Cole Ragans Breakout. Gavin Williams' Velo Uptick

Cole Ragans, Gavin Williams, Brandon Williamson

• Royals Cole Ragans has dominated over his past 2 starts. 12.2 IP, 19 K, 1 ER. His previous cutter with TEX was 91 mph with 5” vertical break and 0” side-to-side. That appears to be two new pitches now based on yesterday’s outing. The key has been the addition of an 86-mph slider, which is a gyro ball (bullet spin) with -1” vertical break and 2” glove-side movement. Above-average swing-miss, above-average contact quality (small sample). He’s dropping his release point (2-3”) to get to the shape but FanGraphs Stuff+ likes it (121), Driveline has it as a 157, and his location is sharp. This is more a lefty pitch for him, but he’s still using it versus right-handed hitters. The cutter he’s throwing is also different, 91-92 mph with 6” vertical break and 2” arm-side movement. FanGraphs Stuff+ is only a 90, likely because of the arm-side movement. More of a contact-neutralizer righty pitch to my eye.

  • His velo was also way up yesterday on everything. Fastball in particular gained 2 mph relative to his Aug 2 start, along with 1” vertical break and 1” arm-side from a slightly lower release point. Stuff+ here soared from 95 to 123. Driveline had it jumping from 118 to 181. He did back off the fastball usage yesterday in favor of changeups and breakers, makes sense given prior contact quality against the fastball, even with that Stuff+. Multiple things to keep an eye on here: fastball velo and shape, whether the slider/cutter tweaks stick. I’m cautiously in on the profile for now given the underlying changes. 👑

• Guardians Gavin Williams velo is up in his past 2 outings. He averaged 95.3 mph in his first 5 starts. He’s been up to 96.3 mph in his last 2 starts. No shape change on the fastball, Stuff+ goes from 110 to 121. Swing-miss jumped from 24% to 34%, xwOBA on contact is down to .199, which is rare territory for a fastball. The velo jump extends to his curveball and slider as well. Curveball is up 2 ticks to 78 mph. FanGraphs Stuff+ goes from 84 to 97. Swing-miss there up to 54% in his past 2 outings. Slider is perhaps the most interesting with the velocity increase, 86 mph where it was 83 mph. Vertical break (lift) there is up 2” as he’s behind the ball more, totally normal to see those two variables tied together (velo and lift). FanGraphs is downgrading the pitch from 88 to 57, which makes no sense to me. Driveline Baseball has it jumping from 105 to 126, which I agree more with. Slider has always been more barrel miss than bat miss. Strong tick up in stock here if he holds this velocity. 💂‍♂️

• Reds Brandon Williamson with a Stuff+ jump on his cutter. The pitch was 90 mph with 9” vertical break and 2” glove-side in his prior 4 starts. Yesterday it maintained velocity and picked up 2” glove-side movement (cut) and dropped 2” vertical break (lift). FanGraphs Stuff+ upgraded it from 100 to 109. Driveline Baseball from 99 to 141. Both jumps that push it from average to 1 standard deviation above the average based on scaling. Williamson also threw it 36% of the time, a season-high. He was mixing in both a slider and a sweeper in his previous starts, both of which he backed off in this outing. The slider and sweeper graded out well but didn’t perform well. They appear to be toggling cutter location between away and inside. The away misses are sometimes up. Overall location here appears strong. Would like to see usage stay above 30% here. Heavy cutter+four-seam is probably best approach. ✂️