed a good slider, but the changeup has left him almost completely. Now, it seems that Bello is relying on three variations of a fastball (four-seam, sinker, and cutter), while mixing in his sweeper and changeup. Bello threw his cutter for the first time this season on May 13th. He then didn't throw a single cutter in his next outing, but from May 23rd on, Bello has thrown his cutter 13% of the time, including a career-high 33% usage on Sunday. Over that same span, he's using his sinker 39% of the time and sweeper 23% of the time, while dropping his changeup rate to 12% and kicking his four-seam usage up to an equal 12%. It's a pretty drastic shift for the 26-year-old, but is it one that can work? In his start against the Yankees on Sunday, Bello used his cutter as his primary fastball to both righties and lefties, but it was such an anomaly in his usage pattern that we have to wonder if this was just a gameplan against the Yankees. However, Boston has also tweaked their entire pitching philosophy over the last week and has leaned harder into fastball usage than they have since Andrew Bailey became the pitching coach. The cutter is Bello's best fastball, so this may be a new avenue forward for him. He can locate the pitch in the zone well, using it more as a strike pitch for lefties but bringing it in as a two-strike offering for right-handed hitters as well. The cutter is about 89 mph with just 1.5 inches of horizontal movement and very little drop, but it has been great as a two-strike pitch to righties, posting a 28.6% chase rate in those counts and a 28.6% PutAway Rate. We're dealing with a small sample size here, but because Bello throws his slider 36% of the time in two-strike counts to righties, he's able to create some deception by mixing in the cutter in those counts too. The cutter doesn't miss a ton of bats, but it's Bello's best fastball variation and gives him another pitch he can command while he struggles to harness his changeup. Bello's change has a league-average swinging strike rate to lefties, and his slider has a league-average swinging strike rate to righties, so having multiple fastball variations where he can get ahead certainly raises his floor. However, I still think Bello won't take a true leap forward until he figures out his changeup, which is, for some reason, now over two mph harder than it has been in his career and is posting a career-worst zone rate and strike rate. That's going to be the true key to unlocking Bello, but I do think this new cutter usage makes him a bit safer by raising his floor. Moving from one Red Sox pitcher to a former Red Sox pitcher. Walter was a 26th-round pick by the Red Sox in 2019 and emerged onto the prospect radar in 2021 after a solid season split between A-ball and High-A. He then posted a 2.88 ERA, 0.78 WHIP, and 68/3 K/BB ratio in 50 innings at Double-A in 2022. However, he struggled in a promotion to Triple-A that year and struggled again in Triple-A in 2023 before getting promoted anyway and posting a 6.26 ERA in 23 innings out of the bullpen for the Red Sox. He suffered a rotator cuff injury that kept him out all of the 2024 season and was designated for assignment after the Red Sox acquired Lucas Sims at last year's deadline. A member of the Astros organization since last August, Walter has made a few changes since we last saw him in big league games in 2023. For starters, his cutter velocity is up from 87 mph to 88.3 mph and features double the iVB while cutting down on some of the horizontal run. As you can see below, it's his primary fastball offering, and he uses it exclusively against right-handed hitters. He does a nice job getting the pitch inside, but keeps it more in the middle of the zone rather than attacking up or down with it. The pitch has high zone and strike rates, but it also doesn't miss many bats and has a 47% Ideal Contact Rate allowed, so that's not an ideal pairing. He uses this cutter 72% of the time early in counts to right-handed hitters, so even if it doesn't get swings and misses, as long as he can get ahead with it, the pitch is doing its job. He then comes back with a sweeper that he throws 41% of the time in two-strike counts to righties and a changeup that he uses 34% of the time in two-strike counts. The sweeper is another pitch that he doesn't focus much on burying low in the zone, but it has a 72nd percentile PutAway rate to righties, likely because of how it plays off of his cutter. The changeup is another high zone rate pitch that has an absurdly low 17% ICR allowed to righties while also posting a league-average swinging strike rate. He does a good job keeping it in the lower half of the strike zone and away from righties, which is who he throws it to exclusively. That's a pretty solid three-pitch mix against right-handed hitters that won't lead to tons of strikeouts but should lead to a fair amount of weak contact. Lefties see a heavy dose of Walters' sweeper, both early in the count and with two-strikes, and also get an equally heavy dose of sinkers that weirdly have an 83rd percentile PutAway Rate against lefties. He'll mix in the odd four-seamer to lefties and righties, which means that he has four pitches he can use to righties and three he can use to lefties, all while locating his pitch in the zone well. The easy comparison here will be Ryan Yarbrough, and I understand that, since both are low-velocity lefties with a funky arm angle and a five-pitch mix that relies primarily on a cutter and sweeper. However, Walter throws over three mph harder than Yarbrough, while Yarbrough has registered more swing-and-miss so far this season. To me, Walter is more of a 15-team league option, but I like him more than Ryan Gusto and Colton Gordon because I think his pitch mix is deeper, and I can see a clear attack plan for both righties and lefties. He's still a streamer, but in deeper formats, I'd be OK using him against the bottom half of the league, and I think he can outlast his two teammates and remain in Houston's rotation.
Yahoo
11-06-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
MLB Starting Pitcher News: Jameson Taillon's new changeup, Tanner Bibee bounceback, more
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 Roman Anthony makes a big jump after getting the call to Boston, and CES returns to the rankings. Robbie Ray - San Francisco Giants (New Curve Shape, New Slider Shape, New Changeup) Robbie Ray has been one of the best pitchers in baseball through the first two months of the season, pitching to a 2.44 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 28.4% strikeout rate. While much of that is simply a return to full health, there are a few tweaks to Ray's pitch mix that I think have helped him put together his best stretch of production since 2021. For starters, Ray has added a changeup this season, throwing the pitch exclusively to right-handed hitters, against whom he uses it nearly 18% of the time. The pitch is almost 85 mph with 11.5 inches of horizontal run and close to 11 inches of drop. He throws it all over the strike zone, and while it's primarily used low in the zone (69%), he does throw it up in the zone more than average and that's likely to tunnel with his four-seam fastball, which also has over eight inches of horizontal movement given his arm angle at release. Robbie Ray Ray has used the changeup to steal strikes early in the count, using it 68% of the time in early counts; however, he will also mix it in in two-strike counts and has an above-average PutAway Rate on it, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout. Overall, the pitch has an above-average 61% strike rate and an impressive 24% swinging strike rate (SwStr%). It doesn't get hit hard, with just a 30% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), and gives him an important fourth offering to righties since righties have hit his slider and curve relatively hard, even if they do also miss bats. Advertisement The other big change has been shape changes on both his slider and his curveball. This season, the slider has 1.5 inches more horizontal movement and also 1.6 inches more drop. The added movement has also given him more confidence to throw it in the zone. He has a higher zone rate and strike rate on the pitch and has focused less on burying it inside to righties or keeping it on the outside corner to lefties. That has brought down the overall SwStr% and ICR, but much of that has to do with him using the pitch early in the count to righties as a way to get ahead or generate weak contact. The pitch has also posted a 15.3% SwStr% and 19% ICR to lefties, which is great. He has also seen the zone rate increase on his curve, and you have to wonder if the move to spacious Oracle Park over these last 20 total starts has caused him to be more comfortable pitching to contact. This season, his curve has slightly more sweep but nearly five inches more vertical break. The sharper vertical break pairs better with Ray's four-seam fastball, which has strong vertical movement as well. That might be part of the reason the curve has an above-average called strike rate to righties, which is who Ray uses it primarily against. At the end of the day, these changes don't make Ray a drastically different pitcher, but they widen his arsenal from just the fastball-slider guy he used to be, which has led to far less hard contact and a strong 30% CSW. None of what he's doing should be viewed as fluky. Jameson Taillon - Chicago Cubs (New Changeup) Since May 1st, Jameson Taillon has posted a 3.16 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, and 19.5% strikeout rate over 42.2 innings in seven starts. OK, that strikeout rate isn't great, but is the rest of it sustainable? It feels like a big part of it is due to Taillon's increased reliance on his changeup. Taillon Pitch Mix Change Taillon is also throwing a slightly different version of the changeup this season, adding nearly two inches of arm-side run and over two inches of drop. He's also cut over 1.5 mph on the pitch and killed some of the spin as he has switched to a kick-change grip. As you can see from Alex Chamberlain's chart above, Taillon has also raised his arm angle on the pitch as the year has gone on, perhaps getting more comfortable with a release point that allows him to command the new grip. Advertisement Overall, the changeup has seen a huge jump in SwStr%, posting a 23.1% mark this year, up from 7.5% last year. He's also throwing it in the zone more and has a 71% strike rate on it, after having just a 59% strike rate in 2024. Oh yeah, and the pitch is allowing just a 23% ICR. All of that is tremendous. As you'd expect, he's using the pitch exclusively to left-handed hitters and is more comfortable using it in two-strike counts. Last year, he used his changeup just 10% of the time in two-strike counts, and it had a 9% PutAway Rate. This season, he's using it 28.5% of the time in two-strike counts and has registered a 19% PutAway Rate. That's important for him because his sweeper is used only to righties, his cutter is not a swinging strike pitch, and his curveball has a below-average PutAway rate to lefties, so he needs that changeup to give him a solid two-strike option other than his four-seam fastball. This is not going to make Jameson Taillon an ace or a fantasy asset when it comes to strikeouts, but I think it gives him a safer floor and makes him a streamer in shallow formats and a must-roster player in deeper formats rather than just being a streamer in deeper leagues. 2025 Fantasy Baseball: 60 Undervalued Players, from Jasson Domínguez to Bo Bichette Advertisement 60 undervalued players to help you win your fantasy league. Tanner Bibee - Cleveland Guardians (Arm Angle Change, Sweeper Usage, Curve Usage) It has been an up-and-down start to the year for Tanner Bibee, but I've started to see some pitch mix changes that I felt were worth digging into. In the first six starts of the season, Bibee had a 4.36 ERA (4.68 SIERA), 1.30 WHIP, and 18.4% strikeout rate with a 9.5% SwStr%, 28.8% CSW, and 31.3% ICR. Not awful marks, but a poor swinging strike rate and a SIERA that suggested he was earning his mediocre marks. However, he started tweaking his pitch mix in May, which you can see in the table I made below, and in the seven starts since, he has posted a 3.38 ERA (3.79 SIERA), 1.13 WHIP, and a 21.1% strikeout rate with a 10.5% SwStr%, 27.9% CSW, and 37.5% ICR. Tanner Bibee Pitch Mix Four-Seam Sinker Cutter Sweeper Curve Change Until 5/1 33.90% 15.70% 22.10% 6.90% 3.70% 12.50% From 5/1 On 27.90% 12.90% 18.70% 20.80% 5.80% 13.80% In his two starts in June, which you can see in Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard below, he has continued some of those earlier modifications. In both of those starts, he was tremendous through six innings before fading in the seventh. In those two starts, he has also posted a 24% strikeout rate, 12.3% SwStr%, 28.2% CSW, and 38.9% ICR, so while the contact allowed is getting a bit harder, the swing and miss is coming back a bit. Tanner Bibee Pitch Mix I immediately noticed that Bibee's arm angle had changed pretty drastically throughout the season. Now, that could be an intentional overall shift, but it could be that Bibee has different arm angles on different pitches, which you can see in the chart. So if he were to alter his pitch mix significantly, which is what he's doing, that could change his average arm angle. However, we can see that he has a little more carry/rise on his four-seam fastball, which is improving its overall performance. He also has a flatter cutter, which has similarly led to far less hard contact and better overall command of the pitch, and suggests that the arm angle change is an actual change and not just the result of a new pitch mix distribution. Advertisement Another big part of Bibee's recent success has been the evolution of his sweeper and increased use of his curveball. The sweeper, in particular, has a few things that stand out. For one, Bibee has raised his arm angle on the sweeper by about five degrees. That's not just a random sample or a potential mistake; you can see the huge change in vertical release point on the chart above. The new arm angle has led to a shift in his sweeper movement profile. Since May, his sweeper has gotten over 1.5 mph harder and tightened up its horizontal break while adding nearly two inches of drop. That has led to improvements in SwStr% and CSW but also more hard contact, likely because Bibee needs to alter his locations to account for less overall movement on the pitch. In his last four starts, Bibee has a 15.7% SwStr% on his sweeper after posting a 10.4% mark in his starts before May 22nd. He's using it less frequently early in the count, likely to account for its increased swing-and-miss abilities, but is throwing it more often when he gets deeper into the count (2-2, 3-2, etc.). The added drop has also likely made him more comfortable using it to lefties, as he's increased his sweeper usage by over 7% in his last four starts. Bibee has also started using his curve more as the season has gone on, specifically using it more in two-strike counts and more often to lefties. He could be relying on it more often because the cutter has not been as successful for him early in the season, but I also think the curve is a nice addition against lefties when paired with the changeup and four-seamer. The curve comes out of the same tunnel as his two fastballs, and since it's a late-breaking curve, it stays in that tunnel for longer than you'd expect. It also has a similar pitch height to his changeup but breaks more vertically, while the change has armside run. That creates solid tunneling with the rest of his offerings to lefties. The curve itself has a 15.8% SwStr% against lefties over the last four starts, with a nearly 32% CSW and 74% strike rate. I think Bibee is trending in the right direction with these changes. The decrease in reliance on his four-seam fastball and sinker is working because he has the secondaries to fill in the gaps. The curveball works early in the count to lefties, as does the changeup, and the changeup could even be used to righties more early on. The new sweeper shape gives him more swing and miss ability, and the cutter has flattened, which is improving its overall performance. If Bibee continues to use his more dynamic sweeper and keeps tunneling his curve effectively, he could get back to being a 26-28% strikeout rate pitcher with a low-to-mid 3s ERA. Colton Gordon - Houston Astros (Pitch Mix Review) After covering three pitch mix changes for veterans, I wanted to dive into an overall pitch mix review of Colton Gordon, the Astros left-handed rookie who has earned a spot in the rotation due to injuries and has a 5.11 ERA (3.30 SIERA), 1.38 WHIP, and 20.8% K-BB% in 24.2 inning across five starts this season. Below, you can see Kyle Bland's chart that breaks down Gordon's pitch shapes and usage in his last start against Cleveland, as well as highlighting the specific results of those pitches. Gordon Pitch Mix Gordon starts his arsenal with a four-seamer that he uses more often to righties than lefties. The pitch is just 91.2 mph from the left side with 11 inches of horizontal run and 14.8 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB). It is a flat fastball with a 1.0 Height Adjusted Vertical Approach Angle, but he doesn't keep it up in the zone at all. He does a good job of getting it inside to lefties, but it catches far too much of the plate against righties, which has led to just a 7% SwStr% and 46% ICR. That's concerning. Advertisement He also adds a 91.6 mph sinker, which is his primary fastball to lefties, but also doesn't miss bats to them while posting a 44.4% ICR. So neither of his fastballs misses bats or gives up weak contact. That's a bad start. He does have a good sweeper as his primary secondary pitch, which he throws to both righties and lefties, and has above-average swinging strike rates to both. However, righties also hit the pitch hard when they do make contact, which isn't entirely surprising, and he probably needs to stop throwing it early in counts as often to them as he has been. It can be used as a chase pitch to righties when he's ahead in the count, but he can continue to use it regularly against lefties because it's a truly dominant pitch there. His other best secondary pitch is an underutilized curveball. He uses the pitch exclusively to righties, and it has an above-average zone rate, strike rate, and SwStr%. It's a big breaker at 74.5 mph with over 15 inches of horizontal break and nearly six inches of drop. He has thrown it 97% of the time early in the count, but it really can be used for swings and misses late in the count based on how it's performing as a whiff pitch. In fact, he really should be using it far more at the expense of a changeup that he uses 9% of the time to righties but misses no bats and gives up a 46% ICR. Overall, there's not a ton here that stands out to me. I do think the sweeper is a great pitch against lefties and can be a good swinging strike pitch for righties. I think he can use his curve more often to righties to give him two solid secondaries, but the changeup is not great, and he'll need to hide his fastballs to both righties and lefties, which will always make him a bit of a minefield. If we see his curveball usage tick up then I feel a bit more confident using Gordon as a streamer in plus matchups, but that feels like the ceiling for me right now.
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- 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
04-06-2025
- 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.
