Is James Paxton For Real? Justin Steele's Four-Seam is Back
James Paxton, Cade Povich, Aaron Nola, Justin Steele
Just dropped a YouTube video on minor league hitting philosophies. Check it out here!
Small break for me after this post. I’ll be back next Monday.
Dodgers James Paxton has strung together 3 strong outings after struggling mightily to start the season. Although he’s faced the Rockies and White Sox, we can still learn from a few subtle changes he’s made. First, his release is up slightly and his release point has moved toward the center of the rubber. This suggests he’s throwing from a marginally higher slot. He’s also pitching inside more with his fastball (see heatmaps below). This is a situation where I think he and the Dodgers have been working on something mechanically. And it’s manifested slightly in his release and locations, but moreso in his results. He’s not the 5.40 FIP pitcher from April and May, but he’s also probably not the sub-2.00 ERA guy he’s been for his last 3 outings. I’ll easily take the under on his 4.70 ERA projection rest of season as the Dodgers’ rotation attempts to get healthy. 🤔
Orioles Cade Povich has a new sinker. He threw ~70% of his total pitches to lefties last night, an anomaly for any lefty. In that crop of 67 pitches to lefties were 8 sinkers, averaging out to 10” vertical break and 13” arm-side movement at ~91 mph. It’s a below-average shape via Stuff+. Povich is too over-the-top to kill spin and doesn’t throw hard. But I’m not too sure that’s important. This is more a pitch with a clear utility—help against left-handed hitters. And it appeared successful in that regard against a lefty-heavy Guardians team. 👍
Phillies Aaron Nola is working his four-seam more up-away to left-handed hitters. Through the first two months of the season, he threw his four-seam mostly up-in with occasional usage away (heatmaps below). In June, we’ve seen a much higher concentration of his four-seamers up-away to lefties. He’s using his cutter more up-in to replace that inner-third four-seam. We’re looking at a small sample, but the swinging-strike rate on his four-seam has fallen from 11% to 4%. Nola has mostly thrown his four-seam up-away from lefties looking back at 2023 and 2022, so the early-season shift away from that was novel. Now he’s back to what he’s historically done, the results just aren’t as sharp. This is more an interesting nugget rather than something to be worried about, I believe. But I do wonder whether splitting the location like he did in April/May makes more sense than one or the other. It appears Nola has bucked his trend of having alternating good-bad years by stringing together a pair of sub-4.00 ERA seasons back-to-back. 🎯
Cubs Justin Steele is cutting his fastball again. After hitting the IL with a hamstring issue, he started getting behind the ball more. The pitch added carry or backspin and lost glove-side movement. From May 1 to June 13, the pitch averaged 14.5” vertical break and 1” arm-side. xSLG on the pitch climbed up to .450 compared to the sub-.400 it had in 2023. Over his last 2 outings, the pitch now has 12” vertical break and 1” glove-side movement, lining up much more with his shape from 2023 (11” vertical break with 1” glove-side movement). I wondered if his shape would revert back or if the added carry was the new normal. It appears the reversion has occurred, suggesting he was working through something after returning from the hammy injury that he has now solved. I think this is a good reversion given his success with the 2023 shape. He’s on track to post his 3rd-consecutive season with a sub-3.20 ERA and continues to mystify with essentially 2 pitches. 🐻