Rule 5 picks aren’t known to be guaranteed successes. Of course, there are the obvious exceptions, like Odubel Herrera, Marwin Gonzalez or Hector Rondon, but for every success, there’s a Tyler Goeddel, a Jabari Blash, a Taylor Featherston. Generally speaking, the Rule 5 Draft is a good way to ensure players aren’t buried on a roster, but in terms of long-term contributors, not much often comes of it.

With that said, let me introduce to you right-handed reliever Brandon Brennan. He was the 13th overall selection in the 2018 Rule 5 Draft by the Seattle Mariners, who were so interested in bringing him aboard that they made the pick even after missing out on signing him as a minor league free agent.

When the decision to draft Brennan was made, Mariners Vice President of Scouting Tom Allison expressed his enthusiasm to Greg Johns of MLB.com. “Opportunity is probably what he needs the most, and we have that to give him,” Allison said.

What I love most about this quote is how accurate it is four months later. Brennan not only made the Mariners’ Opening Day roster, but he’s been superb so far here in the early going, making the most of the opportunity that Allison said Seattle had to give. Granted, he’s made just nine appearances and pitched just 12.1 innings, but the results have been there. Brennan has pitched to a 0.73 ERA (one earned run allowed) and 2.57 FIP, with 13 strikeouts (29.6 K%) to just two walks (4.6 BB%) across the 44 batters he’s faced. Hitters are hitting just .143 (6-for-42) against him. Anecdotally, he’s been called “the Mariners’ best reliever this season.” Read the rest of this entry »

Early season performances are always tough to get a handle on, but on a team level, the 16-game mark is worthy of some note. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2012 book Extra Innings: More Baseball Between the Numbers (a book to which I contributed), Derek Carty — a name that should be familiar around here — found that at the 16-game mark, a team’s year-to-date record became as predictive as simply assuming they’ll finish at .500, as the largest possible sample of teams inevitably does. Through Monday, 19 teams have played at least 16 games, and 11 have played at least 17, which makes this a good time to take a closer look.

In his study, Carty examined non-strike seasons from 1962 through 2011, calculating the correlation between a team’s record after n games and its final record. After one game, for example, the correlation with teams’ final mark was just .12, while at the five-game mark it was .28, and at the 10-game mark, .42. The correlation reached .5 at the 16-game mark, rose to .52 at the 17-game mark, and so on. Carty made no mention of the likelihood of teams making the playoffs, though with changing postseason formats — including the introduction of a second Wild Card in each league starting in 2012, just when the book hit the streets — such information would be of limited utility.

To my knowledge, Carty hasn’t updated the study since publishing that, so we don’t know for sure that the 2012-18 period hasn’t altered his conclusion slightly. Since we’re not doing brain surgery here — just getting a preliminary read on where this season is heading for teams — it doesn’t matter a whole lot. I didn’t set out to re-create Carty’s study, but I did examine what 16-game performances from the two Wild Card era can tell us. Read the rest of this entry »

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Patrick Sandoval, LHP, Los Angeles Angels
Level: Double-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 16   FV: 40
Line: 5 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 0 R, 9 K

Notes
Acquired from Houston in exchange for Martin Maldonado last summer, Sandoval now has 45 strikeouts in 28.2 career innings at Double-A. He continues to work with middling fastball velocity but some mechanical elements help it to play better than 90-94. Houston got Sandoval to open his front side a little more, tilt his spine, and release the ball with a more vertical arm slot than he was using in high school. It’s a weirder look for hitters and creates more backspin and, therefore, more “rise” on his fastball. Sandoval also works heavily off his two secondary pitches, and his changeup may be better than we currently have it projected to be on The Board. The strike-throwing is still inconsistent start to start, but Sandoval is officially having upper-level success for a franchise that keeps having injury issues on the big league roster, so perhaps he should be included in the Canning/Suarez/Barria group of young hurlers who may help the Angels sooner than later.

Nate Pearson, RHP, Toronto Blue Jays
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 4   FV: 50
Line: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 9 K

Notes
Pearson was removed from his previous start after just 27 pitches, so it was a relief to see him back and dominant five days later. Pearson’s future as a strike-thrower is hard to anticipate. He was wild last fall but he hadn’t pitched all year due to a fractured ulna, so that wildness could have just been due to rust. He threw 43 of 59 pitches for strikes yesterday, a sign he may actually be able to harness his alien stuff and find a way to start long-term. He may be on an innings limit this year, so unless the Jays expertly manicure his workload with a big league goal in mind (perhaps that two-inning outing last start is an indication of how they’ll handle Pearson throughout the year) it’s unlikely we see him in the big leagues until next year at least. It’s still too early to reposition Pearson in our rankings due to increased confidence that he’ll start, but yesterday’s outing, during which he sat 94-98 and touched 102, could soon be part of a body of evidence indicating we should.

Anderson Tejeda, SS, Texas Rangers
Level: Hi-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 4   FV: 45+
Line: 2-for-5, 2 HR

Notes
These were Tejeda’s first two homers of the year. He’s back at Hi-A despite having success there last year, presumably so the Rangers can let Michael De Leon (who peaked as a teenager) get regular at-bats at Frisco for the third consecutive year. Tejeda is off to a strong start, and may force a promotion to Double-A (and into our Top 100) if he keeps it up for another few weeks.

Ljay Newsome, RHP, Seattle Mariners
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: NR   FV: 35
Line: 6.2, 4 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
We touch base on players like Newsome when we write the org lists. He threw a lot of innings last year and he barely walked anyone, so we checked on the stuff to see if it cleared the bar to stick someone on the list at all. With Newsome, that had not been true. Despite all the strikes, his fastball has been in the mid-to-upper 80s basically since high school, and those guys typically max out as spot starters. Now, Newsome is different. He took part in an offseason velo program and now resides in the 91-94 mph range. He’s clearing his front side a little more, his two-seamer has more tail, he’s working up in the zone with his four-seamer more often, and is setting up his changeup better. Take the performance of a 22-year-old repeating Hi-A with a grain of salt, but know Newsome has grown and changed, and is off to a strong start.

A Weird Box Score
Tulsa pitchers combined to no-hit Arkansas into extra-innings last night, but still lost due to a slew of walks in the 10th inning. The Arkansas staff allowed five hits, but fewer total baserunners than Tulsa did, so in my opinion, justice was done.

Weekend Notes
I saw mostly amateur stuff over the weekend, as both Adley Rutchsmann and Andrew Vaughn (the top two prospects on our Draft Board) were in the state of Arizona. Neither did anything to merit a move in our rankings. The only surprising moment of my weekend was seeing a person in a Detroit Tigers polo operating an Edgertronic camera. To this point, I had only seen Houston employees training cameras like that on hitters.

We’ve begun experimenting with high speed video and while some of its applications (beyond just looking cool) are obvious, especially as it relates to pitching (who is spin efficient, who is not, ah, there’s also a two-seamer, etc), we’re curious if there are applications on the hitting side beyond just breaking down mechanics.

Through their first 701 plate appearances of the 2019 season, the Seattle Mariners hit 38 home runs and posted a wRC+ of 145. Both marks were the best in the game by a fair margin, though you probably knew or could have guessed that already, because Jay Jaffe wrote about the team’s strong offensive start on this site last week. What you might not know is that if you ask Seattle’s hitters about the source of their success, they’ll tell you — after getting through the usual platitudes of “just playing as a team” and “taking it one game at a time” — that this year’s daily hitters’ meetings, led by first-year hitting coach Tim Laker, have been good. Really good.

“Those hitter meetings,” says fellow first-year Mariner Tom Murphy, “have been fantastic. It’s been one of the things that’s stood out to me this year. From the analytic staff to the hitting staff to the players speaking out about what they’re seeing, it’s been a triple-headed effort. Not only are we getting the statistics on what guys are throwing, their locations and pitch tunnels and stuff, we’re also getting real-world advice from players and hitting coaches together. That communication has been spot-on, and I really think it’s contributed to our success.”

Laker, 49, came up as a coach in the Diamondbacks’ system after spending parts of 11 seasons as a big-league catcher, mostly for Montreal. In Arizona, under the guidance of  instructors Craig Wallenbrock and Robert Van Scoyoc, he developed an approach to hitting and communication that focuses on finding the intersection between a hitter’s natural strengths and a pitcher’s natural weaknesses, then communicating an approach based on the center of that Venn diagram that’s simple enough for hitters to take to the plate without needing a cue-card.

“Pitchers have ranges, philosophy-wise, in which they throw their pitches,” Murphy says. “And our hitting team has put that into a simple system, which says, for example, that if a guy has low-ride [meaning a pitcher’s pitches do not deviate substantially up or down from their apparent path upon release] then he’s a ‘zero-ride’ and if he’s high, you’ll go up to three. Nice and easy. And then from there you can visualize the center of the strike zone, and know that a fastball right down the middle that’s a three-ride would play up at the top of the zone even if visually it starts out right in the middle. And if a guy has a lot of sink, anything that starts down in the zone is not going to be a strike, regardless of whether my eyes are telling me it’s a strike out of his hand. You have to find ways to prepare in advance for the tricks your eyes are going to play on you.”

Put that way, the system sounds almost too simple — bucketing continuous data into three or four tranches is not, after all, rocket science. But in the psychological world of hitting, simplicity is a virtue in its own right, and finding ways to communicate complicated data simply and actionably is where teams are currently looking to find any edge they can. In the Mariners’ case, the particular challenge they’re working to tackle this year is finding ways to get their players attacking each night’s particular starting pitcher while not getting too far out of their own comfort zone. That’s a tall order for hitters who have often been raised spend their days thinking of ways to keep their approaches consistent, not tailor them to each night’s starter. But Laker things he’s found an approach that works: translating the message into a specific external cue or physical action.

“For example,” says Murphy, “if we’re facing a big sinker-ball guy, then maybe a good external cue for most guys is to try to hit a popup or a ball way up in the air, so we get underneath that ball path and our swing plane plays better to that guy. Whereas against a guy with a lot of rise on his fastball, like a Verlander, we’re going to try to hit a lot of line drives or almost ground balls to manipulate ourselves without thinking too mechanically to get the desired bat path to that ball. That’s what we do well as players, is move physically, and Laker has been great about taking the statistics and giving us a plan to take into the game that’s more externally focused; that’s still us, but tailored to the pitcher.”

“I think what we’re looking for is guys that have swings that can cover more than one spot,” Laker told me. “I think our guys are good enough that if we adjust the slices they’re swinging in just a little bit on a monthly basis, that they’re good enough to hit in different zones and not just get pigeonholed into one specific spot where they are kind of at the mercy of the pitcher, just hoping that he’s going to make a mistake in the one spot that they’re looking at.”

Perhaps to Laker’s surprise, that approach has found resonance even with Seattle’s veterans, like Jay Bruce. “I think you have to try and walk the line a little bit,” he told me. “Because at the end of the day, they have to throw the ball over the plate. They’re going to miss, and they’re going to make mistakes. And on the one hand if you go chasing what they do you get yourself in trouble, but also I think being cognizant of their approach and their plan and what makes them have success against you is important, too. Finding that balance has been good this year.”

For a relatively young team, hearing that message from all angles — coaches, analytics staff, and veterans — is critical. “That’s when those meetings become really powerful,” says Laker, “When our younger guys can listen to Jay or Edwin, guys who’ve faced other starters a number of times, and hear them say, ‘Here’s what he’s done to me, here’s what his pitch looks like to me, here’s how it moves, here’s what he’s trying to do.’ I think that carries a lot of weight. I think the more we can get hitters involved in what we’re trying to do, and have a collaboration in an open forum, that’s good.”

The Mariners probably aren’t going to have the best offense in baseball all year long. They might not even have the best offense in baseball all April long. But if you’re chalking up their early-season numbers to mere good luck, or running into a stretch of pitching that’s performing below its level, I’m not sure you’re correct. Pitching has under-performed against Seattle for much of this young season (the just-concluded Astros series perhaps excepted) because the Mariners have been highly intentional about finding ways to make it so, and about communicating with their players in such a way that tailoring an approach to each night’s pitcher doesn’t feel like telling hitters to do things they’re not used to. So far in 2019, it may just be working.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Cole Tucker, SS, Pittsburgh Pirates
Level: Triple-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: 5   FV: 50
Line: 3-for-5, HR, 2 SB

Notes
Readers are often looking for a prospect outside the top 50 who might break out and move near the top of our overall list. My answer to that question is typically some big, projectable teenager who I expect to experience sizable physical growth. Tucker is rare in that he’s also a viable answer to this question even though he turns 23 this summer. Having answered once-relevant, shoulder-related questions about his arm strength, Tucker is now seen as a plus-gloved shortstop who has good feel for contact. But because he still has this big, seemingly unfinished frame on him, we think it’s possible that he comes into power a little late, and he might take a sizable leap. A source indicated to me that Tucker looks noticeably bigger and stronger this year. He hit for power during the first week of the season, and his batted ball data should be monitored for a possible indicator that he’s made a mechanical adjustment, too.

Tarik Skubal, LHP, Detroit Tigers
Level: Hi-A   Age: 22   Org Rank: HM   FV: 35
Line: 6 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 1 R, 6 K

Notes
Kiley saw Skubal last night and had him up to 97, with an average breaking ball. A possible second or third rounder as a college underclassman, Skubal’s amateur career was derailed by an elbow injury that required Tommy John. He missed his junior year, instead throwing side sessions in front of scouts close to the draft. Nobody was confident enough to pull the trigger on drafting him, and he went back to school and couldn’t throw strikes. The Tigers signed him after his redshirt junior year for $350k and he threw almost all fastballs during his first pro summer. Things seemed to have clicked a bit.

Michael Baumann, RHP, Baltimore Orioles
Level: Hi-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: 28   FV: 35+
Line: 5 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 0 R, 10 K

Notes
Orioles pitching prospects should be considered potential movers this year as the new front office applies the player dev philosophy that seems to be working in Houston. Baumann already has some components Houston might have otherwise tried to install; he has a vertical release point that looks like it creates backspin, he throws hard, and he works up in the zone. Maybe that just means he has less to fix and is likely to improve more quickly than others in the system. He was up to 96 last night.

Brendan McKay, LHP, Tampa Bay Rays
Level: Double-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: 2   FV: 60
Line: 4.2 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 3 R, 11 K

Notes
McKay’s stuff is not especially nasty — he was 91-95 last night — but his fastball plays up because of good extension. All of his pitches look the same coming out of his hand, and he has shockingly good feel for pitching even though his attention has been split between the mound and the plate for much of his career. If he keeps dominating Double-A hitters like this, it’s fair to start considering him as a potential big league option sometime this year.

Shed Long, 2B/3B/LF, Seattle Mariners
Level: Triple-A   Age: 23   Org Rank: 6   FV: 50
Line: 4-for-5, BB, walk-off HR

Notes
Shed’s defensive assignments mimic what we saw during spring training. He remains a 40 glove at second base who survives through a combination of athleticism and will, but he’s going to mash enough that you want him in your lineup every day. I tend to think of multi-positional players as individuals who excel defensively at various spots, but maybe it’s time to consider if players who can really hit can be barely playable at several positions and just spend each game at a different spot in the field, wherever they’re the least likely to touch the ball that day. Willians Astudillo would seem to be another candidate for a role like this, and perhaps it could be taken to a batter-by-batter extreme. Hiding your worst defensive player is old hat in other sports; maybe there’s a better way to do it in ours.

A Quick Rehabber Update
I saw Angels lefty Jose Suarez rehab in Tempe yesterday. He looked good, sitting 91-93, with command and an above-average curveball (it’s slow but has good bite, and he commands it), and some plus changeups. He didn’t break camp due to a sore shoulder, which is kind of scary, but the stuff looks fine. The Angels rotation has struggled with injuries, so Suarez might see the big leagues this year. He’s in our top 100.

On Pedro Avila
Padres righty Pedro Avila makes his big league debut tonight against Arizona. Expect him to sit 90-94 and touch 96, have scattered fastball command, and try to work heavily off secondary stuff — a change and curveball — that is consistently plus. His long term role may ultimately be in the bullpen, especially since three-pitch relievers may become more necessary due to forthcoming rule changes.

These are notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Yerry Rodriguez, RHP, Texas Rangers
Level: Low-A   Age: 21   Org Rank: 14   FV: 40+
Line: 5 IP, 4 H, 0 BB, 6 K

Notes
If you’ve watched Padres righty Chris Paddack at all this spring, you’ve probably seen how he gets after hitters with his fastball at angles and in locations where they struggle to do anything with it, even in the strike zone. Though Rodriguez’s delivery doesn’t look anything like Paddack’s, the same concept applies, and Rodriguez is able to compete for swings and misses in the strike zone in a notable way. Lots of pitchers’ fastballs perform better than you’d expect given their velocity, but Rodriguez also throws hard. His changeup is good, and while I’ve taken umbrage with his breaking ball quality during in-person looks, he does have strong raw spin and his arm slot helps his breaker play up. I think there are a lot of strong components here and consider Rodriguez a dark horse top 100 candidate for next year.

Read the rest of this entry »

While the Dodgers’ bolt from the gate isn’t too surprising given their back-to-back NL pennants and preseason playoff odds around 90% (though yes, I reaaaally nailed the timing of my investigation into their hitting), the Mariners’ hot start is the kind of early-season anomaly that reminds us how reality often fails to conform to our preconceptions. Expected to be a bystander during a rebuilding year, Seattle opened the season by sweeping a two-game series in Japan against last year’s upstarts, the A’s, and has continued to roll. They own the majors’ best record (11-2) and run differential (+40) so far.

The Mariners did spend most of last year in contention, ultimately notching 89 wins — their highest total since 2003 — but finishing eight games behind the A’s for the second AL Wild Card spot. In missing out on the October festivities, they ran their postseason drought to 17 years, the longest in North American professional sports. Given a club record payroll ($157.9 million as of Opening Day 2018) and the game’s worst farm system, general manager Jerry Dipoto opted to plunge the team into rebuilding mode, bidding adieu to free agent Nelson Cruz and trading away Robinson Cano, Alex Colome, Edwin Diaz, James Paxton, Jean Segura, and Mike Zunino, among others — nearly all of the popular kids, basically. With Kyle Seager suffering a torn tendon in his left hand, the only players common to Seattle’s 2018 and ’19 Opening Day lineups were Dee Gordon, Mitch Haniger, and Ichiro Suzuki, the last of whom used the Japan series as a farewell tour. 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 Anderson, Steven Brault, and Mike Leake — on how they learned and developed their change-of-pace pitches.

———

Tyler Anderson, Colorado Rockies

“In high school, I tried to learn how to pitch by watching other people. And I was doing all kinds of stuff. I was dropping down, throwing from all arm angles, throwing sliders. Then I got to college. At the University of Oregon, they preached fastball-changeup. Not only that, in the fall you weren’t allowed to throw breaking pitches; you had to go fastball-changeup only. Then, just before the season started, you could start mixing in curveballs and sliders.

“Before that, I’d thrown a palm ball. Honestly. I would hold it in my palm and throw a palm ball. It was slower. My dad knew about it from back in the day — it’s an old-school pitch — and mine was actually pretty good. It didn’t have a lot of spin, and as you know, limited spin creates drop. Mine would drop a lot, but it was too hard to control. Read the rest of this entry »

After a strong 2017 campaign for Tampa and Baltimore led some observers to declare, perhaps prematurely, that the former No. 1 pick had finally figured out how to sustainably deliver on his sky-high potential, Tim Beckham’s 2018 performance was sufficiently awful (a 79 wRC+ over 402 plate appearances) that the Baltimore front office declined to tender him a contract and left him to sign a $1.75 million deal with the Mariners in early January. Well, for a guy who was probably only intended to hold the middle of the field warm until J.P. Crawford gets the call up to Seattle at some point later this summer, Beckham has had a remarkably good first week in the Queen City:

Usually, I wouldn’t note a first week like this except in passing — Preston Tucker was hitting .435 through his first seven games of 2018, after all — except for two things. First, Beckham was hurt — with a core muscle injury that required surgery — throughout much of 2018, which suggests that perhaps his poor performance over the full season was less a reflection of a regression from 2017’s breakout and more what you’d expect from a player toughing it out through a debilitating injury. Second, Beckham has actually had a pretty good five weeks, dating back to September 1st of 2018. Since that date, his wRC+ of 186 is eighth-best in the game.

Beckham has always had good power to all fields, but until 2017, that power was too often undercut by a tendency to end at-bats early by swinging at the first pitch he saw offered close to the zone. In 2017, he solved the mental hurdle that had pushed him to try to do too much and instead started taking a few pitches early in at-bats until he found the one he wanted. “These days,” he told me back then, “I want to see the ball in the zone where I can drive it, and if it’s not” — here, a pause — “I want to trust that it’s going to be a ball.” The core injury hindered his ability to execute on that mindset in 2018, yes, but since September of last year, he’s been able to put it into practice again. The results have been impressive. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been a whirlwind few weeks for Yusei Kikuchi. Not only did he see his first action as a major leaguer, a well-documented dream of his since his high school days, but his father passed away after a long battle against cancer. He is staying in the United States in accordance with his father’s wish that he concentrate on baseball. It is quite hard to imagine what the young pitcher must be feeling, and we wish for the best for him and his family in this difficult time.

Kikuchi has made two starts for the Mariners. While some data exists from his days in the NPB, MLB presents a new challenge. We can’t reach any grand conclusions about him as a major leaguer yet, but we can make observations and possibly, some extrapolations. At this moment, here are the basic numbers: 10.2 innings pitched, five hits, three earned runs, two home runs, eight strikeouts, and one walk. Kikuchi currently has a 2.53 ERA and a 4.25 FIP. It’s too early to make any calls, but Seattle has got to be pleased with the return so far.

Our analysis of this limited sample becomes trickier because we only have Statcast data for one of his starts. His Tokyo start – you know, the one where Ichiro announced his retirement mid-game – is not registered there because the Tokyo Dome isn’t equipped with Trackman or PITCHf/x cameras. So, we have his 91-pitch start against the Red Sox on March 29, which is quite a small sample to work with. Kikuchi’s tendencies could change as he pitches in the majors and adjusts to either his strengths or hitters’ weaknesses (or both). With those the caveats understood, his early efforts still merit examination.

Let’s start with the obvious here: the fastball. Since he was an acclaimed prospect at the Hanamaki Higashi High, Kikuchi has been known in Japan for his fastball velocity. In 2017, he set what was then an NPB record for the fastest pitch recorded by a left-handed pitcher with a 158 kmph (roughly 98 mph), though it should be noted that his average fastball velocity was 148.6 kmph (around 92.3 mph). In 2018, his velocity slipped a bit. According to Delta, an NPB sabermetrics site, it went down to 147.3 kmph (around 91.5 mph) last year. He suffered shoulder tightness that was later diagnosed as decreased functionality of shoulder last year, so that seems to have played a part in the decline in velocity. Of all his pitches, the fastball is the only one that Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel did not describe as above average in their write up of Kikuchi for in this year’s top 100.

Against the Red Sox, Kikuchi averaged at 93.1 mph. Statcast had him as high as 95.4 mph. It is not Ohtani-esque big velocity, but it is a range that should work in the majors, especially if he can maintain it through starts consistently locate it like this:

By average velocity, he’s comparable to the likes of David Price and Sean Newcomb. Maybe he’ll gain a tick or two as the season goes on or maybe he’ll get worn down. I don’t know. But as far as the velocity goes, Kikuchi can say he belongs in the majors. One thing of note is that his fastball only induced a whiff once out of the 43 times he threw the pitch. Statcast measured the pitch’s average spin rate at 2,173 rpm. According to Travis Sawchik, an average fastball around 93-94 mph measures out to 2,240 to 2,300 rpm. At least for that one start, his fastball was not seen to be a swing-and-miss weapon, as his velocity would indicate. Obviously, Kikuchi has arm strength, but not all 93 mph fastballs are created equally. Luckily for him, he has another tool in his toolbox that drew many more swings-and-misses: his slider.

Kikuchi’s slider features a nasty 10-5 tilt. He used it as a swing-and-miss pitch in Japan, and he’s used it as one in his early going in the majors as well. Against Boston, he generated seven whiffs from 22 sliders used, which is pretty good! Here’s one to Xander Bogaerts that I feel is representative of how he likes to use the pitch.

And here’s one to Sam Travis that had a particularly vicious bite.

Looking at Kikuchi’s slider heatmap from that game, we see a lot of low and inside pitches to the right-handed heavy Sox lineup. Being aware of his pitch tendencies from the NPB, I’d assume he meant to locate them that way as well. It’s hard to draw a conclusion at this moment, but Kikuchi’s slider has been rated above-average, as noted by Eric and Kiley. Future value grades don’t always come to fruition, but I would say that Kikuchi’s slider could forecast well in the majors.

As for the bad, Kikuchi did not necessarily avoid the meat of the zone. Here is his pitch heatmap:

The good here is that Kikuchi located well to the inside edge versus right-handed hitters, and away versus left-handed hitters. However, there’s that big dark and red circle towards the middle-up part of the strike zone that indicates that he was also prone to leaving pitches “up there.” FanGraphs rated his command as a 45-grade, which is just below major league average. As of this moment, Kikuchi has thrown 64% of his pitches for strikes and allowed only one walk in 10.2 innings pitched. Those are good control numbers. Command is a different thing. The Red Sox hitters were much less than forgiving on Kikuchi’s mistake pitches.

Here’s J.D. Martinez going yard on a fastball right down the middle. The catcher had his glove up and in, but the ball missed the spot and Martinez drove it over the center field fence.

Here’s another home run allowed, this time against Xander Bogaerts. The explanation is simple – the catcher appears to have wanted it down and away but the fastball went right down the middle, which is likely to be punished by many major league hitters.

Pitching is extremely hard. You must stand a mark and locate each pitch into a glove size smaller than a pie tin from 60 feet 6 inches away. But it’s also the nature of the business – if you miss even so slightly, major league-caliber hitters can hit it a long way. It is worth noting that every pitcher makes mistakes. It’s the matter of minimizing the amount of them. There will be days when Kikuchi will makes fewer mistakes, and there will probably be days he makes more.

What’s curious for now is that Kikuchi has noticeably bumped up his curveball usage. Here’s the chart of his March 29 start versus his 2018 pitch data with the Seibu Lions, thanks to the NPB sabermetric website Delta.

It’s an interesting bump. He never threw his curve more than 11.1% in a season with the Seibu Lions. He was known for his fastball/slider mix in Japan. The curveball, according to multiple scouting reports, was a third pitch that he would use to give different looks. And it’s not just his start against the Red Sox either. Over at Lookout Landing, Jake Mailhot recorded Kikuchi’s pitch data by hand during the Athletics game in the Tokyo Dome. The chart below indicates that Kikuchi has shown very similar pitch mix for his first two starts as a big leaguer.

One theory on why Kikuchi increased his curveball usage lies in data. Last June, Jim Allen of Kyodo News wrote on how Kikuchi relies on data to make adjustments to things like his release point and extension. I’m not sure how much attention he puts on his pitch metrics, but his curveball does grade out well on Statcast. Take a look at his pitch data from Baseball Savant:

Not only does an effective curveball give hitters another thing to worry about, but the velocity difference can also make his heater stand out more. Here’s a curveball that he threw to the reigning AL MVP Mookie Betts. Betts reacted like he was not expecting this pitch. He held up a for a microsecond and got his bat head out, but made weak contact that ended up being a groundout.

He didn’t generate any whiff with the pitch, but it induced two bits of weak contact for an overall .124 xBA. He also used it to get ahead in counts. Out of 18 curves thrown, nine of them were called strikes. Here’s one of them to Betts.

Kikuchi has had two decent starts and the pitch has worked well, so I don’t anticipate him making drastic changes anytime soon. It will be something to monitor, though. History has shown that many successful pitchers – Tanaka, for instance – have demonstrated the ability to modify their approach to survive in the majors. As time goes on, major league teams will have a book on how to approach Kikuchi. Once they know better what to expect, I don’t know how successful they’ll hit against him, but surviving in the majors involves series of adjustments. If Kikuchi runs into a harder time getting hitters out, I would expect him to take a different approach.

Lastly, it’s worth noting that Kikuchi seemed to struggle when facing the order the third time around. In a very small sample, Kikuchi faced five batters a third time through the order between the A’s and Red Sox games, and allowed two hits, including that aforementioned JD Martinez home run. Again, it is hard to draw conclusions out of five-batter sample, but the concern is not unfounded. The lack of a big fastball could become a problem late in games in instances where he struggles to give hitters different looks. As Bill Petti has written for FanGraphs about how pitchers with a big fastball — who can maintain that velocity late in games — are more likely to pitch deeper.

There will be so much more Kikuchi to watch. Personally, I’ve waited for awhile for him to arrive to the majors, as I’ve written about the lefty a couple of times in the past. Two starts in, Kikuchi gave his team a real chance to win on both occasions. For a starting pitcher, there’s not a lot more you can ask for.