Even though Spring Training is long behind us, we have no reason to stop looking into pitchers throwing new pitches. In fact, this is when the fun begins. Many pitchers will test new pitches in the spring but abandon them when the regular season starts. It can often be more informative to see which pitchers have drastically changed their pitch mix or pitch shape after a few starts in the regular season.
With that in mind, we will continue with the premise of the series I had called Pitchers with New Pitches (and Should We Care) by breaking down notable changes in a pitcher’s pitch mix (hence “Mixing” it up). We’ll look at pitchers throwing a new pitch, have eliminated a pitch, changed their pitch mix meaningfully, or are showcasing a different shape/velocity on a pitch.
I’ll continue my analysis with the simple premise that not every new pitch should be greeted with praise. A new pitch, like a shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to complement what a pitcher already has and fill a meaningful void in his current pitch mix. We want to check and see if he has any splits issues. We want to see what his best pitch(es) is and see if this new pitch would complement that. Then we want to see what this new pitch type is generally used for (control, called strikes, etc.) and see if that is something this pitcher needs help with. We can also now see the pitch in action to look at the shape and command and see if it’s actually any good. Once we’ve done all that, we can decide if the pitch is a good addition or not.
If you missed any of the previous editions of this series, you can click this link here to be taken to the tracker, which I’ll update as the season goes on. It also includes links to the original articles so you can read them in full if you’d like.
We’re going to mix it up this week (haha) by looking at the overall pitch mixes of four rookie starters who debuted this week in the hopes of seeing what we can expect long-term.
Listen to the Rotoworld Baseball Show for the latest player news, waiver claims, roster advice, and more from our experts all season long. Click here or download it wherever you get your podcasts.
Jake Irvin - Washington Nationals (Curveball)
(ARTICLE WAS SUBMITTED BEFORE TUESDAY NIGHT’S START)
There are few pitchers that have seen a bigger rise in their fantasy value over the last few weeks than Jake Irvin. The Nationals’ right-hander is the 97th-ranked player in Yahoo standard 5x5 scoring and is the 29th-ranked player over the last month, with a 1.48 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, and 31 strikeouts in his last 30 1/3 innings. As a 27-year-old who posted a 4.61 ERA last year and has a career strikeout rate of just 19.7%, this all feels hard to believe, so what is driving this success for Irvin?
One thing that jumped out to me is that Irvin has been changing the shape of his curveball and changeup since the season began. Since he only throws his changeup 2% of the time, we’re not going to focus on that here, but the curveball is the driver for him. On the season, it has been his second-best pitch by Pitcher List’s PLV rating with a 5.41 mark, which is 87th percentile among curveballs for starting pitchers. The pitch has a 12.6% swinging strike rate (SwStr%), 53% zone rate (89th percentile), 68% strike rate (88th percentile), and 31.5% Ideal Contact Rate (79th percentile).
Pretty much any way you slice it, the curveball has been a great offering for Irvin, but it seems that he’s also making it better. The image below, from Brooks Baseball, shows the month-by-month change in vertical movement on Irvin’s curve.
What started as an 80.5 mph pitch with 12.5 inches of horizontal movement and almost five inches of drop is now an 81.8 mph pitch with 11.2 inches of horizontal movement and just 1.7 inches of drop. That has coincided with an increasing swinging strike rate from 7.7% in April to 15.3% in June. So why might that be and how does that help him?
For starters, as a location-based pitch that Irvin throws all over the strike zone, cutting down on some of the vertical movement makes it easier for him to spot it for strikes on the inside or outside corner and also use up in the zone or in the middle of the zone. He throws the pitch in the lower third of the strike zone just 53% of the time, which is the 23rd percentile for curveballs, so he doesn’t need it to be a pitch that falls out of the zone. It’s better for him as a pitch he can command anywhere, which this shape seems to help him with.
Since Irvin is able to command the curve more effectively now, he’s been using it more than earlier in the season, throwing it 38% of the time in June (his most-used pitch) compared to 28% of the time in April. He also uses the pitch early in the count 61% of the time and has a 63% first-pitch strike rate with the curve, which allows him to get ahead of hitters and then use his four-seam fastball later in the count. Even though he’s using the four-seamer less overall, he’s throwing it in two-strike counts 39% of the time, which is well above average.
The fastball doesn’t seem like a great two-strike pitch, but he has an above-average putaway rate on it (the rate at which a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout) and a solid 11.3% SwStr%. His four-seamer has a little bit of run to it and he uses it inside on hitters often, so given that he has been throwing it up in the zone more often of late, he has allowed more weak contact and gotten more outs in play with it. None of his fastball variations (four-seam, cutter, sinker) are above average, but they’re all fine, so if he leans on the curve and mixes and matches those, he can continue to have success.
VERDICT: MEANINGFULLY IMPACTFUL. The changes are meaningful in two ways. For starters, he has made his curveball better by upping the swinging strike rates and changing the shape to be something he has better command of. He’s also now using the pitch more often. We love both of those. Relying on the curve puts less pressure on his fastballs and considering he has three types of fastballs that he can mix and match, all he really needs to do is not get hurt consistently by his fastballs and he should be fine. I don’t think the ceiling is high here, but Irvin should continue to be reliable as long as that curve is working.
Tylor Megill - New York Mets (Cutter)
I covered Megill in the offseason when the news came out that he was introducing a splitter, but we’re going to cover Megill again here because it turns out that the cutter usage is more important for him.
Since coming off the IL, he has a 3.71 ERA and 1.28 WHIP in 26.2 innings with a 20% K-BB%, 12.2% SwStr%, and 112 Stuff+. Every pitch that Megill throws, except his curve, grades out as an above-average pitch on Stuff+. However, Megill has just a 92 Location+ grade, which means his overall pitches grade out worse in PLV, which factors in location. The only pitch PLV thinks is above average is Megill’s cutter, which has a 5.30 PLV grade where 5.20 is average. So it’s worth noting that Megill has upped the cutter usage in recent starts.
Megill only made one start in March before going on the IL, but he came back throwing the cutter 15% of the time in two starts in May and then upped the usage to 21% over three starts in June. Considering it’s been his best pitch this season, seeing that usage tick up is good, but why has the cutter been so good for Megill this season?
For starters, it has the highest strike rate of any of his pitches, which is important for a pitcher who struggles with command. Megill’s 69% strike rate on the cutter is 70th percentile, and he’s been improving, registering an 86% strike rate on it in his last start and 72% in the start before. He throws it pretty much equally to both righties and lefties but isn’t particular with his locations. In fact, the biggest thing is that he seems to just throw it over the middle of the plate with a 31% middle location on the x-axis (meaning not inside or outside). That’s the 86th percentile in baseball.
Yet, the approach is working since it is inducing 53% groundballs and has a 41% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), which isn’t great but is basically league average. The fact that it is giving him called strikes and swinging strikes, with a 15.6% SwStr%, is the most important part for Megill. He throws it early in the count 68% of the time, which has allowed him to get ahead of hitters and then use the slider and splitter in two-strike counts. The slider has a 17.5% SwStr% and 24% PutAway rate, while the splitter has a 24% SwStr% and 33% PutAway rate, all of which are 76th percentile or better numbers. The issue is that he can’t command either of them, with a 33% zone rate or worse on both pitches. That hurts him less now since he’s mainly using them in two-strike counts and can get hitters to chase pitches out of the zone more frequently.
Megill also has a four-seam fastball with elite extension and great height-adjusted vertical approach angle that he simply can’t command well enough to throw it up in the zone consistently. He throws it up just 40% of the time and uses it low 30% of the time. Also, he’s thrown his fastball middle-middle 13% of the time. That’s well above the league average of 7.5% for starters. The cutter puts less pressure on all of these pitches, but if Megill can get any of these other ones to be more consistent as well, watch out.
VERDICT: MEANINGFULLY IMPACTFUL. Megill has intriguing swing-and-miss stuff but has lacked the consistent command to make it count, so having a pitch that he can pound the zone with is crucial. It seems like the cutter is emerging as that pitch. That is still room to grow here, but this is an exciting development for Megill that could lead him to unlock his upside even more regularly; although, we have to always expect some volatility here.
Erick Fedde - Chicago White Sox (Cutter, Changeup, Splitter)
Erick Fedde is another pitcher I covered earlier in the season when I profiled his pitch mix changes after coming from Korea. Yet, Fedde seems to have reshaped his arsenal again over his last five starts, which has led to some solid results. In his last 29 1/3 innings, Fedde has a 3.07 ERA with a 2.92 xFIP and a 3.20 SIERA that’s 19th in baseball among qualified starters. Over that span, he also has a 24.6% strikeout rate and 6.3% walk rate that has led to an 18.3% K-BB% which is 38th in baseball, which is not bad for more of a “command guy.”
The primary changes to Fedde’s pitch mix appear to be leaning on his cutter and changeup more, and cutting back on his sweeper usage a bit.
In April, he led with his sinker 32% of the time then threw his sweeper 27% of the time, cutter 22%, and splitter 18% of the time. By May, he had cut down the usage of his splitter and sweeper, and added in a changeup, and by June, he had abandoned the splitter altogether, while relying far more on the cutter and changeup than before.
So what do we make of these moves?
For starters, we have to assume command is why Fedde moved away from the splitter. The pitch graded out well, but he had just a 33% zone rate and 53% strike rate with just a 6.3% SwStr%. So it was a pitch he couldn’t throw in the zone much but also didn’t get many swings and misses. He did induce 70% groundballs, which is nice, but I have no problem with a guy moving on from a pitch that didn’t get called strikes or swinging strikes.
The sweeper is also a pitch that he doesn’t throw in the zone often, with below-average strike rates and zone rates. It also doesn’t get many swings and misses with just a 10% SwStr% and 13.5% PutAway rate, so it’s another pitch I don’t mind him dialing back the usage of. It induces a lot of soft contact with a 26.4% Ideal Contact Rate and also gets a fair amount of called strikes, so I think the pitch works well as a complementary offering, but doesn’t need to be a pitch he leans on so often.
Increasing the cutter usage from 22% to 37% also makes sense for Fedde. It’s an average zone rate and strike rate pitch for him, but he gets a fair amount of called strikes on it with a 69th percentile called strike rate to go along with a solid 13% SwStr%. It does give up a decent amount of hard contact, but just a 30% flyball rate, so most of that hard contact is on the ground. Fedde also uses the cutter a lot in two-strike counts, which makes sense since it has a 24% PutAway Rate that’s 75th percentile for cutters. The changeup has the makings of being a good pitch for Fedde, getting a 5.47 PLV grade where 5.01 is average. The pitch doesn’t get a lot of swings and misses but also doesn’t give up much hard contact at all. Over the last few starts, Fedde has started to pick up the strike rate on the cutter, which is important for him because he needs to be able to use it more often earlier in the count since it doesn’t miss many bats.
All of these changes feel a little bit more like a reshuffling than the real overhaul I expected, but I’m not mad at it.
VERDICT: MINIMALLY IMPACTFUL. I don’t think this gives Fedde much more swing-and-miss in his game, which means the ceiling isn’t much higher than it was before. However, I think the changes he made to the arsenal will limit hard contact and allow his better pitch - the cutter - to shine while also putting less weight on the shoulders of the sweeper, which is a pitch that didn’t fit in such a high-profile spot in his arsenal. The problem is that, without big-time strikeout upside, Fedde will always have a lower upside on a bad team that doesn’t give him much of a chance at a win. Still, I think this raises his floor a bit.