RADIO
Will these starting pitchers be fantasy baseball breakouts? Eric Samulski evaluates SPs who have developed new pitches for 2022, in part 4 of his series.
Welcome to another episode in this FSWA award-winning series Pitchers with New Pitches. We take the simple premise that not every new pitch should be greeted with praise. The new pitch, like the shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to be a complement to what a pitcher already has.
So instead of just celebrating that some pitchers are throwing new pitches, I watch the pitch in action, check on its performance, and looked at the Statcast Spin Direction graphics to see if it might actually make the pitcher any more effective. From there, I try to give you a simple verdict as to whether or not we should care about this new toy or not.
It's also important to note that for many of these pitchers, this is the first time they've thrown these new pitches in a game situation, so the overall quality and consistency may get better over time, and I've tried to take that into account in my analysis. We should also note that, for the purposes of this article, I will also be including pitchers that have reworked or revamped a pitch to make it "new" even if it was technically a pitch they already threw.
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Tyler Mahle - Cutter and Slider (Re-shaped)
After emerging as a reliable fantasy asset in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Tyler Mahle was solid again in 2021, going 13-6 with a 3.75 ERA and 27.7% strikeout rate. However, questions remained about his command and his ability to pitch in his home stadium - Great American Ballpark. Unfortunately, none of those questions have been answered as Mahle is off to a 2-5 start with a 6.32 ERA, 4.28 xFIP, and 4.20 SIERA with a 12.8% K-BB ratio.
It's actually gotten worse for the right-hander. Mahle can no longer just blame his home park as he has 5.18 road ERA in 21.4 innings and a 7.54 ERA in 22.2 innings pitched at home. Everything in Mahle's profile is mildly worse this season. His 10.2% swinging-strike rate (SwStr%) is down from 11.4% last year, his xBA and xSLG are up slightly from 2021, while his K% and BB% are slightly worse.
So what has changed?
Well, for starters, Mahle has re-shaped his slider and added back his cutter, which he dropped in 2020 and barely threw in 2021. You can see videos of both in the tweet below.
On the surface, giving the slider more horizontal break is not a bad thing. As you can see from the Spin Direction graphics below, most of Mahle's arsenal approaches the batter from similar trajectories since they're all variations of a fastball. The slider biting away from righties and the splitter running in on them. However, you can also the see cutter in there in brown.
You can see how the cutter kind of overlaps with the slider but is two mph harder and has less movement. Essentially, the cutter is the slider that Mahle threw last year and now his slider is slower and has more downward bite. I'm just not convinced that actually does anything for Mahle.
The cutter doesn't miss bats with a 4.9% SwStr% to go along with a .327 xBA and 5.15 deserved ERA (dERA). He's only throwing the pitch 10.1% of the time, but I think he should ditch it. He just throws it to lefties and it does have a 57.1% groundball rate, but his splitter is a much better swing-and-miss pitch and also has a 52% groundball rate to lefties. I'd be more optimistic about Mahle if he was mainly fastball-splitter to lefties and also worked in the slider, which I think would miss bats regardless of hitter-handedness.
However, the new slider has been solid for him. It has a 16.7% SwStr% and 32.3% CSW, up from 11.6% SwStr% and 28.2% CSW last year. Given that, I'm not really sure why he's throwing the slider just 14% of the time when he threw it 26.7% last year. He's been relying on the splitter way more, but the splitter has seen a dip in SwStr% and CSW, which supports my belief that it's better as a complementary pitch for Mahle.
VERDICT: CONFUSING BUT POTENTIALLY BENEFICIAL. The new slider is missing bats at an improved rate. That's a good thing. However, Mahle throwing it less doesn't make sense to me. I think he needs to go back to using the slider more and the splitter as a third option, and then I would scrap the cutter altogether because it's doing nothing for him. The pieces are there for him to basically be the pitcher he was the last two years, but we need to see some pitch mix changes. As a result, I think he can be benched or perhaps even dropped in shallow leagues because I can't see starting him until we start to see those changes take shape.
Framber Valdez - Cutter
For a few years now, we've thought of Framber Valdez as a curveball specialist with a fine but not great sinker. He attacks the zone and the curve is such an elite pitch that it's carried him through some inconsistencies due to the lack of depth in his arsenal. However, I think the cutter could be an impactful new wrinkle.
Through eight starts, Framber has a 2.68 ERA, 1.26 WHIP, 3.19 xFIP, 3.35 SIERA, and a paltry 10.1% K-BB rate. He's also only thrown the cutter 6.4% of the time, so its impact thus far has been minimal. So why do I like it?
Well, let's start with the fact that it has a 19.5% SwStr% and 36.6% CSW. Let's also mention that it has a 38.1% whiff rate and hasn't been hit hard once all season. It also has a -0.60 dERA and 0.61 pCRA so the ERA estimators like it as well. Those are all pretty good numbers.
We also need to address that this cutter is basically a tight, hard-dropping slider. It gets 43.3 inches of vertical drop, so this is not Mariano Rivera's cutter. However, it does only have 3.4 inches of horizontal movement and looks a lot like the cutter his teammate Luis Garcia throws, which makes sense.
If you look at the Statcast Spin Direction metrics, you can see another reason why I like the cutter. You'll see how the brown of the cutter and the light blue of the curve are in very similar areas of the clock below.
This means they approach the hitter at similar trajectories and have similar movement profiles; although, the curve moves further towards the four on the clock because it has slightly more horizontal movement. And that's where the effectiveness lies. These pitches leave Valdez's hand at similar locations and approach the batter from similar trajectories, only the curveball is almost five mph slower, drops 17 inches more, and has eight inches more horizontal movement. That's incredibly deceptive to a hitter since the overall movement profiles of the pitch become so different after the point at which the hitter has to make the decision to swing or not.
VERDICT: POTENTIALLY CLEARLY IMPACTFUL. I'm only saying potentially here because, as of now, Valdez has only thrown the pitch 7.4% of the time. However, his sinker continues to be fairly average and his four-seam fastball is poor. I think he could benefit from leaning on this curve-cutter combination and then using the sinker and a revitalized changeup to round out his arsenal. Upping the cutter would, in my opinion, also increase his strikeout upside, which would make him even more attractive for fantasy purposes.
Brad Keller - Change-up (New Grip)
Brad Keller has been an "interesting" pitcher who hasn't quite put together a strong full season. However, the right-hander is only 26-years-old and is experiencing some success this year with a 3.20 ERA and 1.03 WHIP through eight starts that's not fully supported by a 4.11 xFIP and 4.36 SIERA. Still, I think there is reason to believe Keller could over-perform his peripherals and a lot of it has to do with a new pitch.
The two changes that stand out the most to me with Keller this year as that he's relying on his slider more at the expense of his sinker and that he changed his change-up grip. For starters, relying on the slider more is a good thing since it's allowing a .123 batting average against, has a 13.8% SwStr% (his best), and a 28.6% CSW (also his best). Throwing your best pitch more is always a good thing.
The other intriguing development has been the new change-up grip, which has reduced the spin rate and added more drop to the pitch, as you can see in the video below.
In this article from The Athletic, it discusses that this offseason, "Keller discovered what he called a “slip” pitch. He gripped the baseball in his palm but did not have to stress his fingers to do so. He also locked his wrist, so the ball essentially slips out of his hand...This allowed him to throw the pitch for strikes."
Having enough pitches, especially one against lefties, is a good thing for Keller. While he doesn't have major platoon splits, he has given up more home runs per plate appearance and a noticeably higher OPS to left-handed hitters. We can also see from the video above that the change-up approaches the batter at the same trajectory as the fastball but the additional drop causes more differentiation between the two pitches so if a hitter guesses wrong, it's harder to adjust. This could also conceivably help his fastball.
However, there's one main problem: Keller isn't throwing the pitch for strikes. He has just a 28.9% zone rate on the change-up which means that hitters currently know not to chase the pitch, which is why it has just a 6.7 SwStr%.
It's a shame because the pitch has yet to allow a hit and has a -4.1 degree launch angle when it has been put in play, so it could be a strong groundball pitch for Keller in addition to helping his sinker and fastball play up. He also needs to throw it more for strikes to force hitters to start thinking about it.
As Royals Pitching Coach Cal Eldred said, “It just destroys a little bit of timing, and that’s enough. It gives the hitters something else to think about.” Well, not currently, but maybe soon with a little more refinement.
VERDICT: MINIMALLY IMPACTFUL. As it stands right now, the change-up isn't really impactful at all. He simply hasn't been throwing it for enough strikes. However, it's clear that Keller is trying to find his success by reducing hard contact rather than missing bats since his strikeout rate is down 5% to just 14.6% but his walk rate has also fallen to a career-low 5.3%. If he wants to be consistently successful with this approach then having that groundball changeup that he can throw for strikes will be important. Since Keller has also gotten a career-high O-Swing% and SwStr%, I'm interested in his evolution as a pitcher but, for right now, he's really just a match-up-based streamer outside of deep leagues.
Tarik Skubal - Change-up (Re-shape)
Now that we're at the quarter mark of the season, people have been talking a lot about "taking Ls" or doing victory laps, and I will say that I need to take the L on Skubal. Coming into the season, I wasn't sure his command would improve enough for him to reach the potential many saw. Even in the Spring Training starts, his breaking pitches seemed to be all over the place. So far, I've definitely been wrong.
Skubal has just a 4.5% walk rate, which has led to a 23.9% K-BB% with a 2.22 ERA and 1.05 WHIP. He's been electric. A lot of that has been the increased performance of his slider, which he's throwing two mph harder and with more command. This has allowed him to throw the slider more while reducing the usage of his mediocre four-seam fastball. He is also more regularly using his sinker, which misses fewer bats than the four-seam but has been the better overall pitch with a 2.53 dERA compared to a 4.16 dERA on the four-seam.
However, another thing that I believe has been meaningful for Skubal has been his new change-up. In 2022, he has added 1.5 mph to the change-up plus four inches of vertical drop and six inches of horizontal run. You can see evidence of the evolution in the video below:
While the surface-level stats on the changeup don't look overly different, two things stand out to me. For starters, the changeup has improved to 21.5% SwStr% and 32.1%, so the increased movement has made it a slightly better swing-and-miss pitch on its own. Skubal also has a 43% zone rate with the pitch this year after just a 35.5% rate last year, so he appears to have a much better feel for this version of the change-up, which is important.
The other thing that stands out is the importance of the changeup in terms of spin direction. As you can see in the graphic below, the changeup and sinker both move away from right-handers but the changeup is slower and has more vertical drop. Since Skubal is throwing the sinker more now than he did last year, pairing it with the changeup (which he only throws to righties) creates deception between those two offerings. Obviously, the added drop on the change this year only adds to the effectiveness of that deception since it makes it harder to guess wrong and still make contact.
VERDICT: MARGINALLY IMPACTFUL. I say just "marginally" because much of Skubal's gains this year have come from improved command of his breaking pitches and location of the fastball up in the zone. Other gains have come from increasing the effectiveness of his arsenal, but I do believe the new change-up falls into this category. It is a perfect partner for the sinker, which means that it's another step in the process of Skubal getting the most out of his raw ability. It's also another plus groundball pitch that helps him to reduce his home run troubles. I think we're seeing the legitimate growth of a young star, and I'm sad I don't have enough shares. If you can wait for a poor start and try to get Skubal from a manager who maybe is not as convinced about the early start, you'd have my full support.
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