Why Wade LeBlanc Might Make Sense

The Mariners currently possess nearly a 70% chance of making the postseason, are six games clear of the Shohei Ohtani-less Angels, and are firmly in control of the American League’s second Wild Card.

Back at the beginning of the season, this looked unlikely. Back at the beginning of the season, the Mariners had less than a 10% chance of making the postseason by our methodology. In the meantime, the club has not only lost Robinson Cano to injury but also to PED suspension. Their one-time ace, Felix Hernandez, is nearly a replacement-level player. The club is leaning heavily on Wade LeBlanc.

The absence of Cano and the decline of Felix both count as serious hurdles to the club’s postseason’s hopes. It’s looking less and less, however, like Wade LeBlanc is a liability. It’s looking more and more, rather, like he’s someone who can continue helping this team.

Just to give some context on what Wade LeBlanc is, here are some figures of note. LeBlanc made his major-league debut with the Friars in 2008, and was worth -0.6 WAR in 21 innings with more walks than strikeouts. The next year, he posted a FIP of nearly 5.00 in 46 innings and walked nearly four per nine. The year after that, he started 25 games for the Padres, threw 146 innings, and had a 4.80 FIP. Before this year, LeBlanc’s best season was — depending on what metric you chose — either 2012, where he was worth a half-win across 68 innings as a swingman (despite a FIP once again over 4.00), or 2011, where he accrued 0.8 WAR despite a 132 ERA- and 107 FIP-.

I could keep going, but you get the idea. LeBlanc, now 33, has spent the last few years as an up-and-down depth arm bouncing across the majors and Triple-A, passing through Miami, Anaheim, Pittsburgh, Houston, and Toronto, among others, before landing with Seattle.

Up-and-down swingmen are nice. Every team uses them, so every team needs them. Except that this year, LeBlanc has turned from emergency sixth starter to something resembling a top-of-the-rotation starter, at least on the surface. Overall, LeBlanc has a 66 ERA- this year across 61.2 innings. For comparison’s sake, Chris Sale is at a 64 ERA-. It is not an exaggeration to say that, in 2018, Wade LeBlanc has prevented runs at about the same rate as Chris Sale.

It is, of course, easy enough to look at LeBlanc’s overall numbers and write them off. After all, his 3.82 FIP is more than a full run higher than his ERA, and his 102 xFIP- is actually worse than last year’s mark. And there are warning signs. LeBlanc is a decent contact manager, with an average allowed exit velocity allowed of 86.7 mph. But with an xSLG of .466 and xwOBA of .332, Statcast thinks he’s gotten no small amount of good fortune.

So the possibility of regression is real. But LeBlanc’s recent performances also suggest a pitcher who’s continuing to evolve. You may remember a certain dumb redheaded author writing back at the beginning of May that the Mariners should look at Matt Harvey to replace LeBlanc in their rotation. Well, following that, LeBlanc proceeded to record .253 wOBA against and a 3.44 FIP in May. He’s been arguably better in June, allowing a few more homers but producing a strikeout rate of better than a K per inning. And yet, LeBlanc’s doing this with a heater that averages just 87, nearly a full tick lower than last year. (Matt Harvey, meanwhile, had a 5.53 FIP in May and has recorded a 4.77 FIP in June.)

There might be an explanation for this in the left-hander’s pitch mix. LeBlanc changed his approach drastically a couple of years ago, going from 25.7% four-seam fastballs in 2014 to just 9.0% in 2015. Then, he made up the difference by throwing more than twice as many more cutters, going from 12.5% to 27.5%. It didn’t work right away: his cutter and fastball were both below average pitches by pitch values. But this year, he’s gone further, lowering his four-seam usage to just 8.3%, a staggeringly low number. He’s also essentially ditched his slider completely, throwing it just 0.3% of the time.

LeBlanc appears to have emphasized his sinker and changeup, as well. He’s using both around 30%. Neither is really a plus pitch; by pitch values, the sinker is just above average, and the changeup just below. But de-emphasizing the fastball seems to have increased their effectiveness substantially. LeBlanc’s fastball now measures a tick above average. (It was below as recently as 2016.) But his cutter is a career-high 5.5 wRAA, making it by far his most effective pitch.

All of this appears to be the result of a conscious change LeBlanc made when he spent the 2015 season in Japan. There, he learned to throw his fastball less as part of a concerted effort to minimize hard contact.

“Stuff and mechanics is the same. Approach, I can say I became a little bit different. … You grow up in America and you’re taught ‘two balls no strikes, command a fastball, command a fastball.’ Then you go over there and you see bases are loaded, a 3-1 count and they’re throwing a curveball like it’s no balls, no strikes with nobody on base…. So when you think about that, it’s really the whole premise of pitching is to keep the ball off the barrel….When I came back, I really thought about times that I’ve been actually able to do that in my career and those are the times I’ve been the most successful. So I figured if it worked here and it works for them over there, why not try to utilize that every time I step on the mound?”

Reflecting this approach of minimizing hard contact, there’s also one more significant change LeBlanc has made. This is his heat map from last year:

And this is his heat map for 2018:

It’s subtle, but it’s there. LeBlanc is throwing more pitches inside to left-handed hitters and away from righties, and fewer pitches inside to righties and away from lefties. It seems counterintuitive on the surface — we always hear about left-handed cutter specialists needing to come inside to right-handers — but it’s actually working. While he hasn’t improved much between 2017 and 2018 against right-handed hitters — they had a .279 wOBA against him last year, and a .280 this year — it’s a different story for hom against left-handers: after lefties recorded a .353 wOBA against LeBlanc this year, they’ve only produced a .297 mark in this one. Most interestingly, his strikeout rate is at a career high 21.0%, including 22.3% of righties.

But there’s also evidence LeBlanc made a mechanical change which explains the change in location. TJ Cotterill passes this along:

“My first start in Oakland my velocity was down, down for me, to like 85. And every mile per hour is big for me, especially since my changeup was still the same speed,” LeBlanc said. “So my arm strength was the same, so I was just losing something somewhere in my mechanics. I couldn’t figure out where.

“I sat down with Mel and we figured that my stride length was about a half-foot short of what it is when I’m right. I wasn’t using my back leg as much as I normally do. Not driving. And that was huge for me.”

Sure enough, the velocity charts back this up. LeBlanc did have a velocity drop in his first start, and it’s since rebounded. And LeBlanc has also succeeded by really not walking anybody — which, for a soft-tossing lefty, is pretty important.

One last thing. You might find this interesting. Let me show you two players.

Wade LeBlanc: 21% K%, 5.7% BB, 3.71 K/BB, 94 FIP-

Player A: 16.2% K%, 4.3% BB, 3.76 K/BB, 81 FIP-

Player A is another soft-tossing lefty who found himself with the Mariners, Jamie Moyer, in his 1998 season. If LeBlanc is, in fact, Jamie Moyer with a few more strikeouts, the Mariners will have themselves quite a find.

Small sample warnings apply, of course, but there is definitely a difference in how LeBlanc is going about his business, both in what he’s throwing and where he’s throwing it. And there’s no doubt good fortune has been involved; LeBlanc has stranded more than 88% of baserunners, which would easily be a career high. And yet, Wade LeBlanc has already been worth 0.8 WAR, which equals his highest season total ever. Wade LeBlanc, even if he turned into a pumpkin tomorrow, has already done something special.