Adam Mazur's Debut. Shota Imanaga Changed His Fastball Location?

Adam Mazur, Shota Imanaga, Tyler Glasnow

Just dropped a video on “late movement” and how a pair of bad sinkers are dominating. Check it out — YouTube Link

• Padres Adam Mazur with a strong debut for the Padres. He’s a 4-pitch guy. Fastball at 95 with 17” vertical break from a 6.2’ release is around average carry for the release. FanGraphs Stuff+ of 74 on the fastball seems way low to me. He has a bullet slider at 87. This is near a pure bullet ball, 1” vertical break with 2” sweep. Pure would be 0” and 0” which nobody averages. FanGraphs Stuff+ of 133, which feels aggressive. He’ll also mix in the occasional curve, which has a very vertical shape at 82 mph. Fangraphs Stuff+ of 99. To lefties, his changeup (90 mph) is his most-used pitch, followed by his slider and again an occasional curve. Changeup has a FanGraphs Stuff+ of 79. As you can tell, I have some disagreements with the fastball and slider grades. I think it’s more of a 95-100 Stuff+ fastball, plus slider around 115. Contracting both towards average. 🥳

  • He struggled to miss righty bats at Triple-A, likely due to the more platoon neutral, vertically oriented profile he has. It works well versus lefties. He has an interesting mix of velocity—above-average on almost everything—and command, but velocity is driving his Stuff+ grades more than shape. The 4 walks are odd, but he held average or better strike rates in the minors. I worry about the strikeout rate here and righty effectiveness. But I can see some long-term upside because of the command and velocity combination. Overall, I prefer Spencer Schwellenbach, if that helps from a valuation perspective.

• Cubs Shota Imanaga started pitching inside more with his four-seam yesterday (see heatmap below). Tough to gauge whether this is a matchup thing with the White Sox or the start of a trend. It’s something to monitor going forward. I would make a small bet it’s an intentional flip. His fastball has allowed some damage middle to middle-up over his last few starts. Pushing to up-away from lefties and up-in to righties could be a sharp way to effectively make his 2-pitch mix 3 pitches. 🐻

  • Shota also only threw his slider twice, but the shape had substantially less sweep than usual. It was 7” vertical break with 2” sweep yesterday compared to 4” vertical break and 10” sweep in his prior starts. He basically turned the pitch into his cutter at 83 mph instead of a sweeper at 82. Unusual tweak given the velocity didn’t spike much. We need more sample here to confirm it’s a different iteration of his slider (more cutter) to lefties.

Shota Imanaga’s four-seam location (first 10 starts vs yesterday)

• Dodgers Tyler Glasnow’s slider is morphing. Since May 1, his slider is down 1.5 mph and has lost 4” vertical break. He’s getting to the front of the ball more at release, and as a result, it’s dropping more. We're seeing similar changes with his curveball, down .5 mph and dropping 3.5” more. No release change is affecting the shapes, which makes it a more distinct tweak. This isn’t unusual for Glasnow to have ebbs and flows with the verticality of his shapes. He seems to have points in any season where his pitches add/substract drop. 👍

  • The result has been pretty neutral overall. His fastball lost some swing-miss and these breakers are picking up some swing-miss (all under 5 percentage points). The only notable location change is the elevation of his fastball (see below). He’s tracking to shatter his career high in regular season IP of 120. I think he’s squarely a top 5 pitcher in baseball. I’m curious to see how much the Dodgers manage his workload moving forward.

Tyler Glasnow’s four-seam location to righties (April vs May)