Chris Heston Is the Giants’ Latest Find

Chris Heston was listed on only two of the six major preseason prospect reports. John Sickels listed him in his “Others” section at the end of his top-20 list, and FanGraphs’ own Kiley McDaniel placed Heston 14th on his list. Kiley called him an “inventory starter” but did allow for some potential as well. Here was his final sentence on Heston:

Heston may be one of the small percentage of potential #5 starters that turns into more, but we’ll need to see how he performs his second time through the league.

And here’s what Sickels said:

There is a mixture of physical upside arms and pitchability talents who could surprise, finesse right-hander Chris Heston being a good example of the latter. If you are looking for a pitcher who could pull a Matt Shoemaker-like out-of-nowhere season in 2015, Heston is as good a candidate as anyone.

Here we are, three months into the season, and Heston is indeed that candidate. If you look at the pitching WAR leaderboard right now, there are certainly surprises, but few pitchers by whom you are just completely blown away.

The Giants seem to specialize in these guys. Last year, Joe Panik didn’t make the top-10 prospect list here at FanGraphs or at Baseball Prospectus. Baseball America had him ninth; Sickels had him 13th and called him a utility player, as did Keith Law. We can also note that Matt Duffy had a similar profile heading into this season (ninth ranked at BA, #11 at FG, #13 by Sickels, Factor on the Farm at BP).

We don’t need to do this for every player, but the point is that the Giants seem to have a habit of turning these guys up. George Kontos, Jean Machi, Ryan Vogelsong, Yusmeiro Petit, a resurgent Jake Peavy — draft them, trade for them, free them, bring them back from the dead, or maybe make them in some secret fringe-pitcher lab — the Giants find a way. Heston is just the latest.

This is not meant to diminish Heston in any way, but rather to emphasize the success he’s has relative to his pedigree. He’s already thrown a no-hitter this year, and he did it with minimal pushback from the team he faced, the New York Mets. And Heston is markedly different from most Giants pitchers in at least one way — he gets ground balls. Yes, San Francisco now has Tim Hudson, but aside from him, the starting pitchers who have pitched most frequently for the Giants in recent years have been a fly-balling bunch, as we’ve discussed here in the past:

You can see the chasm between Hudson and Heston and the rest of the Giants’ pitchers — more than seven percentage points. Heston and Hudson, as you might expect, place near the top of the major-league leaderboard in ground-ball percentage as well, with Heston placing 11th overall at the moment. Unlike most of the ground-ball pitchers at the top of that leaderboard though, Heston is also adept at generating infield fly balls. In fact, Heston places at the top of that leaderboard as well — specifically, fifth place. Placing among the league leaders on both of those lists is kind of difficult. Here is the list of pitchers who rank in the top 25 in both ground-ball and infield-fly-ball percentage:

That’s pretty decent company. Francisco Liriano just misses the cut, at 10th and 27th, respectively. Heston has a league-average home-run rate, but other than that he is getting all the kinds of contact you want to see in a pitcher. His Hard% is nearly four points below the league average.

How is he doing this without hitting 90 mph on a consistent basis? By throwing a lot of sinkers. Only two pitchers — A.J. Burnett and Hector Santiago — have derived more value from their sinker so far this year than has Heston, according to PITCHf/x. Only Kyle Hendricks has thrown his sinker more frequently than has Heston. Heston isn’t just a one-note guy though. He complements that sinker, which ranks seventh per 100 pitches, with an above-average curveball that ranks 34th per 100 pitches.

As you would expect for someone who throws a lot of sinkers, most of Heston’s pitches are down in the zone. Let’s take a look:

As you can see, the five squares below the strike zone are five of his six most-frequently thrown-to spots on the heat map (or, zone profile, as Dan calls it). That’s a pretty clear gameplan. If you head over to Brooks Baseball and break that down by versus lefties and righties, you see that he does a good job of keeping the ball away from hitters, with one exception — he’s not afraid to come up and in on right-handed hitters. And when he does, he is getting swings and misses, probably because batters assume they can hit anything that high that is travelling under 90 mph. That change of pace is also likely what is keeping hitters honest, and why he’s getting so many swings and misses at the bottom of the zone.

When you don’t throw hard, your roads to success are definitely more limited, but that doesn’t mean you can’t succeed. If you know how to locate the ball, you stand a much better chance. Judging by the very low percentage of “grooved” pitches Heston has thrown the past two months, he has a pretty decent idea where the ball is going. He is generating lots of ground balls and infield fly balls, and keeping the ball out of the fat part of the strike zone. That approach isn’t going to work everywhere — he has been tattooed at Coors Field for 12 runs in 11 innings — but it’s going to work in most places, particularly given the nature of today’s strike zone.

If Heston was pitching in a different organization, you might be tempted chalk this up to luck or something unsustainable, but the Giants have a knack for turning undervalued assets into solid big leaguers. It’s how they stay relevant in most seasons, and Heston is the latest, even though his batted-ball profile doesn’t fit with most of their recent pitchers. That’s a testament to their pro scouting department. You might not have heard of Chris Heston before this season, but he’s probably going to stick around for awhile.