Podcasts hosted by athletes — I don’t know about all that. But I did enjoy a recent clip from Mookie Betts’ podcast where he was talking to Cal Raleigh, who was comparing Zack Wheeler — perhaps the best pitcher in baseball — to his batterymate Bryan Woo.
“[Wheeler] is kind of like Woo,” Raleigh said. “He glides down the mound. And it’s so effortless. Some guys just have that natural glide down the mound, easy, and [the ball] just gets on you.”
Coincidentally, in a conversation in late August, Phillies minor league pitching coach Riley McCauley made the same comparison.
There’s a new pitch classification, well, sweeping the nation, and with the aptly-named sweeper comes a lot to learn about its behavior, usage, and effectiveness. For those catching up, the sweeper, which Statcast introduced to its pitch classification system this spring, is a breaking ball that plays more on the horizontal plane than the vertical one, typically thrown slower and with more break than a slider, “sweeping” across its path rather than dropping the way a traditional curveball might. The rarer slurve, on the other hand, breaks horizontally like a sweeper but also features more downward break. While the slider classification had become a bit of a catch-all for pitches that break horizontally, which vary tremendously in velocity and depth of the break, the introduction of the sweeper classification helps to differentiate the breaking ball by both the type and the amount of horizontal break. For reference, here’s what the average sweeper, slider, curveball, and slurve have looked like so far this year:
Pitch Type Averages, 2023
Pitch Type
Velocity
Glove-Side Movement
Vertical Movement w/o Gravity
Sweeper
81.6
14.6
2.2
Slider
84.8
5.9
2.0
Curveball
79.7
8.8
-8.9
Slurve
82.4
14.5
-3.1
SOURCE: Statcast
As many have noted, this isn’t a new pitch so much as it is a recognition of trends toward a pitch that was already there. Over the last seven seasons, the percentage of breaking balls that broke at least a foot to the pitcher’s glove side has risen from 17.7% in 2017 to 27.4% so far this year, including a seven-point increase in the last two seasons. Meanwhile, the average vertical drop (without gravity) on those breaking balls has shrunk from -5.9 inches as recently as 2019 to just -2.0 so far this year. Over the last few years, pitchers have been sending more and more breaking balls veering across the strike zone without dropping. Pitchers and teams have different names for the pitch – the Yankees call their version a “whirly;” Statcast now calls it a sweeper. Read the rest of this entry »
Every year, I help write the Fantasy Profiles you see on FanGraphs player pages. One of my assigned players for the 2020 season was Michael Pineda. Pineda is a bit of a mystery. In 2019, his fastball was a unicorn. Nothing in his profile made sense. I decided to investigate, and tweeted out my initial findings:
Pineda's 2019 fastball is a unicorn.
Velo down over 1 mph Spin down Bauer units (spin/velo) down Drop in its vertical break
But Career-high SwStr% Career-low GB%
The only change I noticed what that in 2017 and 2019, he started living up in the zone more.
No improved performance indicators stick out quite like higher velocity, greater spin, or a pitcher living in the strike zone more. Sometimes a pitch will improve if it’s thrown less often since batters don’t expect it, but Pineda’s fastball usage jumped. The flashing red lights are with the groundball rate; Pineda’s fastball’s groundball rate was almost halved. Maybe he was throwing higher in the strike zone. Here are his pitch location heat maps over those three seasons. Read the rest of this entry »
A pitcher’s swinging strike rate is one of the better measures of how well they are performing. It correlates well to their overall strikeout rate, and is one of the three gold standards I use (along with other methods) to evaluate a pitcher as a whole, in conjunction with O-Swing% (how often a hitter chases) and Z-Contact% (how little hitters make contact with pitches in the zone).
SwStr% can be used to inspect the effectiveness of either an entire arsenal or an individual pitch, and is a strong indicator of how good a pitcher’s “stuff” is. As such, an increased SwStr% is a desirable outcome for a pitcher. Obviously, some pitching styles don’t lend themselves to missing bats, and instead are good for timing disruption and/or weak contact.
One pitcher who fits the mold of a bat-misser is the young lefty prospect from the Oakland Athletics, Jesus Luzardo.
With a minuscule sample of just six games in 2019, amounting to 12 innings pitched, Luzardo had a strikeout rate of 34% (versus a 6.5% walk rate), and held hitters to a .119 batting average with an 0.67 WHIP while posting a 2.36 FIP (1.50 ERA). Luzardo was pretty good during the American League Wild Card game as well. Back in October against the Tampa Bay Rays, he pitched three innings, allowing one hit and two walks while striking out four. Read the rest of this entry »
Back in November, I wrote a piece on spin mirroring in which I broke down the phenomenon and its applications, along with theories on its effectiveness. There have been some misconceptions about how spin mirroring actually works. I’m going to attempt to break down how to create “true” (or parallel) spin mirroring, which is based on much more than just opposite spin directions. Spin direction, spin axis, tunneling, and “seeing” spin are all factors that make up this phenomena.
The premise of the strategy is based on a hitter’s potential to recognize spin and the pitcher having the ability to tunnel two pitches, which can create a repelling effect in terms of opposing Magnus force. This juxtaposing effect can create a large spread ratio between the tunnel point and the position of the pitches when they cross home plate. So long as the spin direction contrast is somewhere between 170 and 190-degrees, and their gyro degrees (where the spin axis is pointed in space) are similar, true spin mirroring can be facilitated.
The below example shows how spin direction and the spin axis of two pitches are affected by the contrary Magnus effect (as well as gravity), which creates the appearance of them almost pushing off from each other. There is no additional force from the balls themselves acting on each other; it’s simply how each pitch, individually, responds to this law of physics:
One thing I want to point out as we dive into this is that the Driveline EDGE tool I’ll be using doesn’t account for gravity, drag, or the effect seam orientation might have on ball flight, as well as any park factors like air pressure. These are provided to add visual context to reinforce my statements. That isn’t to say the tool doesn’t have uses otherwise; it relies more on the movement the pitcher is able to generate by himself, which is elaborated on here. Read the rest of this entry »
Curveballs can be fairly vexing to classify. Though not as vast as the kingdom of sliders, curveballs have more personality than other pitch types. Some curveballs have heavy sweep like a slider (slurve), or have a grip variation that will kill spin (knuckle curve); others can fall like a hard changeup (churve), while another variant seems to float in slow motion on the way to home (eephus).
Most tend to fit the more stereotypical slicing shape (sweep with comparable drop), or have a heavy arch that fits the 12-6 style. Each variation has its own identity and benefits depending on factors such as arm slot, spin direction, and axis orientation.
There are situations where a pitcher adopts a particular style but fails to execute the pitch, so it fits into its sub-category. You can have a 12-6 curveball that plots normally on the x-axis but fails to drop far enough down the y-axis. Or, you can have a more classic curveball that doesn’t separate itself enough from either plot point, which causes the pitch to hang in the zone.
But we can make adjustments to these undesirable results, and that’s what we’ll be focusing on in this piece. What can be done to add depth to a curveball that regularly demonstrates a lack of life or separation from the center of the pitch zone chart? Read the rest of this entry »
The supporting cast of Brad Brach, Robert Gsellman, and Justin Wilson present some uncertainty as well. Brach pitched well after being released by the Chicago Cubs, but projects for less than a win. Gsellman is an average reliever, and Wilson is an injury concern after missing 10 weeks in 2019 with elbow soreness.
And if things do go south for the bullpen, the Mets’ reinforcements are limited. Among them is 29-year-old righty Paul Sewald, who might be an option in 2020, but there are some adjustments he’ll have to make before he can be a meaningful contributor. As it stands, Sewald may not even make the 2020 Opening day Roster. Sewald possesses good command of his three-pitch arsenal, which consists of an average four-seamer and changeup, with an above-average slider. Sewald mainly goes to the fastball and slider, with some changeup cameos from time to time:
After an impressive 4.0 WAR season in 2019, 22-year-old right-hander Mike Soroka is set up to become the ace of the Atlanta Braves pitching staff. Soroka started all 29 games he appeared in last year and ranked 14th overall in FIP, with a 7.2 K/9 against a 2.1 BB/9 rate. Soroka induced grounders on over 50% of the contact he allowed, with a .206 GB BABIP (league average is .242 ). It’s a mixed bag of success when it comes to groundball pitchers, and Soroka ranked sixth overall in groundball rate last season (one spot behind his teammate Max Fried). Of the top 10 grounder rates in 2019, Soroka’s ERA was second to Hyun-Jin Ryu’s.
Soroka isn’t really a strikeout pitcher (142 strikeouts in 174.2 IP), but he does have a good mix of above-average pitches and velocity that keeps hitters wary. Soroka already does a pretty good job spreading out his arsenal, especially when ahead in the count and with hitters facing a two-strike count. Soroka’s repertoire has a few great pairing options, and if sequenced properly in the right game state, it could make the youngster dominant.
Let’s start by examining his arsenal. Soroka throws a two-seamer, a slurve, a four-seamer, and a firm, fading circle changeup. All four are demonstrated in the following isolated pitch overlay:
Miami Marlins right-hander Sandy Alcantara showed a lot of promise when he was given a spot in the starting rotation last year. His 2.3 WAR and 3.88 ERA were impressive, but there’s much more going on that meets the eye. Alcantara has a very cohesive pitch ecosystem; the design of each offering makes for a lot of interchangeable parts. Being able to adapt to situations with flexible pitch options gives Alcantara an edge that a lot of pitchers don’t have with their arsenal.
Most pitchers have one, maybe two, pitch combinations that pair well together. Alcantara actually has four, which can allow him to easily flex and keep hitters on their toes.
Alcantara operates with five pitches: two fastballs (four-seam and sinker), a slider, a tight, classic curveball, and a heavy, fading changeup.
San Diego Padres right-hander Chris Paddack had a pretty good first major league season. He struck out 153 hitters in 140.2 innings and posted a 0.98 WHIP with a 3.33 ERA and a 3.95 FIP. Amazingly, he did it with basically two pitches: a four-seam fastball and a changeup. Paddack also has a curveball that he has often tinkered with, but its use never eclipsed 15% in any count. It mainly appeared as the first pitch of the at-bat or when he was ahead in the count. Despite being able to keep hitters under control with two options for most of last season, one of the multiple curveball variations Paddack resorted to works best, both statistically and as an ideal fit with his four-seam and changeup.
Here’s a visual summary of Paddack’s three pitches in an isolated overlay example, which accounts for the typical location of each pitch last season:
Paddack has a well-designed, pure backspinning four-seam fastball with a 12:50 spin direction and nearly 100% spin efficiency. In terms of whiffs, the pitch was best when Paddack kept it high in the zone. When it came to contact, the four-seamer didn’t really have an advantageous location, with the exception of keeping the pitch out of the middle of the strike zone. Paddack held hitters to a .276 wOBA and demonstrated good control of the pitch as evidenced by his 0.18 BB/K-rate. Read the rest of this entry »
