All Gas, No Aim: Bubba Chandler Is Amped

In Bubba Chandler’s first start of the 2026 season, he didn’t allow a single hit. Oh yeah, and he struck out more than 30% of the batters he faced. Spectacular! Just, um, don’t look over at the walk column. Oh, you did? Yeah, fine, he walked more than 30% of the batters he faced, too. Oh, and he allowed a run, and didn’t get out of the fifth inning. To understand what Chandler was up to, and what it might mean for the rest of his year, we’ll have to dig a little deeper.

Chandler leaned heavily on his fastball to start his year, as many pitchers do in their first appearance of the season. He breezed through the first inning with 11 straight fastballs, eclipsing 100 mph on the radar gun four times and essentially daring the Reds to hit it. TJ Friedl waved feebly at 100 above the zone. Matt McLain did the same. Chandler’s fastball is dynamite, particularly when he’s locating it high. It explodes upwards, and some offseason tweaks have it moving less arm side than before, making it even harder to square up.

I could watch a montage of Chandler overpowering Reds hitters all day. In fact, you can too:

You can see how difficult it is to track Chandler’s fastball by watching the check swings. The pitch that Jose Trevino, the last batter in that loop, offered at was more than a foot above the zone. The combination of velo, movement, and Chandler’s loping delivery means that hitters have a lot of trouble figuring out where the ball is going.

That’s what Chandler looks like when he’s going good. When he got even or ahead in the count, his top-of-zone target worked out fairly well. He had his fair share of wild misses high, but PitchingBot thought his command was acceptable overall:

Command grades don’t take into account how much Chandler’s fastball moves, though. His overall grade on these was solid:

Those charts show why Chandler was so effective after getting ahead in the count. He sprayed some fastballs high, but he hit the best location available, the area just above the top of the zone, enough to make up for it. Put hitters in disadvantageous counts, and you can live outside the zone without too much penalty.

Unfortunately for Chandler, his fastball didn’t play so well when he didn’t have batters over a barrel. Take a look at where he located on first pitches and in the most advantageous counts for hitters:

Suddenly, leaving the ball high isn’t as good of a deal. The reds above the zone are less red. The blues are darker blue, even if they’re in the same location. Without the threat of a strikeout getting bats off of shoulders, Chandler’s command wasn’t up to snuff. He threw 32 fastballs in these situations. Batters took 15 for balls and had an 80% contact rate when they did swing. That’s not going to pay the bills.

That persistent issue hurt Chandler eventually. Even though the Reds couldn’t figure him out, they did a fairly good job of letting him fall behind in the count. In the third inning, Chandler missed high with fastballs against the first two batters he faced. He stuck with fastballs – 11 out of the 12 offerings he threw to those guys – and walked both. After an outfield collision scored a run and a bunt pop double play restored some sense of order, Chandler again fell behind, couldn’t command his fastball, and walked McLain on four pitches.

This trend repeated itself as Chandler continued to work. In the fourth inning, he never fell behind in the count en route to two strikeouts in a clean inning. In the fifth, he got ahead of Noelvi Marte 0-2 before missing on four straight balls. After an out, he walked the next two batters on 10 pitches, all takes. With the bases loaded, that was it; Chandler hit the showers after 4 1/3 innings, 81 pitches, six strikeouts, and six walks.

The most notable statistic about Chandler’s first outing of the year was the count splits. After he got ahead 0-1, he held batters to a wOBA of .070. When he fell behind 1-0, he allowed a .501 wOBA. That’s the difference between – well, I can’t really give you an exact comparison here because both of those wOBAs are outlandish, but it’s something like the gap between the worst-hitting pitcher of all time and Babe Ruth.

Fastballs aren’t supposed to work the way Chandler’s does. They’re generally the option pitchers choose when behind in the count; good for getting the ball in the zone, not so good for swing and miss. But Chandler’s is backwards; he misses plenty of bats with it, and at least for now, he can’t locate it.

Generally speaking, a fastball like that would be a reason to pitch backwards; secondaries early in the count and, when behind, fastballs for strikeouts. But to do that, you have to throw your secondaries a lot, and Chandler didn’t seem to have much confidence in his on Tuesday. Out of his 81 pitches, 60 were fastballs. That 74% usage rate is the highest of his eight big league starts by a mile. It’s tied for the highest out of his 39 tracked minor league games, and roughly 20 percentage points higher than his average.

Chandler’s changeup isn’t the kind of pitch you can use when behind in the count. It’s a diving, bat-missing beast that he likes to tempt hitters with in two-strike counts. For ending protracted at-bats, it’s a marvel. Half of Chandler’s six strikeouts came on changeups. But given how rarely he locates it in the strike zone, he wisely stays away from using it when batters aren’t in swing mode. He threw one while behind in the count all day, and it missed low for a ball.

That leaves his two breaking balls, a slider and a show-me curveball that he breaks out only in emergencies. You might think that a slider would be the perfect pitch for the starter with a scattershot fastball and a hammer changeup. You’d be wrong, at least as long as this is where he throws that slider:

That’s the issue with Chandler in a nutshell. He has a putaway fastball, a putaway changeup, and a slider that he couldn’t land in the zone at all in his first start. How did he strike out six? Because when he’s ahead, everything he throws feels unfair. How did he walk six? Because when hitters aren’t priced into swinging, he just isn’t hitting the strike zone all that frequently.

Obviously, this won’t be Chandler’s line all year long. I do think that his solution to this problem will go a long way toward determining how his season goes. Last year, he used his fastball more conventionally, by which I mean he commanded it well enough to get back into counts by laying it in the zone and daring hitters to do something. The new shape and new velo – he threw 16 fastballs at least 100 mph this game, nearly doubling his previous single-game high of triple-digit heaters – have taken that option away, at least for the moment.

Will he keep throwing his fastball at a huge rate and bank on harnessing it better? That seems like the most likely outcome to me, but it’s hardly the only one. Will he start using his slider in the zone? Hitters would probably have a hard time swinging at it, particularly considering that a too-high fastball and an in-zone slider look similar out of the hand. Will he add a cutter or sinker, some bridge pitch that he feels he can get over the plate? It’s a reasonable idea.

Regardless of what transpires, I’m going to be watching with great interest. Jared Jones was one of my favorite pitchers to watch before he tore his UCL. Paul Skenes is Paul Skenes. Chandler’s nasty stuff has me dreaming of a spectacular rotation of GIF-worthy strikeout monsters. I’m rooting for him to figure it out – but I’ll also enjoy watching him try new solutions on the fly as he attempts to work things out. What a wonderful pitcher to follow as the new season begins.