Who Is Ryan Gusto? A Trio of Perplexing SPs

Ryan Gusto, Sean Newcomb, Emerson Hancock, Tomoyuki Sugano

• Astros Ryan Gusto has looked stellar in his 3 starts with the Astros (2.78 ERA, 2.67 FIP). He sat 93 mph last season with 16.5” vertical break and ~6.5” arm-side movement on his four-seam. This season, he’s averaging 94 mph with 19” vertical break (!!) and the same amount of arm-side. It’s a considerable improvement that doesn’t seem to have much connection to a change in release. He generated a 13% swinging-strike rate on his four-seamer last season at Triple-A. He’s holding an 18% clip right now in MLB on the pitch. He’s got a strong 70%+ strike rate to right-handed hitters (~64% is average). It falls a tick lower to lefties, mainly because his curveball and changeup are bigger chase pitches. FanGraphs Stuff+ has him with 4 above-average pitches (4S, SK, CT, SL) and 2 below-average. 👍

  • Aesthetically, he has an odd “look” on the mound, stepping crossfire with average extension into his release, paired with an average release height. He moved toward the 3B side of the rubber late last season and has stuck with positioning this season. This makes me wonder whether the Astros were trying to optimize something horizontally in terms of his approach, or if his stride direction is connected somehow to his fastball vert increase. I had no idea who Gusto was before today’s outing, and I’m now intrigued. It’s a deep mix, 2 strikeable pitches per handedness, put-away pitches versus righties. The Astros remain good at developing pitchers.

Ryan Gusto’s four-seam fastball release (4/23/25)

• Red Sox Sean Newcomb has a 4.43 ERA / 2.80 FIP in 5 starts for the Red Sox this season. In absolutely stunning news, he’s throwing a cutter because Craig Breslow and Andrew Bailey hate four-seamers. Newcomb threw 50% four-seam with curveballs and sweepers to lefties last year. He’s chipped away about 15 percentage points of four-seam usage for his cutter and is throwing his changeup more to righties. He’s using the cutter as a backdoor pitch in zone to righties as well, which feels like a clever hack to push up his strike rate to 66% this season. His barrel rate has come down below 8% in this small sample, alongside a better xwOBAcon to righties. Not much change in his lefty approach aside from occasional cutters. ✂️

  • FanGraphs Stuff+ kind of hates Newcomb, viewing him as a below-average stuff guy with below-average locations. He’s still probably a worse-than-league-average pitcher, but the Red Sox have an innate ability to take other teams’ projects and turn them into viable arms. It doesn’t always work, but they found probably a league-average or slightly worse SP with Newcomb, which I didn’t think was ever going to happen.

• Mariners Emerson Hancock has two new sliders. His slider last year at 84 mph with 3” vertical break with 4” glove-side movement. He’s now throwing an 82-mph slider with -3” vertical break and 6” glove-side and a sweeper at 79 mph with 3” vertical break and 14” glove-side. The changes don’t seem to be working despite a strong outing last night in Boston (6 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, 2 BB 7 K). Hancock perplexes me because his sinker has less drop than average, and he throws it down in the zone, where damage heatmaps show it continually gets pounded. 🔱

  • My wholesale change here would be to see if Hancock can pitch up-in with the sinker to righties as opposed to down, sacrificing strikes for less damage. His four-seam to lefties has been effective this season, so it makes sense to push his usage up from the 27% it sits, lower than his runner sinker to lefties. I feel like I suggested this exact thing last year, so my impression of Hancock remains the same—probably an up-and-down AAAA SP until he goes to the Red Sox and they give him a cutter of some kind that finally unlocks weak contact in zone.

• Orioles Tomoyuki Sugano is a random number generator. He’s throwing 6 pitches 5% or more to both left- and right-handed hitters. Through 5 starts, he has a laughable <10% strikeout rate with a 3.54 ERA and a 5.81 FIP. He’s a true contact merchant running a crazy-low BABIP alongside a worse-than-average barrel rate. I’m not even too sure how to approach analyzing him, given the diversity of his mix. The positive is that his four-seam is performing well from a swing-miss standpoint and can probably be used more to left-handed hitters. The four-seam is probably his best pitch, even though it’s likely working because hitters are thinking about 5 other pitches. 📉

  • I’m most surprised that with his command, his locations are pretty aggressive in zone to righties. He mixes arm-side and glove-side locations to lefties on his cutter, sinker and four-seamer, which I love. But versus righties, most of his approach is middle to middle-away. He feels like a ticking time bomb to me. Every bone in my body makes me think this is a high 4s ERA pitcher. Just impossible to survive in the league with this low of a swinging strike rate. The lowest qualified strikeout rate last year was 17% from Austin Gomber and Miles Mikolas. Both had worse-than-league-average ERAs. Sugano would shatter that floor of strikeout rate if he manages to survive a full season this year.