Generation X-Axis: Nick Lodolo’s Horizontal Adventures

Gregory Fisher-USA TODAY Sports

I don’t like using absolutes when talking about sports on the internet. No matter how uncontroversial the take, there’s always someone out there whose whole personality is wrapped up in “No, actually Mike Trout isn’t the best center fielder in baseball” and you get yelled at.

So I’m not going to say that Nick Lodolo has been the best pitcher in baseball thus far this year. And even if I did, it wouldn’t be that momentous a statement, since he’s only made two starts so far and nobody else has made more than three. Still, through those two starts and 12 innings, he’s faced 51 batters, striking out 21 and reducing another nine to popups and softly-hit groundballs. He’s allowed just 10 hits and two runs, and has a strikeout rate over 40%.

Regardless of superlatives, certainly he’s pitched well enough to warrant both praise and examination.

But first, a bit of history. Lodolo is a member of a small but fascinating subclass of ballplayer: The two-time first-round pitcher. In 2016, the Pittsburgh Pirates thought enough of Lodolo, then an 18-year-old out of the Los Angeles area, to make him the no. 41 pick in the draft. So yeah, technically Lodolo was the last player picked in Competitive Balance Round A, but it comes before the second round and Baseball Reference counts it as the first round, so I will too.

Lodolo chose not to sign with Pittsburgh and instead opted to go to TCU. It’s unusual but hardly unheard-of for a first-round pitcher to go to school; it happens about once a year. Normally, unsigned first-round pitchers fall into two camps: high school seniors who can’t agree with the club about money and college juniors who have something weird show up on their physical. (The inverse happens every so often, with Brady Aiken and Mark Appel being the two most notable examples.)

Here’s every example dating back to 2008. You’ll know most of these names, particularly if you have any interest in college baseball. In fact, I chose 2008 as a cutoff point because that was Gerrit Cole’s first draft year and that felt like a fun place to stop:

Unsigned First-Round Pitchers Since 2008
Year Pick Team Player Fate
2021 10 Mets Kumar Rocker* Drafted no. 3 overall by Rangers in 2022
2018 8 Braves Carter Stewart Signed with Fukuoka of NPB
2018 30 Dodgers J.T. Ginn Drafted 2nd round by Mets in 2020
2018 36 Pirates Gunnar Hoglund Drafted no. 19 overall by Blue Jays in 2021
2017 31 Rays Drew Rasmussen* Drafted 6th round by Brewers in 2018, traded back to TBR
2016 41 Pirates Nick Lodolo Drafted no. 7 overall by Reds in 2019
2015 35 Dodgers Kyle Funkhouser* Drafted 4th round by Tigers in 2016
2014 1 Astros Brady Aiken Drafted no. 20 overall by Guardians in 2015
2013 10 Blue Jays Phil Bickford Drafted no. 18 overall by Giants in 2015
2013 35 Marlins Matt Krook Drafted 4th round by Giants in 2016
2012 8 Pirates Mark Appel* Drafted no. 1 overall by Astros in 2013
2011 21 Blue Jays Tyler Beede Drafted no. 14 overall by Giants in 2014
2010 6 Diamondbacks Barrett Loux* Declared a free agent by MLB
2010 9 Nationals Karsten Whitson Drafted 11th round by Red Sox in 2014
2010 14 Brewers Dylan Covey Drafted 4th round by Athletics in 2013
2009 14 Rangers Matt Purke Drafted 3rd round by Nationals in 2011
2009 37 Blue Jays James Paxton* Drafted 4th round by Mariners in 2010
2008 9 Nationals Aaron Crow* Drafted no. 12 overall by Royals in 2009
2008 28 Yankees Gerrit Cole Drafted no. 1 overall by Pirates in 2011
SOURCE: Baseball-Reference
*Denotes college pitcher

I was covering college baseball in Texas when Lodolo decided to go to TCU, and there was quite a bit of buzz about him. Under Kirk Saarloos, who took over as pitching coach in 2012 before being promoted to the head coaching job in 2022, the Horned Frogs have won a lot and had plenty of excellent college pitchers, but relatively little success developing guys for the pros. Big-time high school prospects like Lodolo usually go to Florida, like Brady Singer, or Vanderbilt, like Rocker. Lodolo was basically just fine for two years before he really broke out as a junior. He landed at no. 7 and signed for more than three times as much as his slot value when he was drafted out of high school.

There are advantages to going the college route. Quality of life in a major conference program is leaps and bounds better than life in the low minors, and top schools can develop players nearly as well as the pros. But in terms of draft position, going to school usually doesn’t help much. The risk of career-threatening injury is lower than it was 20 years ago, but most two-time first rounders either see their stock drop slightly or end up basically back where they started. Lodolo is one of the few two-time first-round pitchers who not only broke even going to college but came out clearly ahead.

As a rookie in 2022, Lodolo was very good: 19 starts, 103 1/3 IP, 3.66 ERA, 3.90 FIP. He missed two months with a back injury, but in this day and age every pitcher lives the Home Improvement bit where Tim takes Randy to the ER and he’s on a first-name basis with all the doctors and nurses.

In early August, he made a couple of changes, detailed here by Justin Choi, that might’ve changed his career: Lodolo dropped his arm angle and moved to the left-hand side of the rubber. The aggregate impact of this adjustment was limited in 2022:

Rookie Nick Lodolo, Before and After Adjustment
Time Period GS IP K% BB% ERA FIP AVG OBP SLG
April-July 8 38 1/3 30.3 9.0 4.32 3.79 .284 .376 .426
August-October 11 65 29.3 8.7 3.32 3.96 .202 .308 .368

Lodolo’s results got a lot better, but his underlying numbers more or less stayed the same. But let’s look at what he’s doing from a qualitative perspective. Lodolo is 6-foot-6, 216 pounds. He’s built like East German swimming legend Michael Groß, or a construction crane. What do we know about pitchers with levers that long? Two things: First, it’s tough to keep everything moving in the right direction all the time, which can lead to issues with command. Second, they can make it look like they’re throwing harder by releasing the ball closer to the plate than a short guy can. The guy at the top of the leaderboard in extension right now is 6-foot-6 Logan Gilbert.

Where’s Lodolo on that list? All the way down in the 37th percentile. So he’s got these huge albatross arms and he’s getting less extension than a little guy like A.J. Minter? (By the standards of a major league pitcher, at least; the 6-foot Minter would not be able to enjoy Short King Summer had he chosen basically any other profession.)

Lodolo is using those long arms, his release slot, and his stance on the rubber to let the ball go as far to his left as possible. The ball is moving an extra three and a half feet horizontally from a side-arm delivery, compared to an over-the-top one. And you can see how extreme the horizontal movement is on every one of Lodolo’s pitches:

Nick Lodolo’s Ranks in Pitch Movement vs. Avg.
Pitch FF SI CU CH
Vertical 315th 43rd 155th 17th
Horizontal 1st 2nd 14th 4th
Total Pitchers 327 209 164 215
SOURCE: Baseball Savant

In addition to these pitches being hard to hit just because they move a lot, there are two other unsettling psychological effects for hitters. First, it’s weird. You just don’t see a delivery like this every day, so it’s hard to get used to. Second, regardless of whether you’re a left- or right-handed hitter, the ball will look like it’s going to hit you at some point during it’s flight path.

There are two potential dangers from Lodolo’s perspective. First, will he be able to hit his spots as consistently if he’s essentially pitching sideways? Lodolo has always had good command and a pretty consistent release point, and the early returns from 2023 suggest this isn’t a problem:

The second is the platoon issue. Lodolo’s stuff is good enough that he can back-door or back-foot the breaking ball to righties, but they’re still going to see him better from a low release point. For his career, Lodolo does have a big platoon split, so whether he’s able to continue to get righties out from this angle remains an open question.

But it can be done. There’s another long-armed lefty sidearmer who shows up near Lodolo both on the horizontal movement and extension leaderboards: Chris Sale. Randy Johnson is another example. Do you have to be that good to make that arm angle work as a starter, or does working from that arm angle as a starter automatically make you that good? Let’s watch Lodolo for another few months and see.





Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.

4 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
mdgwsu89
11 months ago

Second, regardless of whether you’re a left- or right-handed hitter, the ball will look like it’s going to hit you at some point during it’s flight path.”

In fact, in his last start against the Phillies, Lodolo got Josh Harrison to strikeout swinging on a pitch that hit him squarely in the knee

https://twitter.com/FDSportsbook/status/1644812194918412289?s=20

si.or.nomember
11 months ago
Reply to  mdgwsu89

So dirty.

Adding injury to insult?

Last edited 11 months ago by si.or.no