The report is back! With a new name — because we’re still trying to nail down some details behind the scenes, but also because this title and format allows for more creativity. You might find a full breakdown of one pitcher that caught my eye, or even just an inning. You might find a group of pitchers that are interesting for some reason. You might even find those Command and Stuff leaderboards we had here last year.
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This week, it’s time to look at pitchers who are throwing new pitches. Thanks to Mike Kurland, and his new pitch mix change app, we can do a simple search that asks: which pitchers are throwing a pitch more (up 10 percentage points at least) who didn’t throw it at least 10 percent of the time last year (using that as a benchmark for “owning” a pitch)?
That list is below, with the newest Command+ and Stuff+ numbers. Those Stuff+ numbers are thanks to Max Bay, who picked up Ethan Moore’s stuff research and updated it.
Pitcher | Pitch Up | 2020 | 2021 | Command+ | Stuff+ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Sinker | 0% | 13% | 87 | 81 | |
Slider | 0% | 17% | 124 | 92 | |
Slider | 0% | 16% | 72 | 99 | |
Slider | 0% | 34% | 89 | 60 | |
Cutter | 0% | 24% | 154 | ||
Slider | 0% | 30% | 72 | 80 | |
Sinker | 1% | 23% | 74 | 94 | |
Curve | 2% | 20% | 96 | 88 | |
Slider | 2% | 14% | 100 | 80 | |
Cutter | 2% | 29% | 108 | 80 | |
Curve | 4% | 15% | 90 | 93 | |
Slider | 5% | 39% | 94 | 97 | |
Changeup | 6% | 21% | 111 | ||
Cutter | 6% | 25% | 90 | 109 | |
Curve | 7% | 24% | 83 | 107 | |
Slider | 7% | 39% | 96 | 129 | |
Cutter | 7% | 19% | 127 | 73 | |
Changeup | 8% | 25% | 103 | 71 | |
Cutter | 9% | 20% | 97 | 97 | |
Slider | 9% | 19% | 93 | 92 |
Scanning the Command+ and Stuff+ numbers for this pitch, you realize quickly it’s a bit of an underwhelming list. Hey, if the pitch was amazing, they probably would have thrown it more before, right? There’s still the fact that adding a pitch (by throwing it more than 10 percent of the time), no matter how good it is, softens a pitcher’s third-time-through-the-order penalty, which would potentially allow them to pitch deeper into games. So it’s good news for all of these pitchers, really.
But it’s better news for some. Ideally, the new pitch would be good for action (Stuff) or location (Command) so that it can help the pitcher either get called or swinging strikes. A pitch like Huascar Ynoa’s sinker, which isn’t great at either, still leaves him searching for an action or command pitch other than his slider (114 Stuff+/99 Command+), as all of his other pitches are below-average in both respects.
A pitcher like Tyler Glasnow may get an incomplete on his report card here. There’s evidence he’s still figuring out how to use the slider best, and though you can put together a GIF like this one to highlight the difference between his curve and slider, it ends up being cherry-picking. Watch one of his starts and try to really nail down which breaking ball is which, and you’ll notice it’s not easy. Still, if there was a top-end pitcher who more desperately needed a third pitch, they aren’t obvious, so let’s call it a win for him anyway.
And then there are these five pitchers who are intriguing for one reason or another.
Lance McCullers Jr., Slider
The pitch looks great.
But eyes can be a little deceiving. While his curveball gets nearly 20 inches more drop than this (and 3 inches more than the average curveball) and goes super-fast for a curveball (third-fastest among all pitchers with more than 10 innings, at 84.4 mph), McCullers’ slider velocity (86 mph) is about average, and he gets 5 inches less drop than average. So far the slider has the best slugging and expected slugging numbers of his arsenal, but you have to think some part of this is the league having to adjust to the scouting report.
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The hope is that he improves the command on this pitch while he’s throwing it a ton, and then he’ll have a legit four-pitch mix, since the slider has more horizontal movement compared to his curveball. The slider would also give him a weapon against righties when curves and change-ups often have reverse platoon splits. But, for a guy who doesn’t have average command, adding another pitch he doesn’t command at an average rate, and is inferior to his curveball — well, it’s probably good for the arsenal, but maybe it’s not surprising that his walk rate is up.
With a guy who has stuff as good as this though, we all just have to sit and watch to see what happens with the new slider.
Eduardo Rodriguez, Slider
This is really the story of bringing that old thing back — Rodriguez didn’t throw the slider much at all in 2019, but he’d thrown it as often as 16 percent of the time before that, and he’s spent some time over his career toggling between the cutter and the slider in order to find the best breaking ball to go with his change-up. This pitch is not his best breaking ball.
It looks like a slow slider or a soft curveball … but he’s gotten more than a few called strikes on it in just this manner. The back door called strike is still a valuable weapon, even if it won’t be a dominant one. Now he’s got four pitches (the cutter, the change-up, the two-seamer, and the slider) that he commands at an above-average rate, and two pitches (change-up, cutter, and four-seamer) that get great whiff rates.
This could be his best year if he stays healthy.
Elieser Hernandez, Change-up
The man who owns the weirdest breaking ball in baseball just added maybe one of the weirder change-ups in baseball. By Statcast, this pitch has a whopping 12 inches less drop than the average change-up, and 6 inches less fade.
People like to talk about all the red on the Statcast page, and this pitch just added even more blue to Hernandez’ page. It’s gotten one called strike and one swinging strike and both belong to Rich Hill. It looks like a soft sinker with no separation from his four-seam (which only goes about three or four ticks faster). It might be his two-seam.
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We’ll see if he really uses this, but with such a unique pitch mix, and such a glaring need for a third pitch, it’s worth highlighting. Sometimes, being unique is good enough, as we’ve already learned from his weird slow-curve-velocity cutter-movement breaking pitch. The good news here is that Bay’s update to Stuff+ — which used extreme gradient boost to help account for the fact that distance from average is good, even if it’s a 51-mph eephus or a weird 87-mph soft change — caught the weirdness of this pitch and gave it a decent Stuff number.
Wouldn’t it be something if this guy succeeded by throwing three pitches that look absolutely terrible? Three of the weirdest pitches in baseball? The real action here, though, is to wait and see. Stuff+ still takes about 100 pitches to really believe.
Jakob Junis, Cutter
Here is where we might see the best overall impact from a new pitch. Junis was a two-pitch pitcher, and according to STATS Perform, he still is. But Statcast is tracking a new cutter, so let’s see if we can tell the difference. Here’s a typical slider thrown to a righty for a whiff.
Now here’s a cutter thrown to a lefty.
Maaaayybee? It’s interesting that STATS doesn’t see a difference because they use catcher signs in their work, and if there’s one sign for these two offerings then it’s probably just one pitch. Also, using Alex Chamberlain’s pitch type leaderboard, the slider has basically the same movement and stats to lefties and righties … but he throws a curve on that leaderboard, and not on Statcast.
So, let’s keep watching. Two breaking balls could be a big deal for Junis, who sorely needs a third pitch. His home runs per nine innings go up from 1.3 the first time through the order to 2.0 the third time through. For now, in fantasy, you’d want to hold him on your bench away from home and even home against better offenses, but he might still be a hold.
Chris Flexen, Curve
Overall, Flexen has below-average stuff (90 Stuff+) and Command (93 Command+), but sometimes a collection of pitches that are slightly below-average can produce average or better results, just because the pitcher has a lot of different options in any count. This newer curveball has made Flexen a four-pitch pitcher even if it’s his third-best pitch by command and second-best by stuff.
In a 2-2 count, Flexen could have gone with a high four-seamer, a change-up away, or the backfoot curveball, and so he had Jake Cave guessing. That’s how he has a decent strikeout rate so far despite a mediocre swinging strike rate. He’ll have some good starts at home or in cold away parks against weaker offenses, is the guess here.
(Top Photo of Junis: Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
