Will Mike Clevinger's Strikeouts Return Soon?

September 2, 2020

After a blockbuster deal at the trade deadline, Mike Clevinger is now a San Diego Padre. Nicklaus Gaut takes a look at whether he'll bring his elite strikeout rate from 2019 with him.

This was supposed to be a wider look at the biggest decreases in starting pitcher strikeout rates. But lo and behold, the leader of that list - and someone who had been cooling his heels at Cleveland's alternate site, as of late - was traded to San Diego in a blockbuster deal. And even though Clevinger only has four starts under his belt in 2020, there were some things I found in my digging that were interesting, if not troubling. And Clevinger has faced 93 batters this season, which as I explain in more depth here, is enough of a sample size to make some early judgments.

Clevinger only has a 22.6% K% in his four starts, a year after posting a 33.9% K% in 2019. He has a 3.18 ERA but a 5.60 FIP speaks much more poorly of his abbreviated start. But besides those performance results, there were a lot of changes to how his various pitches were moving and performing. As well, as some changes in his release points that go back to 2019 and may be contributing to his arsenal tunneling worse this season.

Make no mistake, I love this "win-now" move by San Diego, getting a front-line starter in exchange for bulk and without having to deal one of their elite pitching prospects. But there are some possible mechanical changes that could be leading Clevinger to be more hittable. Let's dig some stuff up.

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Sunshine's Strikeouts Are Setting

In terms of total batters faced, Clevinger is lighter on the list due to being put on ice for breaking COVID-19 protocols after just four starts. However, it's probably worth chatting about his 11-point drop in strikeout-rate seeing that he was the headline piece in a blockbuster deadline deal, being traded to San Diego for approximately 17 players.

Clevinger's 3.18 ERA over 22.2 innings is a little deceptive, as he has a 5.60 FIP, and his walk-rate is up four-points to 11.8%. And the four starts were again the Twins (twice), Royals, and Reds, none of whom have been stingy with strikeouts to righthanded pitching. Minnesota is the seventh-highest at 25.5% K%,  Kansas City is 12th-highest at 24% K%, and Cinncinati is 13th-highest at a 23.9% K%. Looking further, all of the key indicators for strikeouts have taken a dip:

Starting with swinging-strike, let's look at which pitches in Clevinger's arsenal have seen the biggest changes in their whiffery.  Here are the pitches, according to their splits, that have seen the biggest drop in SwStr%, along with their usage rates:

Probably not coincidentally, all three pitches have seen some sort of change in their movement profiles. The changeup is an inch short of 2019 on both the vertical and horizontal plane, while his four-seamer went the opposite way, gaining about an inch on both planes. The slider, however, had the largest differences, losing 3.5 inches of drop and 4.6 inches of break. The slider versus right-handers last season had a .308 wOBAcon and 7.7% Brl% against it. This year it's up to a .365 xwOBAcon and 15.4% Brl%, with batters making much better contact, in addition to whiffing less.

Here's the slider to righties in 2019:

And here it is in 2020:

And finally here's where Clevinger probably shouldn't be throwing his slider to RHB:

Then there is the matter of his curveball, which he throws almost exclusively to left-handers and is getting 2.5 fewer inches of drop and 4.7 fewer inches of break. In terms of quality of contact, batters had a .400 wOBAcon against the curveball in 2019, compared to a .671 wOBAcon in 2020, even though his contact-rate on the pitch has dropped from 29.4% to 20.8%. But of the contact that's been made against the curve, much more of it has been hit in the air compared to last year; his groundball-rate has dropped from 53% to 47 % and his flyball-rate has increased from 16.2% to 26.6%.

On the left is his curveball to LHB in 2019, on the right is 2020:

Finally, there is his four-seam fastball, particularly to right-handers. Its swinging-strike rate has dropped 4.5 points and overall, batters have an xwOBA against it that's nearly 200 points higher. Batters also have nearly a seven-point higher contact-rate against it than in 2020 and even though he's getting slightly more movement on both planes, batters aren't chasing it; he's dropped precipitously from a 26.4% chase-rate to 10.9%.

Simple Mechanics?

Since Clevinger has only pitched four games, it's hard to pin any of this on anything more than a pitcher finding his rhythm at the beginning of the season. Although, it isn't thrilling that all of his pitches seem to have something wonky going on with them. He hasn't seen any dramatic changes in his spin rates, so something else is driving the changes in movement and trouble with the location.

I won't pretend to be some mechanics whiz who can tell you why the pitches are doing this and that but one change that sticks out to me is a change in his release points, particularly on the vertical plane. But these changes go back to last year, which makes me wonder if it's a feature or a bug.

Below you can see the release points of his different pitches since 2018, with most seeing a steady climb after Clevinger returned from injury last year. In 2020, they're mostly in the areas that they ended 2019 at:

Putting the change in his pitch movement together with the change in release point, let's now take a look at his pitch tracking versus right- and left-handed batters in 2019 and 2020.

Here he is versus RHB:

The fastball/slider combo syncs together for so much longer in 2019, moving together past the decision-point at which the batter must decide to swing. In 2020, the separation point has clearly been much earlier.

The differences are even starker versus LHB:

In 2019, his fastball, changeup, and curveball all tunneled nicely together as they moved towards the decision point. The fastball and changeup stayed together until the very end and moving opposite of the curveball. Those are some tough tunnels to track.

His pitches are tracking completely different in 2020. The curve and changeup still move together towards the decision-point but the fastball is out in a world by itself, making it easy for the batter to identify it early in the path. And instead of the changeup fading away from left-handers, it now has less separation in his path from his curve. For good hitters, this makes life a lot easier. They can identify early on whether it's a fastball and if it's not they have to deal with two pitches that will end up right in the same area.

Rest of Season Outlook

I don't suddenly think Clevinger is broken and for all I know, he spent his "vacation" at Cleveland's alternate site honing his mechanics. But the fact that the change in his release points started last year and has continued to 2020 makes me wonder if it's a permanent change.  And if those release points are what's leading to how his pitches are moving and tunneling, then I do worry if he'll be a lot more hittable.

One extra little nugget. Besides raw spin, we can also track active-spin. This is the amount of spin that actually translates to movement by the pitch. The active-spin rates for Clevinger's slider and curveball the last two seasons aren't inspiring:

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