Brad Ziegler Is a Freak

Relievers are the hot new thing, you might have heard. Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen got north of $80 million, plus opt-outs. Mark Melancon got $62 million, plus an opt-out. Mike Dunn got $19 million. Mike Dunn! Perhaps nothing says reliever inflation more than Mike Dunn getting $19 million. Or maybe that just says he signed with the Rockies, and the Rockies are weird. But Colorado bizarreness aside, good relievers aren’t cheap anymore.

Well, unless they’re good in a really weird way, anyway.

Wherever he ends up, Brad Ziegler is expected to land ~2 years, $17 million. Not bad for a 37-year-old with an 84-mph fastball. cc @ithrow88

— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) December 16, 2016

This is just how it is when you’re an oddball. I’m sure Brad Ziegler is used to it by now, but it is interesting that the hook here isn’t that Ziegler is a good reliever getting less than a mediocre LOOGY got a few days ago, but that Ziegler is a reliever without a traditional big league fastball. When, velocity aside, let’s be clear that Brad Ziegler’s track record makes it inarguable that he’s been a very good reliever.

Over the last three years, Ziegler is one of just 15 relievers to have thrown at least 200 innings. Of that group, his +5.1 RA9-WAR ranks 7th, right between Jeurys Familia and Cody Allen. If we lower the bar to 150 innings to let some guys in who have worked less — and thus, switch to a rate stat to compensate for the difference in workloads — we find Ziegler’s .273 wOBA allowed is basically the equal of David Robertson’s .270 mark. We can slice and dice things all kinds of ways, but the conclusion is basically always the same; Brad Ziegler has performed at the kind of level that should make him a household name.

But Ziegler is still kind of anonymous, because, as Passan notes, he throws 84 mph and he doesn’t strike anyone out. Of the 77 relievers who have thrown at least 150 innings over the last three years, Ziegler ranks 70th in strikeout rate and 77th in fastball velocity. And in the latter category, it’s not even really close. The next slowest throwing reliever is Darren O’Day, who is up near 87. Ziegler isn’t just the softest tosser; he’s the softest tosser by almost three miles per hour.

But that’s actually not what makes Ziegler so weird. The velocity is a fun trivia question, but here’s the really insane thing about how Ziegler gets people out; he succeeds in a way that basically no one else can replicate. If all you knew about a guy was that he threw 84 and he got people out anyway, you’d almost certainly assume he pounds the strike zone, right? This is the Bartolo Colon plan, or before him, Jamie Moyer. We’ve seen guys without good fastballs succeed, and it’s almost always because they can paint the corners of the strike zone with precision.

Brad Ziegler doesn’t do that. Brad Ziegler does the exact opposite of that. Below is a chart of all the qualified relievers in baseball over the last three years, with their walk rates and Zone% listed on the x/y axes.

This chart is mostly what you’d expect; the guys in the upper half of the graph are the strike-throwers, the guys who pound the zone, and by and large, they live on the left side side of the graph, where the low walk rates are represented. As you go down in Zone%, your walk rate goes up, so you move right on this chart. It’s not a perfectly linear arrangement, but the obvious is basically true; the guys who throw strikes don’t walk guys, and the guys who don’t throw strikes do.

Except Brad Ziegler, who is labeled on the chart, even though he probably doesn’t need to be, since his little dot would stand out regardless. Ziegler, you’ll note, is the lowest dot on the chart, meaning he has thrown a lower rate of pitches in the zone than any other qualified reliever in baseball. And yet, his walk rate during that time is basically league average. Every other pitcher with a Zone% under 40% has a double-digit walk rate, and is generally not a great pitcher. The guys at least remotely near him in strike throwing? Zach Putnam, Chasen Shreve, Marc Rzepczynski, Javier Lopez, and Gonzalez Germen. These guys aren’t great, because by and large, they walk too many guys to be effective.

Ziegler, though, lives out of the zone more than any other pitcher, and yet, walks aren’t really a problem for him. This is, in part, because he throws a pitch that hitters just never see otherwise, and don’t really know how to handle. August Fagerstrom wrote about Ziegler’s absurd swing-inducing-yet-never-in-the-zone change-up back in February.

Changeup – Brad Ziegler

• Thrown out of the zone: 85% of the time
• Swung at, when out of the zone: 54% of the time
• Meaning: 46% of the time this pitch is thrown, it’s both a) out of the zone and b) swung at

This was the hardest pitch in all of baseball to lay off last year, by my methodology. Which makes sense, given it could just be the rarest pitch in baseball. Yes, that’s right. Eno Sarris wrote about this very pitch at length for FOXSports last year, noting the oddity of a submarine pitcher throwing a changeup.

Sarris explains:

“You pronate (‘pull down’ on the inside the ball for a righty) with the changeup and supinate (pull down on the outside of the ball) with breaking pitches, generally.

…

There are only three true submariners pitching right now. But it also seems like the physics of throwing a changeup from down under make things difficult. Try to mimic pulling down on the inside of the ball from that angle, and you’ll see that it is difficult to pull off.”

The way a changeup’s spin is achieved and the way a submariner’s mechanics work are like oil and water, yet Ziegler has found a way to blend the two. Few batters have ever seen a pitch that moves like Ziegler’s from Ziegler’s arm slot, and so it makes sense that they have a hard time laying off.

When I first watched the video, the pitch didn’t actually look that low, but it was actually the lowest changeup Ziegler threw that got a swing all year. Must be the deception. And the fact that he puts it right about there every time:

It’s almost never a strike, yet batters keep swinging, and Ziegler is able to pound that one corner of the plate, low-and-outside to lefties, low-and-inside to righties. Of the 118 pitchers who threw at least 200 changeups last year, Ziegler’s had the sixth-highest swing rate, and the third-highest ground ball rate.

This is how Brad Ziegler gets people out with an 84 mph fastball; by actually doing it with a 77 mph change-up. And it’s why a side-armer can get lefties out, rather than being confined to the specialist role that almost all of his fellow drop-down pitchers are forced into. Ziegler might not have a big league fastball, at least from a velocity standpoint, but the development of his change-up has made him a very unique pitcher, and allowed him to get hitters to chase pitches out of the zone even without stuff that would be described as traditionally dominant.

So Ziegler basically breaks every mold you can think of. And he even breaks our models. His career FIP is 3.38, but his career ERA is 2.44, almost a full run lower. Part of that is that groundball pitchers get to count more of their runs as unearned because there are more errors on groundballs than on flyballs, so ERA systematically is biased in favor of groundball pitchers. A larger part of it, however, is that Ziegler has just been very good at stranding runners throughout his career, in part because it’s really hard to score a guy from second or third base on a groundball in a high-leverage situation, when the infield is often unwilling to trade a run for an out.

So Ziegler is about as unique as it gets, and unsurprisingly, the markets aren’t as willing to reward a guy who succeeds in a way that no one else can. There’s risk there, in a way that doesn’t exist with more traditional players. And there’s probably some extra risk with Ziegler, given that the league has talked about raising the bottom of the strike zone in order to alleviate the pressure for guys to swing at pitches they can’t hit. Ziegler would be hurt by that change more than anyone, in all likelihood, so if the strike zone really does change in 2017, perhaps his approach won’t work quite as well.

Given his age and unique skillset, it’s not that surprising that Ziegler looks like something of a relative bargain compared to some of the other reliever contracts we’ve seen this winter. When we focus on what Brad Ziegler can’t do — throw hard — then we miss what he can do; get people out. He won’t do that forever, but in this market, $17 million for a durable workhorse who keeps runs off the board seems like something of a bargain.