Bryce Miller has improved on his 2023 rookie season with the Seattle Mariners. Especially notable are his ERA (3.46 versus last year’s 4.32), FIP (3.70 versus 3.98), and OPS against opposite-handed hitters (.685 OPS versus .917). At the same time, many of his numbers have been strikingly similar. When I spoke to the 25-year-old right-hander at the end of July — he’s since made two starts — his win-loss record and average fastball velocity were identical to last year’s marks, as were his FB% and HR/FB%. His strikeout rate differed by just a few percentage points.
I cited those similarities to the righty, then proceeded to ask him what differentiates this season’s version of Bryce Miller from last year’s.
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Bryce Miller: “I think that type of stuff is very similar, but the lefty-righty splits are quite a bit different. Last year, lefties batted over .300 against me. This year, it’s around .215. I think the addition of the splitter has been big, and I’ve also been locating better. If you look at the heat maps from last year, a lot of the fastballs were in the middle of the plate. This year, I’ve gotten them [elevated] a little better for the most part. So getting the heaters up and the splitters down has helped me out a lot with the lefties. That’s really been the main thing.”
David Laurila: Why is the splitter so much better than the changeup you were throwing? Read the rest of this entry »
In early April, an article titled “Astros Pitching Prospect Spencer Arrighetti Is All in With Analytics” ran here at FanGraphs, and given what the 24-year-old right-hander had to say, the headline was wholly accurate. In a conversation that took place during spring training, Arrighetti displayed nuanced knowledge of his pitch metrics while comfortably addressing topics like seam-shifted wake and vertical approach angle. He presented as a bona fide pitching nerd.
Four months into his rookie season — he made his major league debut with Houston on April 10 — Arrighetti is a nerd with an altered approach. The evolution of his M.O. has taken place over the course of an up-and-down campaign that currently has him on a high. Over his last two starts, the 2021 sixth-round pick out of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has allowed just three runs while fanning 25 batters in 13 innings. On the year, he has a 5.14 ERA, a 4.18 FIP, and a 27.9% strikeout rate in 105 innings.
Arrighetti explained how and why his approach has changed when we sat down to chat at Fenway Park this past weekend. My first question elicited an expansive, five-minute response, after which we shared a handful of additional exchanges.
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David Laurila: What’s changed since we talked in spring training?
Spencer Arrighetti: “I have a much better perspective now. When we talked in Lakeland, I was speaking with three big league spring training games under my belt. This is a very different game than I thought at that time. The conversation we had, as great as it was, left out a really big piece of what successful pitching is in the modern era. Obviously, shapes and velocity are really important. Arsenal design is really important. There are people who believe those are primary, but after my time up here, I’m not convinced that chasing shapes is the way to go. Read the rest of this entry »
When Dan Szymborski published his 2024 ZiPS Projections prior to Opening Day, the Kansas City Royals were penciled in for a 73-89 record and a fourth place finish in the American League Central. Coming off of a cellar-dweller season where they lost 106 games — no previous Royals team had lost more — that would have represented a clear step in the right direction.
The predicted step has materialized into a sizable stride. With two months left in the regular season, the Matt Quatraro-managed club is not only currently projected to finish with 86 wins, their postseason odds are hovering around a promising 59%, up from 13.2% at the start of the campaign. Dan hinted at that possibility in his March 27 piece. My colleague wrote that “a Royals playoff appearance would be unlikely but not unreasonably so.”
How have the Royals managed to exceed expectations? I sat down with Quatraro on the eve of the All-Star break — his team has since won nine of 13, and added Lucas Erceg, Paul DeJong, and Michael Lorenzen prior to Tuesday’s trade deadline — to get his perspective.
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David Laurila: Your team has been better than expected. Why?
Matt Quatraro: “Pitching is the name of the game. Our starting pitching has been tremendous. [Seth] Lugo, [Cole] Ragans, [Michael] Wacha, [Brady] Singer. [Alec] Marsh, as well. They’ve taken the ball. They’ve been durable. They’ve kept us in a million games. All in all, the bullpen has been pretty solid, too. There have been some ups and downs, but they’ve weathered some storms. Read the rest of this entry »
When I first wrote about him in 2017, JP Sears was a recently drafted prospect in the Seattle Mariners system who was racking up prodigious strikeout totals in the low minors. When I wrote about him for a second time four years later, he was pitching for the New York Yankees Double-A affiliate and again punching out more than his fair share of batters. Fast forward to this season, and Sears is firmly established as a member of the Oakland A’s starting rotation. The 28-year-old southpaw came to the A’s in 2022 as part of the six-player trade deadline deal that sent Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Bronx, a swap that worked out better for the woebegone West Coast club than many were expecting at the time.
Sears no longer puts up sexy numbers in the K category — his strikeout rate this season is a humble 18.1% — but the overall output has been solid. His 119 1/3 innings pitched this season are the most on the team — ditto his eight wins — and his 6.5% walk rate is indicative of a strike-thrower. The 4.53 ERA and 4.60 FIP aren’t anything to write home about, but Sears is nonetheless the best starting pitcher on the A’s.
Sears, who threw seven shutout innings on Monday against the San Francisco Giants, sat down to talk about his evolution as a pitcher when the A’s visited Boston in mid-July.
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David Laurila: When we last talked, you were pitching in Double-A. Are you basically the same pitcher now, just three years later?
JP Sears: “Good question. I would say that I’m a lot different pitcher. I still use what kind of helped me get through the minor leagues, that being my fastball and the ability to locate it. But my arsenal has definitely gotten bigger. I’ve started throwing a sweeper a lot more — I really just learned that about two years ago — and I’ve also introduced the changeup as more of a pitch. In the minor leagues, I kind of just used it as a bait type of pitch, a show-me pitch, and now it’s more of an executed pitch that I can throw whenever. My average velo has increased a little bit, but the biggest thing would be adding to my arsenal.” Read the rest of this entry »
On July 27, 2018, a piece titled A Conversation With Oakland Pitching Coach Scott Emerson was published here at FanGraphs. Notable about the piece is that a question I’d asked about a particular pitcher, Daniel Mengden, ended up segueing into a variety of related topics. As I noted at the time, Emerson loves discussing his craft.
Six years later, that hasn’t changed. A few days before the All-Star break, I once again sat down with Emerson at Fenway Park. I wanted to ask him about pitch counts — the night before, A’s starter JP Sears threw 114 pitches across 5 2/3 innings in Oakland’s 5-2 win over the Red Sox — and expected our chit-chat would last roughly five minutes. Not surprisingly, we talked a good bit longer. Moreover — again not a surprise — we ended up discussing not just what I’d intended, but other aspects of the art and science of pitching as well.
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David Laurila: JP Sears threw 114 pitches last night. “What is your philosophy on starters going deep into games in terms of pitch count?
Scott Emerson: “For us last night, he had an extra day of rest, and we’re also going into the break, so he’s going to have some rest there. We wanted him to get through the sixth so we could get to [Austin] Adams, [Lucas] Erceg, and [Mason] Miller. We thought that was our best chance through their lineup.
“As for me, I like starters to go as long as they can and as hard as they can. I don’t think 114 is necessarily that high of a pitch count. I thought he was throwing the ball fine. [Mark Kotsay] and I talked about it, and [Sears] felt good about himself, so we tried to get him through [Rafael] Devers. That was the goal.”
Laurila: Generally speaking, how does a pitcher’s arm action and pitching style factor into it? Read the rest of this entry »
The Toronto Blue Jays’ Matt Hague is earning a reputation as one of the best young hitting coaches in the game. Promoted to the big league staff this year after a pair of seasons spent working at Double-A, followed by a year in Triple-A, the 38-year-old former first baseman is one of the team’s two assistant hitting coaches. (Hunter Mense, who was featured in our Talks Hitting series in July 2022, is the other, while Guillermo Martinez is the lead hitting coach and Don Mattingly serves as the team’s offensive coordinator.)
Hague’s playing career included several strong seasons in the minors, but only a smattering of opportunities in the majors. The Bellevue, Washington native logged just 91 big league plate appearances, 74 with the Pittsburgh Pirates and 17 with the Blue Jays. And while what he experienced over 11 professional campaigns influences the approach he brings to his current role, what he’s learned since is every bit as important. Like most coaches who excel at their jobs, Hague is not only an effective communicator, he embraces modern training methods.
Hague sat down to talk hitting when the Blue Jays visited Fenway Park in late June.
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David Laurila: You last played professionally in 2018. What do you know now that you didn’t know then?
Matt Hague: “Oh, man. That’s a really good question. I think the how. As a coach you’re kind of forced to unfold things that you thought as a player, but didn’t necessarily go really deep into, or didn’t have the chance to go as deep into. The importance of certain things shift on what you want to emphasize. That’s because you’re looking out for a whole group, even though it’s an individual plan, or an individual mover — a certain trait that an individual person needs to develop and continue to get better at.
“There are a lot of different pathways on how to bring out certain stuff, and the more you evolve as a coach, your perspective shifts. You try to find understandings on the mentality side, the game-planning side, the technical part of it. So yeah, I think it’s that you’re just forced to find out more. You’re forced to have a broader perspective than you had as a player.” Read the rest of this entry »
Last Thursday, a Q&A titled “Chris Bassitt Embraces the Art of Pitching” ran here at FanGraphs. In it, the 35-year-old Toronto Blue Jays right-hander discussed his diverse repertoire — “eight or nine pitches,” he told me — and how he uses them to attack hitters. Both stylistically and variety-wise, Bassitt is a close approximation of a pitcher who will represent the Kansas City Royals in tonight’s All-Star Game. That would be Seth Lugo.
The Royals were at Fenway Park last weekend, and with Boston being my home base, I took the opportunity to talk to the 34-year-old right-hander. I expected a conversation similar to the one I’d had with Bassitt, and I was by no means mistaken. Lugo, who boasts a 2.48 ERA and a 3.31 FIP this season, very much embraces the art of pitching.
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David Laurila: How have you developed as a pitcher over the years?
Seth Lugo: “I would say that I’ve learned from failure. Coming up through the minors is different than pitching in the big leagues. Once you get to the big leagues you start to notice a pattern with how your mistakes are happening, whether it’s a pitch, sequences, or game situations. I think that learning from my mistakes has been the biggest thing for me.”
Laurila: You used to be known primarily for your curveball, and now you have a varied repertoire. How has your adding of pitches evolved?
Lugo: “Well, as a reliever I would usually just stick with my best two pitches and show one or two more, whether it be [against] a righty or a lefty, a changeup or a slider. When I was in San Diego last year, the pitching coach, Ruben Niebla, was talking about sweeper sliders. I’d never heard the term sweeper before. I didn’t really know what it meant. We started messing with some grips. He told me, ‘You can spin it good. You can spin some other stuff, so it doesn’t have to be just one pitch you’re spinning so well.’ That’s kind of how that came along.
“Growing up, I was always messing around with balls, whether it was a Whiffle Ball or a baseball. I was throwing pitches, just having fun. I’ve always had the ability to pick up a new pitch pretty quickly, so I realized that I can throw more than just three or four pitches in a game. Right now it’s up to 10 or 11. I’m keeping the hitters off balance and recognizing their swing paths, trying to make an adjustment before they do.”
Laurila: What is your full repertoire right now?
Lugo: “Two-seam, four-seam, cutter, change, split-change, sweeper, slow sweeper, one that I call the carry sweeper, slurve, curveball, and slider — a regular slider.”
Laurila: You’re basically Chris Bassitt…
Lugo: “I think I’ve got one or two more than him. I was also throwing a gyro sweeper earlier in the season — I haven’t thrown it in about four starts now — so then I had 12 pitches.”
Laurila: Gyro sweeper sounds counterintuitive…
Lugo: “Yeah. It’s like a one-seam gyro spin that catches. It’s a bigger horizontal break than a regular gyro slider. It’s not depth-y, but shoots to the left pretty good. A sweeper is going to have side spin. Gyros have bullet spin. A gyro sweeper is bullet spin, but with one seam… one seam that catches. A seam-shift gyro.”
Laurila: But you’re not actually throwing it now…
Lugo: “I’ll probably bring it back out. I was working through a couple of other things. Between that one and my slider they were starting to blend a little bit. But yeah, I’ll bring it back out one day.”
Laurila: How did you initially learn it?
Lugo: “I had someone reach out to me. He said that a lot of guys around the league are swinging and missing at gyro spin, and if you can find a way to get more sweeper action with gyro spin, that one’s pretty hard to hit. I think [Alec] Marsh throws a variation of that. Tinkering with a couple of grips, I found one that worked pretty good. But I kind of got away from it a little bit. I picked it up after a month, just this season, so I haven’t had a lot of time to work on it and find the consistency.”
Laurila: Who suggested the pitch?
Lugo: “A guy I know. I’ll leave it at that.”
Laurila: How many pitches did you have when you moved into a starting role last season?
Lugo: “In the offseason, I developed a different slider. I threw it for two months last year before I figured out the sweeper and the other pitches. It was like a slow slider, which I haven’t thrown since. So, it was two sliders, changeup, four-seam, sinker, curveball.”
Laurila: You’ve basically doubled the number of pitches you’re throwing…
Lugo: “In about a year, yeah. I was on the IL and that’s when I came up with a couple of pitches — in June, last year.”
Laurila: I assume you’ve used a lot of tech when developing pitches?
Lugo: “It’s actually more feel for me. Feel and just the horizontal and vertical movements. We’ve got the TrackMan. I don’t look at spin rates, really. I check on my curveball every once awhile, just to make sure it’s spinning like it should, but mostly it’s just horizontal and vertical movements that I look at.”
Laurila: Are you still throwing the same curveball?
Lugo: “Same curveball I’ve always had. I’ve just learned how to use other pitches off of it to make it perform better. My first couple years, with two strikes you were probably getting a curveball. That makes it easier to hit. Guys could eliminate pitches really easily. Now, having four or five pitches in their head when they get to two strikes makes the curveball perform even better.”
Laurila: Where do you think you’d be if you were still a reliever? Would you be as good as you are now?
Lugo: “Well, I wouldn’t have all of these pitches. I would say it would be similar to my career average. I would kind of be where I was.”
Laurila: With your ability to utilize a variety of pitches, starting seems like a natural fit.
Lugo: “Yeah. That and reading swings, and trying to get guys off certain pitches to save them for later in the game. Finding holes where I can go to them over and over. As a reliever, you’re only facing three or four guys, so they can be ambushing first pitch, or they could be taking to get a strike. It’s kind of a smaller game plan, tactic, to pitch as a reliever.
“As a starter, if a guy has a big hole you’re going to expose that hole. But if the guy is a pretty good hitter — he’s hard to get out — you’re going to show all of your pitches, and you’ve got to know where each of them fits. As I’m going over these hitters, we’re talking about where we’re going to throw each one. Some of them might not even be competitive, but I want them to look at it and think about it. I try to find a spot to throw every pitch, even if it’s a pitch they hit well. There is going to be somewhere they don’t hit it — it might be in the dirt — but we’re going to throw it.”
Laurila: You mentioned saving pitches. What is the value in not throwing something you know a hitter has a hard time handling?
Lugo: “So, let’s say it’s the four-hole hitter. This pitch is going get him out most every time — he’s got some weak contact on it — but he’s not going to swing and miss at it. There is no one on base and we’ve got a three-run lead. I’m not going to go straight to my best pitch to get him out; I’m going to save that for when there are two guys on and no outs. In a different situation, you pitch different. That also keeps it harder for guys to pick up my sequences.”
Laurila: Something I’ve asked a lot of pitchers is whether they view pitching as more of an art or as more of a science. I think I know what your answer would be…
Lugo: “It’s an art. I mean, science will help you. Like with anything, you can use science to make your techniques better. You can use it as a learning tool, but you can’t just plug it in. There are too many variables out there for it to work every time. Ultimately — at least to me — it’s not a science. It’s an art.”
With the Blue Jays a whopping 16 games out of first place in the American League East and eight teams in front of them in the wild card race, right-hander Chris Bassitt and several other notable Toronto players could be traded before the fast-approaching July 30 trade deadline. It would make a lot of sense for the Blue Jays to move on from Bassitt, a 35-year-old on a contract worth $22 million annually that extends through next season. No shortage of contenders are seeking pitching help, and Bassitt would seemingly yield an attractive return.
His track record is that of a reliable starter. Since the beginning of the 2021 season, Bassitt has logged a 3.43 ERA and a 3.79 FIP while tossing the seventh-most innings in the majors. Moreover, after a rocky first month (5.64 ERA, 5.55 FIP across his first six starts), he has been at the top of his game since the beginning of May. Bassitt boasts a 2.69 ERA and a 3.02 FIP over his past 13 starts, and he’s gone at least five frames in all of them. Overall, he is 8-7 with a 3.52 ERA, a 3.73 FIP, and 2.0 WAR across 107 1/3 innings this season.
How does the 10-year veteran approach his craft? I sat down with him earlier this month to find out.
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David Laurila: Would you call yourself a pitching nerd?
Chris Bassitt: “I like to understand the art of it, for sure. I would say that it’s more been a fascination with just watching guys. I’ve been blessed to be teammates with a lot of guys who are really, really good, and I’ve always liked to watch the pitches they use, how they use them, who they use them against. Things like that.
“If I’m having struggles with, say, a certain type of hitter, I kind of go back to what I’ve seen in the past with other pitchers and what they’ve done. If that makes me a nerd, then yeah.”
Laurila: Are you mostly just watching — I’m sure video is a big part of that — or are you also digging into the data? Read the rest of this entry »
Juan Nieves had a promising career cut short by a shoulder injury. A 21-year-old when he debuted with the Milwaukee Brewers in April 1986, the southpaw from Santurce, Puerto Rico pitched just three big league seasons before a tear in his rotator cuff was discovered. With 490.2 innings, 32 wins, and a no-hitter already under his belt, Nieves threw his last pitch at baseball’s highest level prior to celebrating his 24th birthday.
He joined the coaching ranks not long thereafter. Nieves has been tutoring hurlers since 1992, most recently as the assistant pitching coach for the Detroit Tigers, a position he’s held since November 2020. He looked back at his playing days when the Tigers visited Fenway Park earlier this season.
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David Laurila: You faced some great hitters during your relatively short stint in the majors. How did you view those matchups at the time?
Juan Nieves: “It’s funny. Coming from Puerto Rico, I grew up watching the Pirates because of Roberto Clemente, and because of Turner Broadcasting we saw a lot of the Braves. It was more National League, and I ended up in the American League [the Brewers joined the senior circuit in 1998]. Read the rest of this entry »
Spencer Horwitz is hoping to show that what he did in the minors can be replicated in the majors, and so far, he’s off to a strong start. Displaying what my colleagues Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin called “a patient, contact-driven approach at the plate,” the lefty-hitting Blue Jays utilityman has slashed .310/.430/.479 with an equal amount of walks and strikeouts over 86 plate appearances since being called up from Triple-A in early June. By comparison, his numbers down on the farm include a .307/.413/.471 slash line and roughly the same number of strikeouts and free passes over parts of five professional seasons. The extent to which Horwitz can continue having this level of success against major league pitching remains to be seen — last season’s 15-game cup of coffee yielded lesser results — but his skillset and upside are promising.
In the latest installment of our Talks Hitting series, the 26-year-old Horwitz discussed how he’s learned and evolved as a hitter over the years, from watching Manny Machado flicking the barrel to challenging himself with high velocity off of machines.
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David Laurila: Let’s start with one of my favorite ice-breaker questions in this series: Do you view hitting as more of an art or as more of a science?
Spencer Horwitz: “Oh, good question. I would say a blend of both. I’ve been blessed in a lot of ways with some hitter-ish things that I can’t explain, but I’ve also learned a lot through the science of hitting.”
Laurila: When did that learning start?
Horwitz: “I think it started when I was in high school, not really knowing what I was looking at, but watching really good hitters and trying to emulate them. Later, I was able to put some true numbers to the data that I was collecting in my mind.” Read the rest of this entry »
