A Conversation With Jake Bird, the Pitching Nerd Conquering Coors Field

Jake Bird is having a career-best season, and conquering Coors Field has been a big part of the reason why. Over 21 relief appearances comprising 26 1/3 innings, the 29-year-old right-hander has held opposing hitters to a .196/.276/.217 slash line at home. His ERA at the notoriously hitter-friendly venue is 1.71, and his strikeout rate is a healthy 34.3%. Folding in his 18 road outings — including last night’s ERA-inflating, five-run debacle in Boston — Bird has a 3.70 ERA, a 2.92 FIP, and a 27.8% strikeout rate over 48 2/3 frames.

Prior to this year, he’d been a run-of-the-mill reliever on moribund Rockies teams. From 2022-24, Colorado’s fifth-round pick in the 2018 draft had a record of 7-9 with one save and a 4.53 ERA over 177 innings. An unranked prospect coming up through the system, Bird was in possession of an economics degree from UCLA, but boasted little in terms of big league upside. He came into the current campaign projected to essentially replicate the nondescript performances of his previous three seasons.

What is behind Bird’s unexpected emergence as a high-quality bullpen arm? Moreover, what is allowing him to have so much success in his home ballpark? I asked him those questions before Monday’s Rockies-Red Sox game at Fenway Park.

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David Laurila: How are you having so much success at Coors this year? Can you explain it?

Jake Bird: “I think a lot of it is just the comfortability factor. After being here a few years, I’m realizing that Coors isn’t the big monster that everybody makes it out to be. It’s not that big of a deal. Sometimes [the ball] gets in the air, and the [pitches] move less, but as long as you have a plan of where you want to go with the ball, and sequence pitches, it doesn’t make too much of a difference.

“Some of it is just baseball, too. I’ve gotten a little better luck at home than on the road. But again, I’m comfortable there and I know my plans. Having less movement on the pitches has helped me really wire in on where it is I want to throw, as opposed to when we’re on the road and the ball is moving a little more. You just have to make those adjustments to get into those areas better.”

Laurila: Are you focusing more on getting pitches to exact spots when you’re at Coors?

Bird: “I have the same plan, it’s just that the sights are a little bit easier because of the ball breaking a little bit less. If I’m throwing a curveball, it moves 20-25% less, generally, so my sights are closer to where I want to land the pitch. On the road, I have to set my sights a little further out. The home base has kind of been where I’m really dialed in.

“In the past, we’d go on the road and it felt like a safe haven, almost. It was like a vacation, where you just flip everything in there. This year, I’ve been in the zone a good amount, home and away, but I think I’ve walked fewer guys at home. Just overall, everything has played up.”

Laurila: What is your full repertoire right now?

Bird: “For the most part, it’s going to be a sinker with a lot of vertical break, a slider that’s kind of a sweeping slider, and then a curveball, which is kind of a slurve curveball. I also throw a four-seam and a cutter, but those have kind of taken a back seat because they didn’t get exactly where I wanted them to be during spring training. They weren’t quite as effective as the other three.”

Laurila: Which of the three would you say has been your best pitch this year?

Bird: “I think they’ve all been good. The curveball has kind of always been my safety net, I guess you could say, and because of the new slider I’m throwing — they seem like they play really well off each other. Originally, the slider was supposed to be something to help me with right-handed hitters — in 2023, I was better against left-handed hitters than I was against righties — but my catchers called it a few times against left-handed hitters and I realized how well they tunnel off each other.

“The slider I can throw at the bottom, and it sweeps straight across in the zone. Then I can throw a curveball out of that same slot. Before, when I was just sinker/curveball for the most part, it would be an easy take because if you saw it down, you could just let it go. Now, because of that slider they have to respect, I can throw the curveball below the zone and get more swings.”

Laurila: Is the sweeping slider new to this year?

Bird: “I added it going into last year, but I had some issues feeling healthy early on, so the command was a little erratic. When I came back at the end of the year, it was a little better. The command should have been better, but the numbers were pretty good at the end of the year, which gave me confidence that at least my general plan was pretty good. I’ve definitely refined it, and added a little more clarity. That’s something I worked on this offseason.”

Laurila: Is a sweeper a better Coors pitch than a traditional slider?

Bird: “What I’ve noticed this year, it seems so… I don’t know why, but for whatever reason, the seam-shift movement stays more similar from home to road, whereas my curveball might lose 20-25% of its induced spin movement. The movement on my slider is based on seam-shift effect, so it holds a lot of the movement. Whether I’m at home or on the road, it doesn’t feel much different.”

Laurila: Do you get any depth on your new slider?

Bird: “The depth I get is just from the velo being slower, so it’s pretty much just horizontal. Sometimes, if you’re just looking at the spin effects, it’s more kind of rising, It’s above the zero line. The curveball probably averages around eight or nine inches below the zero line, and can be up to 12. I call it a curveball, but the movement profile has a lot of horizontal movement, so it’s more of a slurve. If we’re on the road, the horizontal could be up to 20 [inches], but it’s usually more 17-18.”

Laurila: What about your sinker?

Bird: “It’s close to the zero line [vertically]. The horizontal will come and go, but it’s usually not too much.”

Laurila: Where are you velocity-wise?

Bird: “The curveball is 80-82, the slider is usually around 84-85, and the sinker is around 94-95.”

Laurila: You mentioned your pitches coming out of the same slot…

Bird: “Yes. When I looked at the Edgertronic when I first started throwing my slider, I looked at like the way the ball was coming out of my hand, and the slider and the sinker matched exactly for strike throwing. I also noticed that when I threw my curveball in the dirt, it would come out in the same spot out of the hand. When I’d throw it for a strike, there would be a little bit of a pop. Again, that’s why I think the slider has been so helpful to the curveball. I have pitches coming out of my hand the same way.”

Laurila: You’ve been in the organization since 2018. Have you seen it grow in terms of pitching development and analytics?

Bird: “For sure. It’s been changing and getting better over the course of my career. I remember in 2019, in the minor leagues, they had the TruMedia stuff and you could kind of get in trouble if you took a look at those numbers. They didn’t like us looking at that stuff, at least not in the minors — I don’t know how it was in the big leagues — so you kind of had to be sneaky about it. Since 2020, when the regime kind of changed, it became more, ‘Whatever you want to look at, you can.’

“The way I learned about the data and the numbers was actually from fellow teammates. In 2021, it was two guys that came over from different organizations. They kind of taught me. Zach Matson was one of the guys. I remember asking him about my sinker. I could throw it right down the middle and it would end up on the ground every single time, yet on another day, even if I would throw it down, they’d be hitting it in the air. He pulled me into an office and showed me the numbers on TruMedia. He explained the spin-induced movements. He basically explained that my sinker was better when it was more of a three o’clock tilt out of my hand, so more of that zero induced vertical break, and negative. The ones that were getting hit in the air were 2:15, 2:30, more of that positive induced vertical break.

“He asked me, ‘Is there anything you can feel that you think will get it more to that three o’clock?’ At that point in time it was just feeling more inside of the ball, and immediately I was able to make the adjustment. It helped me right away. But again, it’s gotten better. As the years have gone along, the organization is giving us more of those numbers, and more talking about it with us. It’s increased a little bit each year.”