Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Trevor Cahill, Marco Gonzales, and David Phelps— on how they learned and developed their curveballs.

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Trevor Cahill, Los Angeles Angels

“I didn’t throw my [current] curveball until my second year in the big leagues. I used to throw the double-knuckle — I didn’t spin it; I would literally flick it — and that worked in the minor leagues. It was actually my strikeout pitch. But once I got up here, I couldn’t really throw it with the big-league ball. Not consistently.

“The seams in the minor leagues were bigger, and that made a difference. Plus, big league hitters are more patient. I used to throw that pitch in the dirt a lot, and get swings, but I had trouble throwing it for strikes. Big league hitters, if you can’t throw it for a strike, they see that spin and just spit on it.

“One day I was playing catch with Brett Anderson, working on his slider grip, which he spikes. I did that, and it was really good on flat ground, so that offseason I started working on it. Then my finger started coming up higher, so I was throwing a normal spiked curveball. In 2010, in spring training, I started using it against hitters. I’ve thrown it ever since. Read the rest of this entry »

At this point, it seems like common knowledge that the sinker has fallen out of favor. We’ve covered that development pretty often here at FanGraphs over the past couple of years. In fact, here’s Jeff Sullivan doing just that in a 2017 piece called, “Baseball is Moving Away From the Sinker:”

“The league got a whole hell of a lot better at hitting the low pitch out of the ballpark. Not exclusively the low pitch, but disproportionately the low pitch. Swings started to gear up for elevating the low sinker. This is something that’s continuing today. Where many of those swings have a vulnerability is up, around the belt. The uppercut swing can have trouble connecting with pitches in the upper half, and those pitches have long gotten swings and misses, anyhow. Sinkers? Sinkers are supposed to be low. They’re not so good at the thigh.”

Since then, homer totals have soared and sinker usage rates have fallen. For those still working with a sinker, it’s often their worst pitch. This is true for Noah Syndergaard, Chris Archer, and even a guy like Aaron Sanchez, who has notably reduced his sinker usage since he was traded to Houston.

That doesn’t mean the sinker is entirely dead. The most obvious example of a guy with an effective one is Zack Britton, who’s riding his sinker to a near-80% ground-ball rate this year. Britton’s a unicorn, but there are still several “normal” pitchers succeeding with sinkers too. Look at the top of the pitch value leaderboard, and you’ll see a decidedly normal pitcher with a good sinker in Julio Teheran. Read the rest of this entry »

We have a sizable collection of players to talk about this week because the two of us have been busy wrapping up our summer looks at the 2020 Draft class over the last couple weeks. This equates to every prospect added to or moved on THE BOARD since the Trade Deadline.

Top 100 Changes
We had two players enter the 50 FV tier in Diamondbacks SS Geraldo Perdomo and Padres C Luis Campusano. Perdomo is in the “Advanced Baseball Skills” player bucket with players like Vidal Brujan, Brayan Rocchio and Xavier Edwards. He’s added visible power since first arriving in the States and had as many walks as strikeouts at Low-A before he was promoted to the Cal League, which has been Campusano’s stomping ground all summer. He’s still not a great catcher but he does have an impact arm, big power, and he’s a good enough athlete that we’re optimistic he’ll both catch and make the necessary adjustments to get to his power in games down the line.

We also moved a D-back and a Padre down in RHP Taylor Widener and 1B Tirso Ornelas. Widener has been very homer prone at Triple-A a year after leading the minors in K’s. His fastball has natural cut rather than ride and while we still like him as a rotation piece, there’s a chance he continues to be very susceptible to the long ball. Ornelas has dealt with injury and swing issues.

On Aristides Aquino
Aristides Aquino was a 50 FV on the 2017 Reds list; at the time, he was a traditional right field profile with big power undermined by the strikeout issues that would eventually cause his performance to tank so badly that he became a minor league free agent. A swing change visually similar to the one Justin Turner made before his breakout (Reds hitting coach Turner Ward comes from the Dodgers) is evident here, so we’re cautiously optimistic Aquino will be a productive role player, but we don’t think he’ll keep up a star’s pace. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, Mike Trout celebrated his 28th birthday, and here at FanGraphs, Craig Edwards baked a cake, so to speak, by using some yardsticks to measure Trout’s career to date without considering Wins Above Replacement. As Craig noted here, and as Ben Lindbergh said similarly at The Ringer, WAR and Trout have become rather inextricably linked during the span of his career. The metric’s ability to estimate value in the field and on the bases as well as at the plate has helped us appreciate the completeness of Trout’s game and accelerated our understanding of the breakneck pace at which he has carved out a spot among the very best in history.

With roughly six weeks to go in his age-27 season, Trout already has the highest WAR of any player at that stage. By FanGraphs’ version, his 72.9 WAR is 4.1 ahead of Ty Cobb, while by Baseball-Reference’s version, his 72.1 WAR is 3.1 ahead. Trout has done this despite having reached 120 games played in just six seasons thus far, though by this time next week, he’ll have reached that modest plateau a seventh time.

Less than 15 months ago, before Trout had even turned 27, I noted that he had matched the bWAR-based JAWS standard among center fielders — the average of the Hall of Famers at the position — moving into eighth place in those rankings. Since then, he’s climbed up to sixth, with a clear shot to surpass Ken Griffey Jr. for fifth before the month ends. Perhaps more impressively, this week he climbed past Mickey Mantle — Extra! Extra! Millville Meteor Overtakes Commerce Comet! — to take over sole possession of third place in seven-year peak (65.2), with Thursday night’s 4-for-4 showing against the White Sox, featuring his 40th homer of the season (one short of his career high, set in 2015) breaking what had been a tie that had lingered for a few days. Here, have a dinger:

Read the rest of this entry »

Ronald Acuña Jr., with 34 home runs, 28 stolen bases, and six weeks left in the season, has a chance to become the fifth player to join Major League Baseball’s 40-40 Club. If Acuña’s membership application is approved by feats of baseballing, he’ll join an exclusive fraternity of Jose Canseco, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, and Alfonso Soriano. Okay, mostly elite.

As someone who apparently became a “veteran” baseball analyst at some point, I’m not always sure if the game has changed or if I have. When I was a kid, there’d be talk of 20-20 clubs, 30 HR/100 RBI guys, and scores of home run milestones. But you don’t hear about these baseball clubs as often as you used to. Has fandom changed this much or have I become jaded about these kinds of statistically interesting accomplishments? Or is that some of the older markers for performance, such as the 400 Homer Club, have become less exclusive institutions to join than a sandwich shop that give you a 10th sub free after buying nine?

The 40-40 Club, on the other hand, still excites me. Part of it could be that Jose Canseco’s charge on his way to becoming the founding member of this fraternity in 1988 was still very early in my Serious Baseball Fandom phase. I’ve loved watching baseball from the age of three, but it wasn’t until a few years later I really became a serious fan of the game, aided by my grandfather getting me a subscription to Sports Illustrated in 1986, a bit before my eighth birthday. While I watched the 1983-1985 World Series games, the 1986 World Series was the first one where I really followed every pitch, watching to the end even on school nights. I can still remember Tim Teufel‘s error as much as Bill Buckner‘s more famous one, and am able to exactly replicate Marty Barrett‘s closed stance and Sid Fernandez’s three-quarters delivery.

Read the rest of this entry »

Unless you’re a die-hard Reds fan, you probably hadn’t heard of Aristides Aquino before this month. The 6-foot-4, 220-pound right fielder been part of Cincinnati’s system since being signed out of the Dominican Republic in January 2011, but his overly aggressive approach at the plate offset his considerable raw power and limited his attractiveness as a prospect, particularly as he aged. He entered this season, his age-25 campaign, with one major league plate appearance to his name, but the combination of an overhauled swing, a 28-homer showing at Triple-A Louisville, and the July 31 trade of Yasiel Puig led to his promotion to the majors, and since then, “The Punisher” has clubbed his way into the record books.

Aquino joined the Reds for a four-game series in Atlanta at the start of August, and after going 0-for-6 with three strikeouts in his first two games, went 2-for-2 with a walk against former Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel on August 3. After singling off Keuchel in the second inning for his first hit, he walked in the fifth and then hit a game-tying three-run homer in the seventh, though the Reds lost 5-4. He then reeled off a nine-game hitting streak, keeping it alive with a pinch-single on August 4. He homered off the the Angels’ Jose Suarez on August 6 in Cincinnati as part of his first three-hit game, then went yard in each of the first three games of a four-game series against the Cubs, dinging Cole Hamels and Yu Darvish in back-to-back contests. On August 10, he launched three homers, two off Kyle Hendricks and one off Dillon Maples, then added yet another homer on Monday night against the Nationals’ Tanner Rainey. His hitting streak came to an end with an 0-for-4 showing on Tuesday, though he did make some contact. Through 42 plate appearances, he’s put up video game numbers: .385/.429/1.026 for a 267 wRC+.

Read the rest of this entry »

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Tyler Beede, John Gant, and David Hale — on how they learned and developed their changeups.

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Tyler Beede, San Francisco Giants

“Based on how unique of a pitch it’s been for me, I’d say we should go with my changeup. I’m not sure of the numbers, in terms of batting-average-against or anything like that, but I know how effective it’s been for me. That’s from the time I was 13 or 14, when I learned it, to now at 26 [years old].

“I learned the pitch from a guy named Lenny Solesky. He was my pitching coach coming up through… right before high school. His big thing was — he never really showed me a specific grip — ‘hold it like an egg.’ That, and ‘keep the same arm speed as your fastball.’

“For me, it’s a light grip. It’s way far out in my fingertips. Having big hands, I’m kind of given more room to keep it out on my fingertips. It’s not a circle change. I don’t choke it, I don’t palm it; I just hold it loose with sort of a two-seam grip. And I’m not touching a seam. With my changeup, I like to feel like I’m throwing the crap out of nothing. Read the rest of this entry »

Ryan Yarbrough was in Maddux territory. He’d thrown just 89 pitches as he walked to the mound to begin the top of the ninth inning against the Seattle Mariners on Sunday with his Tampa Bay Rays leading 1-0, having allowed just three hits and no walks against eight strikeouts. The 27-year-old southpaw had two lefties waiting to face him, neither of whom had reached base that afternoon.

The inning started about as well as it could have, as Yarbrough took just 10 pitches to induce weak ground balls out of Mallex Smith and J.P. Crawford. He was now at 99 pitches and one out away from just the 18th complete-game shutout thrown in the majors this season. But as soon as Yarbrough got the ball back from the infield after Crawford’s groundout, he turned to see Rays manager Kevin Cash exiting the dugout and walking toward him. He tried to sneak in a word of protest before Cash got to the mound, but it was no use. His day was over.

“Obviously, a little angry,” Yarbrough said to reporters after the game, according to MLB.com. “But I think [Cash] would want me to be. I think he would want me to want to finish it. I don’t think I have any ill-will about it or anything.”

In the moment, Yarbrough did little to conceal the way he felt about the decision. Here’s the moment he sees Cash walking his way:

And here he is walking off the mound:

From Cash’s perspective, the move was a well-reasoned one. Tampa Bay was ahead by just one run, and the hitter on deck at the time, Domingo Santana, is plenty capable of doing enough damage to a mistake to make that lead evaporate. With the Rays possessing just a 1 1/2 game lead in the second Wild Card playoff spot, there was little margin for error in the big picture, too. Read the rest of this entry »

WAR isn’t everything, and it can certainly be more variable year to year for pitchers than it is for hitters. Still, Charlie Morton — who has pitched in parts of 12 major league seasons and never before accumulated more than 3.1 WAR in a single year — has posted 4.7 WAR through 25 starts in 2019, and we’re not even all the way to the middle of August. Here’s how he compares to the league leaders in that category:

Morton, who signed as a free agent with the Rays this offseason after stints in Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and Houston, has been a few different pitchers over the years. With Pittsburgh, where he established himself as a credible big league starter after a spotty minor league track record for the Braves, Morton threw two-seam fastballs nearly two thirds of the time and earned a reputation as a groundball machine, ranking 11th in the majors in GB% over the course of his seven seasons with the Pirates. In Philadelphia in 2016, and then even more markedly in Houston, where he won a world title in 2017, Morton raised his velocity by about two miles per hour across the board and added a cut fastball to complement his elite curveball.

This year for Tampa, Morton is throwing that curveball more frequently than he ever has before — 36.5% of the time, against a previous career high of 29.3% last year — and has found previously unknown levels of success in pairing that pitch with that cut fastball he first developed in Philadelphia and has been refining ever since. That pitch, in particular, has allowed Morton to make significant strides against lefties, who previously burned him to the tune of a career .344 wOBA against, but who are posting a substantially worsened .288 against him this year. Read the rest of this entry »

The other night, I was texting a friend of mine while simultaneously running one of my many queries on Baseball Savant. My “trivia” prompt was pretty simple: “Hitter with the most home runs on pitches outside the zone. Go.” His response was five words. “Javy is the obvious guess.”

Javier Báez was indeed the correct answer. The Cubs’ shortstop, who is known for his free-swinging tendency, has left the yard 28 times this season. Seven of those pitches weren’t even in the strike zone. Only seven hitters this season have at least five out-of-zone homers:

The names on this list are pretty interesting, and as you might expect, there are some similarities between them. Since Báez was the “obvious guess,” it made sense to consider whether most of these players were of a similar free-swinging variety. Generally speaking, they are. Six of the seven names on the list have an O-Swing rate above the league-average mark (31.4%), but what’s fascinating about the rest of this group is that Báez still sticks out, even if he’s not an outlier by the mathematical definition: Read the rest of this entry »