Griffin Canning's Lefty Makeover. Shota Imanaga's Four-Seam Oddities
Griffin Canning, Shota Imanaga, Brayan Bello
Mets Griffin Canning has been fantastic this season. He’s sitting on a 3.12 ERA / 3.31 FIP through 5 starts. The big changes here are no more curveball to righties, his slider is his primary offering (29% to 44% usage), and that slider has 5” less vertical break (more drop) at the same velocity. This has cut his fly-ball rate to righties in half and mildly increased his swinging-strike rate from 12% to 14.5%. His changeup has also become more of a down pitch to righties. He was mostly down-in to righties with it last season with the Angels working off inside targets. The Mets have been more middle of the plate with their targets. I’m surprised this approach is working well without a sinker to cover the inner third of the plate. 🍎
The real magic comes versus lefties, where he had a 5.55 FIP last year that’s down to ~2.40 this year. He scrapped his curveball here, increased his slider usage slightly, and started throwing a cutter. His fastball and slider locations are different too. He threw his slider away with fastballs mostly up with the Angels. The Mets have him mixing middle-in fastballs with up-away locations alongside sliders down-in to lefties. I assume the middle fastballs serve as a way to set up the down-in sliders, which hold better chase and swing-miss compared to last year. See plots below for his change in approach.
Cubs Shota Imanaga’s fastball is hopping this season. He’s averaging 19” vertical break with 12” arm-side movement at ~91 mph. That’s an inch more of both vertical and horizontal compared to last season from the same release. This is one of those instances, like with Yoshinobu Yamamoto, where I wonder if whatever could be different with the ball this year is having a positive effect on more efficient shapes. Or maybe it’s two guys getting comfortable with the MLB ball after being in NPB for a while? 🐻
Even though his four-seam shape is better, he’s allowing more barrels on the offering, littered all over the zone to righties. One thing I find kind of interesting is that his four-seam location has changed in each of his last 4 starts (see below). We’re seeing some natural regression here, alongside Wrigley playing more neutral wind-wise to start the season. He’s probably more of a ~3.75 ERA pitch than the <3.00 he was last season, which puts more pressure on the Cubs to acquire a frontline starting pitcher without Steele.
Red Sox Brayan Bello made his 2025 debut (5 IP, 4 H, ER, 3 BB, 3K). His slider shape is different from last season. In 2024, it averaged 87 mph with ~0” vertical break and 8” glove-side sweep. At Triple-A and in his debut yesterday, the pitch averaged 85 mph with -4” vertical break and 12” glove-side sweep. Given his slot isn’t down enough to connect the shape change to a lower slot, I’d guess this is a variation of the sweeper grip he was throwing last season. The shape is bigger, although I liked how the tighter shape played last year. 🧹
My guess is the Red Sox are trying to improve the 11% barrel rate his 2024 slider had to right-handed hitters by leaning on a bigger shape. It routinely got clipped the second it leaked arm-side back into the zone off the outer-third. In theory, the bigger shape, in the same arm-side leak situation, would give up less damage. Bello threw his new slider shape 39% to lefties yesterday, which would’ve ranked as the second-highest individual game usage of the offering to lefties for him since the beginning of last season. Usage of that pitch is something to keep an eye on. I’m not sold on the new slider shape. At this point, it makes me wonder whether there’s a shot for 2 sliders in his mix—bigger to righties and smaller-tighther to lefties.
Do you think Griffin Cannings more slider heavy approach is tenable? Or you think hitters can just sit on his fastball and hammer it since that is one of his more hittable pitches? Also the data is pretty early but it looks like his changeup which was good the previous years, is worse this year even though it has more drop, stuff+ models say it is also better, this one is more of an oddity to me.
Unrelated, but does anyone know why Glasnow stuff is down? Is he a slow starter/ramp up guy or is this a conscious effort to lower his stuff to limit injury risk? Or are we just seeing the aging curve take effect?