One Way to Get Excited About Nathan Eovaldi
There are plenty of ways to poo-poo Nathan Eovaldi. Dude has thrown 300 changeups and they’ve been bad, for the most part. Dude has gas, but his four-seamer gets only gets average whiffs. Dude’s thrown almost 500 innings and been league average. Dude’s done this in pitcher-friendly parks and leagues and now is headed to Yankee Stadium. Dude.
There’s at least one way to get excited about Eovaldi. By arsenal shape, speed, and peripheral results, he’s pretty much Garrett Richards.
First, it is true that Eovaldi doesn’t have a good changeup. He should probably just stop throwing it. If you look at different classification systems, he’s thrown anywhere from 150 to 300 changeups in his career, and averaged around a 8% whiff rate. The average whiff rate on a change is 13%.
The reason those systems have a hard time identifying his change is that it’s very close in movement to his sinker. At Brooks Baseball, his change has the same horizontal movement as his sinker, just over an inch more drop than his sinker, and eight mph difference in velocity. Those don’t really satisfy the conditions for a good changeup.
Maybe he should turf it. It worked for Richards. And before you say they’re really different pitchers, maybe we should look at the shape, velocity, and whiff rates on their pitches. It’s a bit eye-opening:
| Eovaldi | Usage | Velocity | Horizontal | Vertical | Whiff% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Four-Seam | 58% | 95.1 | -6.5 | 7.5 | 6.4% |
| Sinker | 7% | 95.6 | -9.6 | 7.6 | 4.7% |
| Slider | 22% | 86.0 | 2.3 | 1.0 | 14.6% |
| Curveball | 9% | 75.8 | 5.4 | -7.8 | 7.5% |
| Richards | Usage | Velocity | Horizontal | Vertical | Whiff% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Four-Seam | 41% | 95.4 | -2.7 | 6.7 | 7.0% |
| Sinker | 15% | 95.5 | -7.7 | 5.9 | 8.0% |
| Slider | 28% | 86.1 | 2.3 | -4.4 | 16.8% |
| Curveball | 4% | 78.1 | 5.3 | -12.5 | 10.1% |
So maybe Richards’ slider is a little better than Eovaldi’s. It has more movement and has shown a bitter whiff rate so far. And his curve is bigger than Eovaldi’s and has also had better results. But Eovaldi’s fastball actually has a bit more horizontal movement than Richards’, especially when it comes to the sinker.
Zoom out a bit, and you’ve got more similarities than differences. Both are big fastball guys with two good breaking pitches. Both have bad changepieces. Both have had some issues with command, both showed good command more recently.
If you agree that they are at least somewhat alike, let’s move on. How did Richards get over the hump and become the Richards that he was last year?
The two biggest changes he made to his mix were radical but effective. Richards turfed the change and upped his slider usage to near 40% by the end of the year. From an outcome standpoint, it made a ton of sense. His changeup wasn’t getting whiffs, and his slider was. With the curve, he had a weapon against lefties.
Richards does throw the sinker more than Eovaldi, so the new Yankee may want to look at his fastball usage. There might be something there. He may also want to turf the changeup, it’s not working anyway. Eovaldi’s curve has better results by whiffs against lefties than righties anyway (12% to 8%), so it’s effective as a platoon-buster.
Should Eovaldi push his slider usage as far as Richards did? By the end of the season, the Angel was throwing the pitch more than a third of the time. That’s harder to recommend — his strikeout rate went down in the second half, and the result was mostly seen (if they were) in his ground-ball rate and walk rates, which improved. The ball rate on Richards’ slider is better than Eovaldi’s, so maybe Eovaldi can’t command the slider as much as the Angel starter can.
Richards has always had better overall whiff rates than Eovaldi, so maybe those differences in breaking pitches are very important here. But it might be equally important to note that turfing a bad pitch can be as useful as improving it. If Nathan Eovaldi’s changeup isn’t getting good results, why keep throwing it? There’s a good chance he’ll be better without it, if Garrett Richards‘ history is to be believed.
With a phone full of pictures of pitchers' fingers, strange beers, and his two toddler sons, Eno Sarris can be found at the ballpark or a brewery most days. Read him here, writing about the A's or Giants at The Athletic, or about beer at October. Follow him on Twitter @enosarris if you can handle the sandwiches and inanity.
I think the similarity is pretty compelling, and I’m sure the Yankees are hoping that Eovaldi follows the same trajectory, but it seems like one fairly important difference between the two is that Richards has a superior whiff rate on every single one of his pitches.
It’s true. But if you look back to before this year’s breakout for Richards, it’s a bit closer. He’d never had a whiff rate above 8% on the curve before this year http://www.fangraphs.com/pitchfx.aspx?playerid=9784&position=P
The Yankees pitching coach, Larry Rothschild, has a good track record going back to the Cubs of increasing the K rates of his starting pitchers. He was key voice in advocating that the Yankees trade for Brandon McCarthy because he thought he could “fix” him, and he did wonders with Shane Greene. I like his chances with helping Eovaldi.
Any data on this?
Well actually yes there is quite a bit of data on that. A quick Google search will show you it’s been looked at and confirmed. Every where rothscjild goes the pitchers improve their k rates and also their gb rates.. It’s basically his calling card. And it’s a long enough track record now that it’s beyond small sample anecdote and clearly a result of something Rothschild is teaching.
He’s taken this from team to team and the results are usually immediate and long lasting.
Yup.
Why the tone?
Isn’t it kinda standard that if one presents an idea it’s his job to prove…not his audience’s.
That said, I appreciate the information.
Seems like copying or even referencing a link from such a “quick google search” would have taken less effort than a paragraph that simply restates the conclusions and says to look it up, which helps no one.
For anyone else more interested in data than conclusions, here is what a quick google search yielded: a few short, self-referencing articles on River Ave Blues and one fangraphs community entry.
The first few RAB entries all just mention Rothschild’s reputation without substantiating it. The first reference to actual data is the fangraphs community post: http://www.fangraphs.com/community/larry-rothschild-and-strikeouts/
While interesting, this is not very strong evidence. It does not control for a number of confounding factors (e.g. AL vs. NL, overall league performance & environment) and is dodgy on its sample and methodology details.
RAB has another piece with data that attempts to confirm the theory after Rothschild’s first season in NY: http://riveraveblues.com/2011/11/the-larry-rothschild-affect-59246/
It looks at some interesting examples of individual pitchers, but finds the overall staff change in strikeout rate to be less than 1%.
The idea that this skill has been “confirmed” seems silly if it’s based only on the above. Hopefully someone will link to data I didn’t see, but based on this alone it doesn’t seem like one could take a strong position either way.
The issue is that Another Cubs Blog, who did most of the research referenced in the RAB articles, went down.
Here’s the Wayback Machine version of that article:
http://web.archive.org/web/20101120004240/http://anothercubsblog.net/2010-articles/june/larry-rothschild-and-walks.html
Including Greg Maddux, average Cubs’ pitchers’ K% rose from 17.86% to 19.71%, and BB% decreased from 7.88% to 7.59%.
Excluding Maddux, who didn’t start pitching for Rothschild until he was 38, and a finished product at the tail end of an HOF career, K% increased from 18.18% to 20.35%, and BB% decreased from 9.55% to 8.22%.
As I learned from jdbolick below, those are damn significant differences.
Thanks for the link.
Some of my concerns about that dataset still exist, though. How many of those pitchers switched from the AL to the NL? In what pitching environment did these improvements take place? That is, what was their increase in k% relative to league average?
As for the first issue at least, here is the list:
Rich Harden – AL
Jason Marquis – NL
Ted Lilly – AL
Scott Eyre – Both
Bob Howry – AL
Ryan Dempster – NL
Glendon Rusch – Both
Mike Remlinger – NL
Shawn Estes – NL
Antonio Alfonseca – NL
Matt Clement – NL
Largely NL. But to control for it entirely, let’s look at the same with only NL players.
Player K%Before K%After %Diff
Marquis 13.9 12.6 -1.3
Dempster 18.0 21.4 +3.4
Remlingr 22.3 24.8 +2.5
Estes 18.4 14.7 -3.7
Alfonse 14.7 17.9 +3.2
Clement 17.6 23.2 +5.6
Percentage of players positively changed: 66%
Avg magnitude of positive change in that group: +3.7%
Avg magnitude of change in entire group: +1.6%
Certainly a smaller difference than those from the original group, but still pretty interesting. It looks like there may be something there. I’m still worried about confounding factors, though. How stable are pitcher k-rates year-to-year in general? I don’t actually know. 66% in a sample of 6 is not actually very far from 50%.
Anyway, fun stuff. Here’s hoping Eovaldi sees a boost.
As others have noted, it’s out there. Even FanGraphs has written on it.
Hm. I’m torn. They really needed pitching, and Eovaldi’s got very good stuff, but Prado is much better than Refsnyder, and he’d also be a much better RF than Garret Jones when Beltran or Rodriguez inevitably get hurt.
That definitely got very, very good value for Prado and a 5th starter, though.
Are you bearish on Refsnyder? I’ve heard lots of good things and the numbers look solid.
I actually really like Ref!
Prado’s been a consistently above average player for the past 5 years, though, and I don’t feel comfortable projecting any pretty-good-not-great prospect with shaky defense as an above average player in his first MLB season.
Projections like Ref over Prado FYI
Prado was good on the Yanks, but he’s certainly not the answer long term or anything. Given his age, he’s likely hit his decline phase as well.
It seems to me the Yankees are realizing they were unlikely to make the playoffs with their current roster, so why not get younger and cheaper while adding more upside potential? They would never go through a complete fire sale. Just not in their nature. For 2014, this might not work out to be the best move, but for 2015 I like it.
Yeah, I agree noseeum. A lot always would have had to break right for them to make the playoffs, even with Prado, and Eovaldi certainly puts them in a better position from 2016 going forward.
Cliff: Steamer thinks Prado will be a (slightly) better hitter, and I discount any positive projection for the defense of a guy who wasn’t called up last season because he couldn’t fake 2B at a major league level.
The Yankees are basically doing what the Phillies should also do, getting younger wherever they can and not worrying if they have to throw in some money to make it happen.
As a Red Sox fan, I would have gladly taken Eovaldi for Cespedes plus whatever, being fairly optimistic that he could pull a Garrett Richards as Eno mentioned. Nice work by the Yankees here.
Yeah, I agree that it’s a very, very good value deal for Cashman.
I do think there’s a difference between the Sox trading Cespedes and the Yanks trading Prado, though, if only because the Sox had like 5 starting caliber OFs, while Prado (who’s solid at best) was the Yanks’ second best IF after Headley, and would have shifted to RF when Beltran or A-Rod got hurt.
Minor league numbers. He is not a proven 2nd baseman.
That’s deep, thanks.
It’s not wrong, though. He wasn’t an MLB caliber defensive player last year, and it’s very possible that he doesn’t hit for that kind of power in the MLB.
It’s quite possible that he’s a .260/.320/.380 hitter with bad defense in the MLB.
thing is how much are the Yankees covering the Prado contract.
6 million
aggressive “turf” usage in this article
I wouldn’t discount 5.4 inches of break on the slider or 4.7 inches of break on the curve (with a 2.3 mph difference as well). Richards had the most vertical curveball break of any starter in 2014 (min. 100 CU thrown) while Eovaldi’s vertical break ranked 45th. Richards had the 3rd most vertical slider break while Eovaldi ranked 63rd. I agree that Eovaldi has more strikeout potential in him and might be well-suited to ditching the changeup, but their breaking stuff is not comparable.
Yeah, Eovaldi is indeed similar to Richards except in being slightly to significantly worse in almost every way. So he’s a poor man’s Richards, I guess.
Age-24 Eovaldi is not that far off from age-24 Richards (2 years age difference). I’m guessing Eno’s main point is that Eovaldi could have a 2014 Garrett Richards season in him sometime in the future.
Hell, he’s just about identical to age-25 Richards, right down to having a big ERA-FIP.
Not in movement or whiff rates.
Why don’t you actually look at Richards’ 2013 whiff rates?
Fourseam
2013 Richards: 7.34% (38.87% usage)
2014 Eovaldi: 6.76% (61.61% usage)
Sinker
2013 Richards: 6.66% (29.6% usage)
If you combine the two fastballs:
Richards: 7.04% (68.47% usage)
Eovaldi: 6.76% (61.61% usage)
Change
Richards: 16.22% (1.55% usage)
Eovaldi: 8.08 (3.15% usage)
Slider
Richards: 17.08% (25.53% usage)
Eovaldi: 16.84% (24.75% usage)
Curve
Richards: 8.49% (4.44% usage)
Eovaldi: 10.88% (9.35% usage)
Overall Whiff%:
Richards: 9.2%
Eovaldi: 8.4%
So, yeah. They’re pretty damn close across the board, other than the change-up that neither of them really throws.
The movement difference still remains. Unless one completely discounts a pitcher’s stuff in projecting whether a pitcher can/will take a huge step forward, I would be much more optimistic about a pitcher who has much better breaking stuff than a pitcher with much lesser breaking stuff. Yeah, both of them had similar whiffs before Richards’ breakout but that doesn’t mean their chances for improvement have to be equal.
Movement:
Fourseam
2013 Richards: .11 Horizontal, 5.51 Vertical
2014 Eovaldi: -7.59 Horizontal, 7.85 Vertical
Change
Richards: -4.97 Horizontal, 5.49 Vertical
Eovaldi: -8.01 Horizontal, 4.26 Vertical
Slider
Richards: 2.65 Horizontal, -6.01 Vertical
Eovaldi: 2.61 Horizontal, 1.52 Vertical
Curve
Richards: 5.25 Horizontal, -13.57 Vertical
Eovaldi: 7.14 Horizontal, -7.34 Vertical.
So, yeah, not that big a difference in movement, either. Eovaldi’s FS and CH move more, Richards’ CU moves more, and their SL’s are just different pitches.
Using Brooks Baseball (which the pitch f/x “Guts” section on Fangraphs lists as more accurate than what Fangraphs uses) shows both of Richards’ breaking ball as moving a significant amount more. Saying it’s a minor difference is like saying Martin Prado is just a slightly worse player than Evan Longoria.
…the numbers I used are from Brooks Baseball. Directly.
Richards clearly has a huuuuge advantage in his curve, but Eovaldi’s fourseamer is similarly much better.
The slider movements are so different that I have to assume they’re just different types of sliders.
There’s a much larger gap when you look at age-26 Richards, and I’m certainly not suggesting that Eovaldi’s going to ever have a season like Richards’ 2014, but the comp does work a lot better than people are giving it credit for, when you look at who Richards was before he broke out.
Cool Lester Smooth, it’s weird that you said “Why don’t you actually look at Richards’ 2013 whiff rates?,” then posted the evidence that Richards’ 2013 whiff rate was significantly higher than Eovaldi’s in 2014. Maybe 0.8% doesn’t seem like much to you, but it’s a 10% improvement.
Eovaldi was tied for 53rd among qualified pitchers last year. Richards would have tied for 42nd, had he qualified, in 2013.
It’s really not that big of a difference. Pretty firmly in the same “decent-not-great” tier.
Cool Lester Smooth, be honest, if Eovaldi posted a 10% improvement in his whiff rate next season then it would be an exciting development. You’re trying to minimize that because you don’t want to admit that you attempted to correct me when I wasn’t wrong.
I’m not trying to semantic my way out of a losing argument, haha. I just don’t know how much is a significant delta in Whiff%.
If I’d known it was a significant increase I would have brought up the fact that Eovaldi’s increased from 7.7% to 8.4% last year!
Sick trade guys!
while the wiff rates are different, do you see the upping of his slider usage and turfing the change being a catalyst in improving the swing and miss rate?
He doesnt have a second pitch to lefties. His slider is good but he just cant generate called strikes with it or any other pitch outside of his four seamer. His curve is poor and his change terrible.
The marlins didnt get fleeced, they are infull win now mode. I dont quite understand the criticism on here. Their moves may not all seem like wins but they got better and if they lock up the rest of the core they have had a fantastic off season.
The thing I don’t understand is why the slider got better for Richards. It was a good pitch and he started throwing it 5% more of the time and it made him better.
But I don’t get why the slider itself got better. It wasn’t faster,no change in movement or how he used it.
curve got better too. I think he surprised people more with the big fastball after throwing other stuff 45% of the time.
But his fastball became better in 2014: more velocity, more sink, and better command. A good fastball with command makes every other pitch better.
I like what the Yanks are doing..if you go back to the winning years they found solid role players who were hungry like o’neil and brosius and knobby..i’m tired of these high priced aged stars who just want big bucks and are living off past years…go young, use the farm system to give these guys a chance…why give someone like max a 7 year deal and end up with the last 3-4 years with a high priced washed up player..like tex, cc. and a-rod
Actually Knobby was a star who was about to get too expensive for the Twins. If he didn’t get the yips throwing he might have had an Alomar type career.
Olberman’s mom won’t forget him any time soon, though.
Explain to me how they are going to score runs. Show me our great hitters.
They have above average hitters at 3rd, left, center and hopefully right. They have average hitters at DH, catcher and first. They have a below average hitter at SS, and a wild card that could be either average or below average at second.
That’s not a terrible lineup, especially in this run environment.
I’m going to sound dumb b/c I’m not quoting any stats with this assessment, but I watched Nathan Eovaldi every 5th day since he came over from the Dodgers, and I feel there are certain things that need to be said about why I dont feel like 2014 was an unlucky year for him, despite the ERA estimators liking him. There is a reason why he was so hittable last year.
It should be good for him to work with Larry Rothschild. His problem is mechanical, but he has shown some improvement in that area at times. He has an issue repeating his delivery (though not as much as it was when he came over from the Dodgers), and has an issue getting on top of the ball, and creating a downplane towards the plate. This makes his pitches flat and hittable, regardless of how hard he throws. It also effects the sharpness of his secondary offerings, and is the reason he doesnt see more swing and miss, He throws more strikes than he used to, which should help, but he doesnt have much command in the zone b/c of his mechanical issues. He seemed to do some good work on that in the beginning of 2014, and he started to see more swing and miss and show the #2 potential he does still have. If he can get back to that, he is a big gain for the Yankees, as they have him for 3 years, but IMO, he should get one more shot at a rotation, and if it doesnt work in a couple of months, move him to the pen, where he threw 102 for the Dodgers
Awesome stuff. It’s always good to hear from someone who’s seen him firsthand.
No problem. It may also comes as a surprise that a Marlins fan exists, and I actually go to almost every game…Eovaldi has been one of the most frustrating pitchers I’ve seen in a long time. This guy should be so much better, its almost a joke. Last year especially was frustrating, b/c I had been mentioning the mechanical issue from the first outing that it started being an issue again. Then, it wasnt until the very end of the season, before his start against the Mets, when Eovaldi and Chuck Hernandez mentioned that they noticed a mechanical issue. You could imagine my reaction to that lol. I had only been mentioning it for close to 4 months, and it had been a problem with Eovaldi in the past…
One thing I think should be mentioned is something that was mentioned in the article in a speculative way. Seeing him, I would agree with it. I think its possible that Eovaldi is able to suppress fly ball distance. His fastball tends to be heavy when he is on, and it induces weaker contact. That being said, when he is having the mechanical issue that I mentioned, its LD city…I find this article interesting for 1 reason in particular. I’ve heard Eovaldi say on multiple occasions, that he needs to use his changeup more. Thats obviously the exact opposite of what this article suggests, and I would expect that Eovaldi doesnt realize that his changeup isnt good. He has had games where it was working for him, but it has always been very inconsistent, just like his ability to repeat his delivery. I’ll say this though. I think his curveball has a chance to be a decent-pretty good pitch. I looked pretty good at times last year, but again, for him its about getting on top of the ball
Yeah, I’d love to have Kiley throw grades on Eovaldi’s stuff.
I think Doug Thorburn gave Eovaldi some of the best mechanical grades of any pitcher in baseball. And all he does is pitching mechanics.
im equally as interested to see what eovaldi’s gb rates look like next year. the yankees/rothschild might be thinking they can tweak the sinker or maybe teach him a cutter to neutralize lefites.