Chris Paddack, Shane Bieber Return. Reid Detmers' Changeup
Chris Paddack, Shane Bieber, Reid Detmers, Tarik Skubal
There’s a new video up on my YouTube where I advance scout the Baltimore Orioles best hitters. It’s a long video, but one I enjoyed making and think has valuable info in it. LINK TO WATCH
Twins Chris Paddack returned from Tommy John surgery with some newfound velocity. His four-seam averaged 96 mph across 19 pitches, 1 mph higher than he threw in 2021 and 3 mph higher than he threw last season. His max velo touched 99, which he hasn’t thrown in MLB. The extension on his fastball was slightly up compared to both 2022 and 2021, release height was marginally lower as well. He hung around 18” vertical break on his four-seam too even with the velocity increase, which led to the gaudy 124 four-seam Stuff+ per FanGraphs, 171 per Driveline Baseball. Shapes on his changeup, slider, and curve looked the same. 📈
Angels Reid Detmers has started throwing his changeup more. Since his September 5 start, he’s thrown his changeup a minimum 15% of the time for four consecutive starts after only eclipsing 10% once in his prior 15 outings. Whiff on it is slightly below average for a changeup, but xwOBA on contact (small sample) is above average. FanGraphs Stuff+ has the grade at 101 and the location has been good (Location+ of 102, in-zone above average). Location is primarily down-away from right-handed hitters, fits nicely into his approach given he didn’t have anything down in the zone that moved arm-side. He has a 1.82 ERA | 2.77 FIP in the four starts since he started throwing the pitch. 😇
Guardians Shane Bieber has made 2 starts since coming off the IL. His velocity is down ~1 mph across the board compared to his April-July numbers. His extension is up ~1-2”, but more importantly his release height is up 2-3” on his four-seam. Usually, extension and release are inversely correlated, so with both increasing there’s some reason to think he’s working with a higher arm angle upon his return. The result is that his four-seam has picked up 1.5” vertical break, sending the Stuff+ from 80 to 90, swing-miss on it has also doubled in the small sample of the pitch upon his return. Unfortunately, we won’t have a larger sample to go off heading into the offseason, but there’s some minor encouragement here that whatever he was dealing with shoulder-wise was causing his arm angle to drop. I still think velocity is the most important thing here, however, getting back to ~93 would do him wonders. 🤷♂️
Tigers Tarik Skubal has been one of the best pitchers in baseball since the All-Star break. He holds the highest fWAR in baseball, thanks in part to low HR totals, a sub-2 BB/9 and an 11+ K/9. Skubal confirms my anecdotal belief that left-handed pitchers are generally undersold by Stuff+. FanGraphs only gives him one above-average pitch—his slider—which is oddly the only pitch in his repertoire generating below-average swing-miss relative to that given pitch type. The key, I think, is moderate usage of his fastball (sub 40%) and when he does use it, he locates it well at the top of the zone and the pitches he puts middle don’t result in huge damage numbers. Driveline Baseball has the four-seam Stuff+ at 111, so reasonably higher. His changeup posts a 51% swing-miss since the break (33% is average) and his sinker acts primarily as a front-door pitch to right-handed hitters. It’s a good mix and one that I think is propped up by being left-handed and potentially having some deception (which we can’t really quantify on the public side over here). 🐅