RADIO
Will these starting pitchers be fantasy baseball breakouts? Eric Samulski evaluates SPs who have developed new pitches for 2022, in Part 5 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 in 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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Sean Manaea - Slider (re-shaped)
Last year was arguably Sean Manaea's best season ever. Despite his 3.91 ERA being slightly worse than his rate in 2018, he posted a career-high 25.7% strikeout rate and also a career-high 13.4% swinging-strike rate (SwStr%).
Still, that doesn't mean the 30-year-old needed to sit tight. Instead, Manaea went into the offseason and re-shaped his slider, which you can see in action in the video below:
The slider wasn't necessarily a problem for Manaea in 2021 either. He had a 12.6% SwStr% and 30.5% CSW on the pitch. It gave up just a 4.8% barrel rate and allowed just a 26.7% flyball rate, so hitters weren't able to do much damage off of it when they did make contact, which is why it earned a 3.04 deserved ERA (dERA).
However, given that Manaea only throws 91 mph (over one mph less than last year), the continued development of his off-speed pitches will enable him to more consistently miss bats. As a result, he added the movement to the slider that you saw in the video above. The result is a 13.4% SwStr% on the pitch this year with a 32.8% CSW, which is just a minor improvement from 2021, but he has allowed no barrels so far on the season. In fact, the pitch has only allowed four hits all season, registering a .160 batting average against.
The added movement helps the pitch round out Manaea's arsenal, since both his change-up and sinker move arm-side but have far less overall movement.
However, my only concern going forward is that Manaea doesn't seem to have great control of the pitch, as evidenced by his heat map this season:
VERDICT: MARGINALLY IMPACTFUL. The added swing and miss on the slider is nice to see and it has improved the overall swing and miss in Manaea's arsenal. However, he has seen a slight decrease in overall strike rate and a 3.3% decrease in K-BB% because his command has been a little worse this year, which I think can be tied back to finding the location on the slider with its added movement. However, Manaea has had been results in his last three starts, so it's possible that we'll see him continue to improve as he gets a better feel for his new pitch.
Robbie Ray - Two-Seam/Sinker
I was not drafting Robbie Ray anywhere coming into the season. I felt like we were paying a premium for a career year with a pitcher who still gave up a lot of contact - and hard contact. Early in the season, that seemed to bear itself out. So far, he has a 4.52 ERA and 1.25 WHIP through 13 starts, backed up by a 3.92 xFIP and 3.81 SIERA.
While he's only allowed an 8.5% barrel rate (his lowest since 2018), his strikeout rate has also come down to 25.1%, which is his lowest since 2015, despite his SwStr% remaining solid at 15.1%.
So, at the end of the day, batters are chasing a little less, being more aggressive in the zone against Ray, and having more success on those pitches in the zone. This means the veteran needed to switch up his attack strategy and try to use the hitters' aggression on pitches in the zone against them. Enter the two-seam fastball or sinker, which Ray started using two starts ago and then became his most-used pitch in his last outing.
Ray throws the pitch at 93.1 mph, which is the exact same as his fastball, but the two-seam has five inches more vertical movement and almost 10 inches more horizontal run. It's meant to be a groundball pitch and so far it's doing its job.
Although two starts is obviously a small sample size, the two-seam has allowed a .235 average against and an average launch angle of -3.9-degrees. As a result, it has induced a 60% groundball rate, which is ideal because both Ray's slider and four-seam induce fewer than 40% groundballs. The pitch also has a dERA of 3.13 through two starts, which is actually the best of any of Ray's pitches.
VERDICT: CLEARLY IMPACTFUL. This is a crucial change for Ray. He saw that hitters were being aggressive and taking advantage of his tendency to fill the zone, so now he's making sure the contact they make with their aggression is worse. In his last start against Boston, he gave up no runs on just three hits over seven innings. He also struck out just four, and that's going to be the trade-off. He can still get swings and misses with his slider, but as he uses the sinker more than the four-seam, he's going to lose the strikeout upside he had last year. However, he also may carry better ratios, so I think it's a trade-off that most fantasy managers would take.
Mitch Keller - Sinker and Slider (re-shaped)
A lot of the talk about Mitch Keller in the offseason centered around his increased velocity. He was seen in offseason videos pumping triple-digits on a radar gun and then came into the season averaging 96 mph on his four-seam, which was up over two mph over last season. However, it didn't mean anything.
In his first even starts of the season, Keller was 0-5 with a 6.61 ERA, 4.53 xFIP, 4.52 SIERA, and 9.5% K-BB%. After a May 13th start in which he allowed five earned runs in 4.2 innings against Cincinnati, Keller was moved into the bullpen. While he only made two appearances out of the pen for the Pirates, the team made a big change during that time: they advised Keller to add a sinker.
Not only did Keller come back from his brief exile throwing a new pitch, but he has now quickly made that his most-used pitch. It was a good change in the first few starts, primarily because Keller has a poor four-seam fastball, which is yet another reminder to us all that velocity alone doesn't mean much of anything.
Despite the added velocity, Keller had just an 8.9% SwStr% and 26.9% CSW on his fastball. It also gave up an 11.6% barrel rate, an average 36.6% flyball rate, and earned a 6.17 dERA. While Keller's sinker also doesn't miss many bats (5.2% SwStr%), it has a 52.9% groundball rate and gives up 76.5% poor contact, which helps reduce damage and is why it has a 2.14 dERA.
However, since the sinker also doesn't miss bats, it puts a lot of pressure on Keller's off-speed pitches, primarily his re-worked slider, which he added three inches of horizontal run to in the offseason. Given the fact that he throws the slider at 86.6 mph, the added run has taken Keller from -1.2 inches of horizontal movement vs the average to 1.5 inches of horizontal movement vs the average. That's good.
The result has been strong since the slider has a 16.2% SwStr% and 28.8% CSW on the year. However, it had a 15.9% SwStr% and 25.1% CSW last year, so the gains aren't that monumental. In fact, this year's slider allows a 10.8% barrel rate and .286 batting average against on the season, so it has just a 4.66 dERA, while the slider last year allowed just 3.5% barrels, .263 BAA, and had a 4.40 dERA, so the new version of the slider is not a major improvement in and of itself.
However, the additional horizontal movement on the slider figures to be a better pairing with the new sinker since the sinker and change-up both move into the hands of right-handed hitters. You can see that in the image below but also in the video above.
VERDICT: POTENTIALLY MINIMALLY IMPACTFUL. Getting rid of a bad pitch and adding a better one is good; however, can we be certain Keller has gotten rid of a bad pitch? After ditching the four-seam for two starts, he threw the four-seam 25.8% of the time in his last start. It might be no surprise then that he struck out only two batters while giving up two earned runs in 5.1 innings. The slider has also been performing worse since Keller added the sinker into his arsenal, so it's important that we not just go ahead and assume that this one change will fix everything for him.
Spencer Strider - Change-up
You won't find a hotter pitcher than Spencer Strider. No, I'm not talking about his mustache; I'm just talking about the love the fantasy community has for Strider. It's not hard to see why. Through 15 appearances, he has a 2.45 ERA, 1.05 WHIP, .161 batting average against, and 38.6% strikeout rate.
When evaluating Strider, we really need to differentiate between him as a reliever and as a starter. So far, Strider has made four starts since joining the rotation on May 30th. In those four starts, he has pitched 19.2 innings and recorded a 2.75 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 38.3% strikeout rate. His K-BB% has dropped to 25.9% from 27.4% as a reliever but that's the only really minor difference.
The Braves also allowed him to throw 109 pitches on Wednesday, which should make for some success as a starter, right?
Yes. Well, most likely.
Strider has had success as a starter on the back of his four-seam fastball and slider combo. Both pitches are pretty damn good, with the four-seam registering a 14.2% SwStr% and 32% CSW while the slider has a 22.2% SwStr% and 38.1% CSW.
However, I think there is another key when you're talking about Strider's long-term success as a starter. When you look at Strider's Spin Direction graphics, something should stand out. There's a lot of white space on that clock.
Why that matters is it simply means that there's a whole direction of movement that is potentially missing from his arsenal. While it won't matter as much versus righties, it means that lefties will only really get one pitch on the outside part of the plate: the four-seam. It will limit what they need to look for and, potentially make it easier to attack Strider.
The change-up could be a potential answer, as you can see in the video below:
So far on the season, the change-up has been a good pitch for him. It has a 22% SwStr% and just a -4.46 dERA which is obviously just a small sample size, but also potentially suggests that the pitch could be a strong third option. We know it will never be a major pitch, but he can operate as protection for his four-seam. Even Strider himself said, "I don’t care how it gets there, or what I do to throw it. I just want it to be slower and something off my fastball. Whatever it does, I’ll call it what it is.”
In truth, I love the way Strider understands and talks about his arsenal: "I’ve been able to throw changeups that run a ton. The changeup I threw in college would run from one side of the plate to the other. But that doesn’t really play with my arsenal. What I need is something that goes down and is just slower than my fastball. I don’t think it’s going to be a pitch that I throw 20% of the time; I think it’s going to be a five-to-10 percent, like the way Gerrit Cole uses his changeup."
Now I'd just like him to actually throw that changeup 10% of the time.
VERDICT: POTENTIALLY IMPACTFUL. If he throws it. He is still only throwing it 7% of the time as a starter. I think he's been able to get away with that so far because his only starts have come against Arizona, Colorado, Pittsburgh, and Washington. Not exactly the best offenses in the league. As a starter, Strider has been a 3.6% decrease in swinging-strike rate on his four-seam and the dERA on his four-seam as a starter is 4.90 while it was just 1.82 as a reliever. The slider has been exceptional regardless, but I think that Strider may be putting too much pressure on the fastball if he doesn't bring in a third pitch.
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