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Eric Samulski continues evaluating starting pitchers who have developed new pitches for 2021 to determine if these additions to their pitch mix will increase fantasy baseball value and make them breakout performers.
Throughout all Spring Training, we hear about pitching adding new pitches, or making major changes to their pitch usage. We even get to see those new pitches in action and dream about their potential impact. However, when the regular season starts, those changes can be abandoned and pitchers go back to what they do/know best. So it's important to continue to track these new pitch or pitch mix developments into the regular season to see what is here to stay and what is just a passing fad.
So far, I have covered some of those potential changes here and here and here.
As with the other versions, the working premise of this article is simply that a new pitch isn't always a good thing. If it is just the same as a pitch the pitcher already throws or is used to target the same area of the plate then it doesn't always add anything to the arsenal and may even take away from the effectiveness of a pitch he already throws. So instead of blindly celebrating that some pitchers are throwing new pitches, we need to look at whether or not it makes the pitcher any more effective. From there I tried to give you a simple verdict as to whether we should care about this new toy or not. Be sure to also check out the rest of my articles in this "Pitchers With New Pitches" series for analysis and deep dives on more starting pitchers.
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Aaron Nola, Philadelphia Phillies
Cutter
Aaron Nola has consistently been one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball and a clear fantasy ace. Over the last five years, he has been slowly increasing his changeup use. The pitch has been effective for him as it registers a 17% swinging-strike rate (SwStr) on its own but also keeps hitters off of Nola's four-seamer, which has a 22% called strike rate over the last three seasons.
In fact, the four-seamer, sinker, and changeup have been an effective trio for Nola.
They all travel towards the hitter on a similar trajectory, but the sinker drops over 20 inches and runs in on righties, while the changeup, which is 5 MPH slower than the sinker, drops more and has less run. The three offerings also almost perfectly mirror Nola's curveball, which has been his best swing-and-miss pitch over the years, registering a 39.4% CSW over the last three years.
With that strong pitch mix, Nola made an interesting change in 2020, relying less on his four-seamer, down to only 25.3%, while upping the curveball usage to 26.7% and the changeup to 27.4%. Even though it was only a shortened season, evenly distributing his pitch led to great results, and Nola's K% jumped to a career-high 33.2%. It seemed like Nola had unlocked the perfect usage of his repertoire, until 2021 began and he started using a cutter.
Despite the fact that Nola has only used the cutter 9.7% this year, it hasn't been an effective pitch and has basically eliminated the sinker, which, while not a tremendous pitch in its own right, but, as I mentioned above, allowed his other offerings to play up. What's more, Nola seems to have, at least in the early going, gone back to using his four-seamer as a primary pitch, upping the usage to 45.9% while the changeup simply hasn't been sharp early.
It's only been three starts so we don't want to read too much into it, but the drastic changes in four-seam and sinker usage feel deliberate. Let's hope it's simply a case of small sample size as he gets a better feel for his pitches, but if the changeup continues to struggle without the ability to play off of his sinker then it could have a meaningful impact on Nola's results this season.
VERDICT:
The cutter doesn't seem to give Nola anything new. This appears to be a prime example of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I'm not sure Nola needed to alter what he did in 2020, and it's possible that he needs to go back to his old pitch mix in order to recapture that strikeout magic.
Nathan Eovaldi, Boston Red Sox
Slider
Nathan Eovaldi has always been known for an electric fastball and tantalizing us with his potential before injuries derailed his season. Much of the narrative surrounding Eovaldi's rise to fantasy relevance over the last few years is that he's been more successful as he started to throw his cutter more, particularly in 2018 when the cutter became his second-most used pitch.
However, Eovaldi had some of his best seasons as a professional in Miami and New York, prior to relying on the cutter. 2018 does mark the beginning of Eovaldi's jump from a 9.3% SwStr to a 10.7% rate, so there is a change we need to explore there. The increased reliance on the cutter was beneficial to Eovaldi in this respect because of the way it approaches the plate on a similar path to his four-seamer but with more horizontal break.
Eovaldi's four-seam fastball jumped from a 17.8% whiff rate in 2016 to a 24.1% rate in 2018 and a 27.5% whiff rate in 2019. A lot of that is attributed to the way the cutter allowed the fastball velocity to play up. Batters weren't sure if they were seeing the cutter or the four-seam and, before they could decide, the four-seam was by them. The issue for Eovaldi was simply that the cutter itself wasn't a good pitch, as discussed in the video below:
Decreasing the use of the cutter and re-introducing a slider has had a tremendous impact on Eovaldi in a small sample size, as his overall SwStr rate has improved to 14.1% with a 30% CSW. Considering the slider, when compared to the cutter, has more shape and velocity difference from the four-seamer, it's logical to assume that hitters are less able to adjust from slider to four-seamer in the way they were able to adjust from cutter to four-seamer if they had guessed wrong.
However, the biggest reason the addition has been beneficial for Eovaldi is that the slider is, in itself, a good pitch. Through three starts it has a .188 xBA, .222 xSLG, and a 43.8% whiff rate. Eovaldi is able to use it almost exclusively against right-handed hitters and throw his curve, which has always been a plus pitch for him, against lefties. In the past, Eovaldi used the curve to both righties and lefties but perhaps not as much as many wanted him to use it. This year, he's thrown 82% of his curves to lefties and jumped his overall usage over 20%, perhaps something he feels more comfortable doing now with the addition of the slider.
VERDICT:
This is a huge addition for Eovaldi. He now has two legitimate swing-and-miss pitches in the slider and curve, and one each for righties and lefties. Pairing that with a 97 mph fastball has made him exceedingly hard to hit, and he's still able to use the split-finger and cutter sparingly to give hitters another look. Eovaldi was a breakout candidate coming into this year, but he is now a clear fantasy SP3 and could be trending towards SP2 status.
Huascar Ynoa, Atlanta Braves
Sinker
We've long talked about the Braves' strong crop of pitching prospects, but Huascar Ynoa has not often been a name mentioned. However, through his first two starts, he was slowly making a name for himself, throwing 12.1 innings and recording a 0.75 ERA, 0.67 WHIP, and 30.2% K-BB ratio. Much of that was due to his dominant fastball-slider combo, which is discussed in the video below:
However, Ynoa has also made a conscious change to his pitch mix in 2021, upping his sinker usage from just 0.3% last year, the first year he'd ever thrown the pitch, to 13.6% this year. He also added a bit more spin on his sinker, improving the revolutions per minute from 2,078 to 2,153; however, that could just be the result of the new ball allegedly being lighter than the previous one.
Although he has added more spin, the deviation from the fastball isn't large enough right now.
A sinker would be a tremendous pitch to add to a fastball-slider pairing; yet, Ynoa's sinker just isn't there yet, which we saw in his last start when it registered a 0% CSW. That gives Ynoa very little wiggle-room when either his slider or fastball aren't working, which was the case against the Cubs.
On the surface, you look at 97% active spin and 21 inches of total movement seem good. However, some of the best sinkers in the game (Corbin Burnes, Kyle Hendricks, Lance Lynn, Brandon Woodruff) have less active spin and less movement, holding a similar velocity to the fastball while having more deviation. Ynoa has a similar velocity between fastball and sinker but doesn't have consistent enough deviation, which could come from slightly more vertical movement on the sinker.
As it stands now, the sinker has a .465 xBA, .831 xSLG, .577 wxOBA, and 90 mph average exit velocity against, which might lead to some more regression in future starts. If hitters continue to ignore that pitch, then they can work to lay off of Ynoa's slider, which is a really strong offering, and attack his fastball, which they have currently done, leading to a .350 batting average and .800 slugging percentage against the four-seamer.
VERDICT:
Potentially impactful, but currently not. Ynoa had a strong two starts, but he was facing a Nationals offense that was ravaged by COVID and a Marlins team that has been punchless early in the season. I love the idea of him adding a sinker, but he is currently still just a two-pitch pitcher, and I can't see him having sustained success unless that sinker begins to improve.
Taijuan Walker, New York Mets
Curve, Slider, and Sinker
Taijuan Walker threw 53.1 innings in 2020 and introduced new pitches, so I'll admit that this one is cheating a bit.
After being just a fastball-splitter-cutter pitcher up until 2019, Walker came back from injury last year and had abandoned the cutter while adding in a slider and re-introducing a curveball and sinker that he had previously thrown in 2017 (albeit only 4% of the time for the sinker).
The pitch mix change was effective for Walker but not overly impactful on the whole. The slider had the lowest dERA of the trio at 1.56, while the curveball came in at 4.05 and the sinker was far behind at 5.19. It was clear that the additional horizontal run of the slider over the cutter was important in keeping hitters off of Walker's fastball. The pitch was also three MPH slower, which added more differentiation from the fastball, and the slider was the only pitch for Walker that had a SwStr over 10%, coming in at 11.2%.
However, despite Walker's strong surface stats last year, he had a 4.82 xFIP and 4.60 SIERA. He simply wasn't missing enough bats, and the sinker was just simply not good with a .398 xBA and .474 xSLG. So if the pitch mix wasn't the reason for Walker's success, what has happened this year? The video below explains the biggest difference:
With increased velocity, Walker's swing-and-miss ability has improved. He has also started to rely more on the slider, which continues to be a good whiff pitch for him, despite being hit a bit harder this year than last year. I'm not entirely sure that the change to make the slider harder and with less movement is going to be a move in the right direction for Walker. The added horizontal break and gap between fastball velocity worked for him last year and is something I'd personally like to see back again.
However, my bigger concern is the sinker. Walker has gone to the sinker almost as much as the four-seamer this year, but the pitch has still not performed. It has only a 14.3% whiff rate but has also given up a .375 average, .375 slugging percentage, and .433 wOBA, all numbers that are backed up by underlying metrics. Meanwhile, Walker's four-seamer has really played up this year at its new velocity of 95.3 MPH. Oh, and the curveball continues to be a swing-and-miss pitch that Walker doesn't really throw, so he has some issues to sort out here.
VERDICT:
Potentially impactful. There's no question that the increased velocity has made Walker more interesting. The slider he added last year remains a solid pitch for him, but I'd like to see him go back to the increased movement he had last year and rely less on the sinker that he added in. These new pitches could potentially take Walker to another level, but I still think he needs to iron out how best to utilize them.
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