In 2019, Jake Odorizzi went from being a promising middle of the rotation arm to one of the best starting pitchers in baseball. With a career-best 3.36 FIP and a nearly 5% jump in his strikeout rate, he was able to post the highest WAR (4.3) of his six-plus seasons in the major leagues. His pitching arsenal, spearheaded by improvements to his four-seam fastball, became as effective as it’s ever been and transformed Odorizzi into a front-line starter.

Throughout his career, Odorizzi’s fastball has been somewhat pedestrian. From 2016 to 2018, it seemed to get worse; his fastball velocity dipped a little each year, as it gradually dropped more than 1 mph. In fact, almost all of his pitches got slower over that span. In an interview with our own David Laurila, Odorizzi confessed he was dealing with some mechanical issues that could have stemmed from past health problems.

But in 2019, Odorizzi’s four-seamer never dipped below 90 mph; the aforementioned drop in his fastball velocity was reversed, with the right-hander again sitting closer to the mid-90s, and for just the third season in his major league career, the pitch maxed out at over 95 mph.

That extra tick in velocity might not seem like a lot, but moving from the 90-92 mph range to 93-95 mph can make a big difference. In 2019, the league-average wOBA on 90-92 mph four-seamers was .398. Moving up to 93-95 mph (Odorizzi’s 2019 range) drops that figure 46 points to .352; Odorizzi saw an improvement on his four-seamer wOBA from a .301 to .245. Read the rest of this entry »

What actually makes a pitch effective? Is it the ability to induce whiffs or draw weak contact on a regular basis? Both? Are those factors actually the result of the pitch itself or the way others in a repertoire set it up? How about its movement? Can that alone make a pitch great?

Changeups and sliders are both interesting pitches, sliders in particular because there are so many variations. And changeups can be thrown with a variety of grips, making them all behave in different ways. The circle change, the Vulcan change, the “Fosh” change, the three-finger and split change — the list goes on.

Luis Castillo, Kyle Hendricks, Mike Minor, and Zack Greinke are a few pitchers who possess a great changeup. But there is another you might not think of in the same breath who deserves the same level of recognition. One that Pitch Info rated as having the most effective changeup in baseball through the 2019 season, namely former Los Angeles Dodgers starter and current free agent Hyun-Jin Ryu.

Before we dive into Ryu’s changeup, let’s go over what having an “effective” changeup, per Pitch Info, entails.

This evaluation of effectiveness comes from our Pitch Type Linear Weights (or ‘Pitch Values’), which attempt to measure how successful a pitcher (or hitter) has been with (or against) a particular pitch. Did batters regularly hit the pitch for productive outcomes, or does it tend to create outs? There is no real predictive value in these ratings. Instead, they are a reflection of what happened over the course of the season, which makes this stat particularly useful here.

A bit of caution, as there is some missing context here. If a pitcher throws a highly-graded pitch, it doesn’t always mean that it’s been strong across the board. A pitcher could have other pitches that make the pitch in question better. For example, maybe he has a dynamite fastball and a breaking pitch that, when thrown before or after the heater, regularly keeps the hitter off-balance and produces favorable results. Is it because of the pitch itself (in this case, the changeup) or is it an after-effect of the fastball? Is Ryu’s changeup elite because it’s a good pitch on its own, or because his fastballs complement it well? Read the rest of this entry »

Stephen Strasburg has apparently decided to defy the notion that two-seamers are out of style in today’s game. Having rarely thrown the pitch from 2015-16, and not at all in 2017, Strasburg bumped up his use of the two-seamer in 2018, and more than doubled it in 2019. This season, pitchers threw the two-seam fastball 14.7% of the time on average; three of Strasburg’s six appearances in October doubled that mark.

That’s a sign he has a lot of faith in the pitch, considering the league wOBA for both the regular and postseason sits at .360.

Strasburg also is using a curveball, with great success, to the tune of a .159 wOBA against. What do these two pitches have in common? Allow me to explain. Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: Michael has previously written at Pitcher List and Baseball Prospectus, as well as his own site, Pitcher Giffer, and serves as the site manager for Bucs Dugout. You may also have seen his nifty pitch GIFs at ESPN. He’ll be contributing to FanGraphs a few times a week. We’re excited to welcome him.

Down two games to one to the Washington Nationals, with their season potentially hanging in the balance, the Houston Astros turned to rookie pitcher Jose Urquidy in Game 4 in an attempt to pull the World Series even. Not much was known or expected from the 24-year-old righty who made his post-All-Star break major league debut in July. To say Urquidy rose to the occasion on Saturday is a bit of an understatement. He kept the Nationals offense in check, throwing five innings with no runs allowed on two hits, no walks, and four strikeouts.

Urquidy spent one month with the team, was sent back down to the minor leagues in August, then returned in September. He continued to strike out hitters at a high rate, minimized his walks, and was able to deflate his ERA by four runs. He made two starts in four appearances, pitching a total of 11 innings, and allowed just one earned run off of four hits and two walks with a 2.76 FIP.

Could Urquidy develop into a front-line starter for the Astros in 2020? It’s possible, but he has an adjustment (or two) that will need to be made if he hopes to maintain his efficiency long term.

Urquidy was a relatively unheralded prospect; he currently sits at 19th in the Astros system on THE BOARD. Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel described him as having plus command, describing him at the time of their report as a “spot-starter type” but also noting there is a “chance that he actually has 7 command and is something more than that.” (That command is especially important given the diversity of arm slots from which he throws his pitches, but more on that in a moment.) With his future value rated at 40, it’s hard to imagine the rookie having the kind of outing he did on Saturday. Sure, you can point to the results of his seven starts and two relief appearances in 2019. During that stretch of 41 innings, Urquidi posted a 3.68 FIP, a 24% strikeout rate, and 4.2% walk rate. While that sounds great, it’s hardly enough data to infer future performance.

Below are the three main pitches Urquidy relies on– the fastball, changeup, and slider. He produces good movement, but notice how the fastball and changeup (sitting in the middle) arm slots are fairly close, but the slider is not:

A more drastic example appears below (with the curveball included):

Allow Brooks Baseball to show how disjointed they actually are, with Urquidy’s regular and postseason release points:

Read the rest of this entry »