Mitch Keller has only thrown 69-and-a-third big-league innings, and he’s already had a remarkable career. The baseball gods are a big reason why. In his 2019 rookie season, the now-24-year-old Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander had a 7.13 ERA to go with a 3.19 FIP, and this past season he had a 2.91 ERA to go with a 6.75 FIP.

Hello, BABIP.

In an almost-inexplicable quirk of fate, Keller followed up a .475 BABIP — the highest one-season mark in MLB history — with a .104 BABIP in 2020. No pitcher who threw 20-or-more innings in last year’s pandemic-truncated campaign had a smaller percentage of balls put in play against him fall safely to the turf. This happened with an average exit velocity of 88.5 mph, which was higher than the 87.6 he’d allowed in 2019.

Ben Lindbergh wrote about Keller’s snake-bit season for The Ringer last spring, and the conversation they had prior to publication is what brought the data to the fore.

“I remember getting off that phone call and looking it up myself,” said Keller. “I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. That’s crazy.’ I knew that I had a high BABIP, but I had no idea it was the highest in history. Once he told me, it wasn’t like I was coming back to the dugout thinking, ‘Man, I think I’m having some bad luck.’ It was actually on paper, as a stat. It was, ‘No, seriously. I was having bad luck.” Read the rest of this entry »

Dave Magadan was a productive big-league hitter — he logged a 117 wRC+ from 1986 to 2001 — and he’s followed up his playing career with several stints as a hitting coach. In that role with the Colorado Rockies for each of the past two seasons, Magadan previously plied his trade with the San Diego Padres, Boston Red Sox, Texas Rangers, and Arizona Diamondbacks. His current situation is arguably the most challenging he’s faced. Having Coors Field as a home venue is a mixed blessing, and it goes without saying that today’s offensive environment is anything but ideal. Magadan has a boatload of experience and expertise, but he’s also got his work cut out for him.

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David Laurila: Let’s start with the fact that the game has changed — hitting has changed — since your playing days.

Dave Magadan: “I guess I’m a little biased. I like guys that control the strike zone and hit for a good average. It’s gone so far in the other direction, where guys don’t mind striking out 180 times as long as they’re hitting the ball out of the park. But there’s always a place for guys who give you good at-bats, get on base, consistently hit the ball hard, and aren’t overmatched by a certain type of pitcher. And there are guys like that in the game, but they’re just not as plentiful as when I played.”

Laurila: How much of the balls-in-play issue is swing plane, and the inability to handle the elevated fastball?

Magadan: “We could do about two hours on that, right? I mean, there is so much malpractice out there in the world of baseball. Not big-league hitting coaches, but guys who are trying to make names for themselves being hitting gurus, teaching kids to swing up and create that launch angle that that is so deceptive. Let’s forget about the swing plane; let’s just talk about contact point. To hit the ball in the air, you have to hit the ball out in front, but when you’re consistently trying to create that contact point, you’re going to swing and miss. You’re going to chase breaking balls, you’re going to chase changeups, you’re not going to be able to hit the late-action pitches. Read the rest of this entry »

Taijuan Walker came back strong in 2020. Coming off two seasons lost to Tommy John surgery, the 28-year-old right-hander put up a 2.70 ERA over 51-and-a-third innings. Six of his 11 starts came with the Toronto Blue Jays, who acquired Walker from the Seattle Mariners at the tail end of August in exchange for Alberto Rodriguez.

A return to health wasn’t the only thing that buoyed Walker’s rebound. Like many modern-day hurlers, the 43rd-overall pick in the 2010 draft has become an adherent of analytics and data-driven pitch-design. Currently a free agent, Walker is looking to move forward with a team that embraces those very things.

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David Laurila: What is your background with analytics and pitch design?

Taijuan Walker: “I went to Driveline about a week after the 2019 season ended. I spent a few days there and got assessed — all of the numbers, threw a bullpen — and it was nice to see where I was at with my fastball spin rate, and more. We talked about the numbers, and how to use those numbers to know what I’m looking for.

“That was part of the reason I signed with the Mariners [in February]; they had a lot of that same technology. Woody [Pete Woodworth], the pitching coach there, is smart, and really good.”

Laurila: I assume you’d been exposed to analytics previously?

Walker: “Yes, but I had a chance to really learn the numbers, whereas before it was more like, ‘Hey, these are your numbers,’ but never really having them explained to me. It was never, ‘This is what they mean, and this is how to make [a pitch] better.’”

Laurila: How are you going about making information actionable? Read the rest of this entry »

Chris Perez didn’t get many opportunities to swing the bat during his seven big-league seasons. As a short reliever who played primarily in the American League, that was to be expected. Somewhat less expected was what happened when he did have a chance to dig into the batters box.

“I had two [plate appearances], and I’m bitter about one of them,” Perez told me recently. “In 2008, my rookie year with St. Louis, we were in Florida at the old stadium, playing the Marlins. I came into the game in the eighth inning with one out, and got a double play with the bases loaded. When I went back to the dugout, Tony La Russa told me, ‘Hey, Chris, you’re still in there. Stay focused, because you’ve got the ninth.’”

The Cardinals were up by a run at the time, and Perez was due up sixth in the top half. Three hits and two outs later — an insurance run having crossed the plate — La Russa approached Perez again. This time the message was less welcome: “Go up to the plate and look dangerous, but don’t swing. I want you to take every pitch.”

La Russa was a veteran manager on his way to the Hall of Fame. Perez was a fresh-faced rookie. He took every pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

Clarke Schmidt is more than a talented, 24-year-old right-hander who made his major league debut with the New York Yankees in 2020. He’s also a bona fide pitching nerd. Selected 18th overall in the 2017 draft out of the University of South Carolina, Schmidt leans heavily on analytics as he strives to further develop an already formidable four-pitch arsenal.

His top two offerings — per Eric Longenhagen, “a power-sweeping, mid-80s breaking ball” and a two-seamer with “nasty tailing action” — have each been honed with the help of data. A third pitch, his four-seamer, is currently on that same path, while his changeup has likewise been undergoing nuanced tweaks. Big-league hitters have barely gotten a glimpse of Schmidt’s smart weaponry — last year’s cup of coffee comprised just six-and-a-third innings — but they can expect to see a lot more of him in the future. Clarke heads into the 2021 season as a strong candidate to capture a spot in New York’s starting rotation.

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David Laurila: You have a plus breaking ball. What is the story behind it?

Clarke Schmidt: “In college, I was a slider and curveball guy — mainly a slider guy — and my sophomore year, I think I led the SEC in strikeouts. I had [129] strikeouts, and if I had to guess, I got 90 of them on sliders. That was like my go-to pitch. It wasn’t very hard, but it was hard for hitters to see the spin. It was an interesting-spinning slider, and it had a good movement profile, but it wasn’t a sharp-breaking slider.”

Laurila: What made the spin interesting?

Schmidt: “It was very depth-y. Normally, when you see sliders from guys who throw mid-90s [fastballs], it’s like a Gerrit Cole slider, or more of a sharpness with it staying on the plate longer. Mine was more of a sweepy slider, kind of like Chris Sale has. It was a low-80s slider. Read the rest of this entry »

Mickey Tettleton was largely underrated throughout a career that spanned from 1984 to ’97. A switch-hitting catcher who blossomed after finally getting an opportunity to play full time at age 28 — this after being released by the Oakland A’s — he quietly excelled thanks to plus power and a keen eye. Playing with the Baltimore Orioles, Detroit Tigers, and Texas Rangers, Tettleton had baseball’s third-highest walk rate (18.2%) from 1989 to ’95, a seven-year stretch where he slashed .245/.384/.474 with 185 home runs and a 133 wRC+.

There are those who took notice. In The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, published in 2001, Tettleton is ranked as the 37th-best catcher of all-time. A low batting average and high strikeout numbers may have sullied his reputation with casual fans, but those who truly understand the game know better. Tettleton — a proud son of Oklahoma — provided a lot of value to his teams.

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David Laurila: You’re from Oklahoma. Were you a big baseball fan growing up?

Mickey Tettleton: “I was. Of course, it was different back then. The one game a week was on Saturday, and you were glued to your TV to watch it. I was a huge sports fan in general — I played football and basketball growing up — and was always a big-time baseball fan.”

Laurila: Did you follow a specific team?

Tettleton: “Cincinnati was obviously very big, and their main rival was the Dodgers, who had Bill Russell at shortstop. He’s from Oklahoma. But with the Johnny Bench connection, Cincinnati was really big around here.”

Laurila: I’ve read that you were named after Mickey Mantle. Read the rest of this entry »

Lucas Sims was one of Cincinnati’s best pitchers in 2020, and his slider was a big reason why. The Reds right-hander threw the firmer of his two breaking balls 34.1% of the time while registering a 2.45 ERA, and 11.9 strikeouts per nine innings, over 20 relief appearances. Per StatCast, opposing batters slugged a paltry .133 against the pitch. The story behind it reflects the vagaries of the art of pitching itself.

“I learned my slider from from Sonny [Gray], but it’s Sonny’s curveball grip,” explained Sims. “I was toying around with it one day — this was in 2019 — and when I threw it, it swept a lot. His is a downer curveball. I thought, ‘Well, that’s a little bit different.'”

So was the manner in which he unveiled the pitch. Sims spent a few days experimenting with Gray’s grip, but only on flat ground. It wasn’t until he toed the rubber in a game that he delivered one off a mound. The Reds were playing Pittsburgh, and Starling Marté at the plate with a two-strike count.

“I was like, ‘You know what? I might as well try it,’” recalled Sims, whom the Reds had acquired from Atlanta the previous year as part of the Adam Duvall deal. “I didn’t want to hang it — I wanted to make sure it didn’t get deposited — and ended up spiking it in the [left-handed] batter’s box. But then I threw another one and got a swing-and-a-miss. I decided, ‘All right, this is going to be a new pitch for me.”

Which brings us to the offering itself. Is Sims throwing a slider with Gray’s curveball grip, or does Gray throw a curveball with a slider grip? Read the rest of this entry »

Eric Jagers is on the fast track in the pitching world. Little more than seven years after discovering Driveline during his freshman year of college, the 25-year-old Iowa native is now the assistant pitching coach for the Reds. Promoted to the position last month — he replaced Caleb Cotham, who is now the Phillies’ new pitching coach— Jagers spent last season as the club’s assistant pitching coordinator. Previously Driveline’s Manager of Technical Development, he remains with the Seattle-area training facility in an advisory role.

Jagers touched on a handful of pitching-related topics, and a pair of Cincinnati hurlers, earlier this week.

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David Laurila: What do many people not really understand about the technological aspects of pitching development?

Eric Jagers: “That’s a good question. With all the pitch-tracking technology — and there are a lot of people who do understand this — it’s all the pieces together, as opposed to the segmented ways we tend to look at things: a pitch has got this movement, and it’s also got this location. But really, those things morph together. The location piece adds to the movement piece. A fastball with a lot of hop that’s also up in the zone is maximized. Same with a sinker that’s at the bottom of the zone. Conversely, with a sinker at the top — when we’re looking at short-form movement — it’s easy for the data to fool you into thinking it’s something it’s not.

“I think a lot of people are pretty comfortable viewing movement on TrackMan, Rapsodo, and now Hawk-Eye. But those are just giving us a piece of the equation. We need to factor in all the variables.”

Laurila: Can you elaborate on what you mean by data fooling you into thinking it’s something it’s not?

Jagers: “It’s easy to come up with an answer, and the easiest person to fool is yourself. It’s like the Richard Feynman quote. Basically, it makes it really easy for us to tell us the story that we want to tell, and we don’t have a full understanding — at least on surface-level stats — of what a complete pitch is. Going back to location and movement, in order to get a true vertical-break number, it’s not just 18 inches of spin-induced vertical movement. It’s that, plus where it was released from, plus where it entered the zone. All of those things together equate to one true number. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the “Best of 2020” articles that ran here at FanGraphs over the holidays featured an under-the-radar right-hander with a unique backstory and a knee-buckling bender. Titled Rangers Prospect Cole Uvila is a Driveline-Developed Spin Monster, the story chronicled, among things, a curveball that had spun upwards of 3,300 RPM in Arizona Fall League action. Honed with the help of technology, the pitch profiled as his ticket to Texas.

He’s no longer throwing it. Instead, Uvila is endeavoring to channel former Cleveland Indians closer Cody Allen.

“In my head, I was going to throw it until my career was over,” Uvila said of his old curveball. “Then the pandemic happened. There was a lot of time to look in the mirror, and you just don’t see big-league relievers throwing 76-mph curveballs. It’s not really a thing.”

Uvila started talking with people in the Rangers organization, as well as to the instructors he’s worked with at Driveline over the years. Their messages were essentially the same: With breaking balls — much like fastballs — velocity is king.

“Driveline R&D has this metric called Stuff Plus, which essentially takes every breaking ball over the last five years and gives it a number,” Uvila told me earlier this week. “It’s kind of like wRC+, where 100 is average. I think the highest one was a dude with the Cubs, named [Dillon] Maples, and his graded out at something like 240. So there’s this range of pitches, and looking at the list, I saw this theme of curveballs at 84-85 [mph]. I said, ‘Man, I need to throw this pitch harder.’” Read the rest of this entry »

In 2020 — this despite limited media access due to the pandemic — I once again had an opportunity to interview numerous people within baseball. Many of their words were shared in my Sunday Notes column, while others came courtesy of the FanGraphs Q&A series, or from feature stories. Here is a selection of the best quotes from this year’s conversations, with the bolded lines linking to the pieces they were excerpted from.

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“If you want to be a surgeon, you can’t just go into an operating room and start cutting people up. If you want to be a baseball analyst, you can start analyzing baseball data tonight. There’s a lot of public baseball data, and the sorts of modeling we do… a lot of it is open source and free.” — Sam Mondry-Cohen, Washington Nationals assistant GM, January 2020

“Going forward, I expect that we’ll be making fewer trades. We’re in a different growth pattern now. It’s about letting the young guys play.” — Jerry Dipoto, Seattle Mariners GM, January 2020

“You can’t control where you release the ball. The ball just naturally flies out of your hand. You can adjust where your arm wants to be when the ball flies out, but if the ball wants to fly out of your hand, it’s going to fly out out of your hand.” — Ethan Hankins, Cleveland Indians pitching prospect, January 2020 Read the rest of this entry »