Jose Soriano Needs a Usage Change. Jordan Romano's Rubber Move
Jose Soriano, Ranger Suarez, Jordan Romano
Angels Jose Soriano is throwing too many four-seam fastballs. His four-seam+sinker usage right now is 58% to lefties and 53% to righties. I’d ditch the four-seam entirely. It’s hard to have a 100-mph fastball grade as a below-average offering, but the shape is the purest of deadzone. Just 5 balls in play with a .719 xSLG. He’s throwing the pitch middle of the plate, can’t locate it (who can at 99+?). Less hot take: throw the sinker more to left-handed hitters. The drop on the pitch should allow it to survive opposite-handed. If the idea is that he needs to throw more strikes, his sinker and four-seam have zone rates that are less than 5 percentage points off his slider, curve, and split. 😢
Soriano’s curveball has one of the gaudiest movement profiles I’ve seen. It’s equal to a curveball shape (slightly more sweep) thrown 7 mph harder than the average curveball. Driveline Stuff+ of 146 yesterday, near 80-grade pitch. His slider is a true bullet ball with 1” vertical and <1” sweep at 92 mph. Driveline Stuff+ of 119, plus. Splitter is 95 mph with negative vertical break from a 5.9’ release—unheard of. Driveline Stuff+ of 109, above-average. The fact he’s striking these three non-fastballs above 60% is incredible. #FreeJoseSoriano
Phillies Ranger Suarez threw a complete-game gem. His sinker velocity is still down nearly 2 mph relative to last season and he’s bumped the usage up about 10 percentage points. It continues to carve hitters. Driveline’s Command+ has him with 120+ sinker command (>85th percentile). Stuff+ is only average, but would increase relative to last season if he maintains shape and adds back the 2 mph he lost. ✂️
Although his cutter is a sub-two-strikes contact neutralizer, the Stuff+ is up from 101 last year to 127 this year (now a plus pitch). This connects to him doubling the glove-side movement on the pitch from 2” to 4”. It feels like an aggressive upgrade in Stuff, but the shape is objectively better. The pitch's location has also pushed more up-in versus right-handed hitters, which was more down-in last year. I wonder if this subtle change has helped the down-away sinker to righties.
Blue Jays Jordan Romano moved to the first-base side of the rubber. There’s about a foot of difference in his horizontal release point from 2023 to his 2024 debut yesterday. Looks similar to last season, one note is that the release height on his slider was up 2.5”, which took away an inch of drop and 3” glove-side movement on his slider. Super tiny sample here, but it’s something to monitor. Driveline Stuff+ on the slider did drop from ~121 last year to 101 this year because there was no velocity jump with the movement loss. ⬅️