Michael Soroka's New Changeup. Ben Brown's Velocity Jump
Michael Soroka, Ben Brown, Zack Littell
Nationals Michael Soroka has a new changeup. The pitch averaged 84 mph with 12” vertical break and 16-17” arm-side movement in his May starts. Yesterday it averaged 86 mph with just 6” vertical break and 18.5” arm-side movement. This is a stellar combination to achieve—harder with 6” less vertical break (way more drop). He threw the pitch 38% to lefties yesterday as well, a massive increase from just 13% in May. 🏛️
I don’t have a visual on this adjustment, but I assume he’s throwing a kick-changeup. His lefty FIP in May was 5.10 compared to just 3.67 against righties, so a tweak makes sense. I also love that he threw 4 changeups behind in the count to lefties, a situation in May where he was throwing ~60% four-seamer. That four-seamer was getting touched up behind in the count, as most fastballs do. Peripherals have Soroka more like a low 4’s ERA pitcher rather than the 4.86 he currently has. This altered changeup should help a lot to push his results in the direction of an average MLB starting pitcher.
Cubs Ben Brown’s velocity was up just over 1 mph last night, sitting 96.8 mph on his four-seamer after sitting 95.6 mph in May. He also threw the hardest pitch of his career at 98.8 mph and held 96.5 in the 6th and 7th innings. I would assume this is mostly adrenaline, given the sold-out Detroit crowd and a big matchup against Skubal and the Tigers. Brown also threw a career-high 8 changeups. The pitch averaged 4.6” vertical break at 90-91 mph, which is the most amount of drop (lowest vertical break) his changeup has had in a game in his career. He flipped to a kick-changeup in early May and has been figuring out his feel for the pitch ever since. It was the most consistent it has ever been last night. 🐻
Cubs have an interesting decision on who to take out of their rotation when Shota Imanaga returns (Brown, Rea or Horton). Brown’s last two outings feel as though he’s cemented himself as somebody who will stick in the rotation. For more on the sinker that I hope Brown adds, jump back to this post. His 5.37 ERA is a massive mismatch with his 3.14 FIP.
Rays Zack Littell has an 18% K-BB over his last 4 starts compared to an 8% in his prior 6 outings. Even in a more disadvantageous park, he continues to outpitch his peripherals with the Rays. He has a 3.86 ERA and a 5.05 FIP in 13 starts this season. We saw a similar overperformance of peripherals last year. Now that our sample is over 200 innings with Kyle Snyder and Tampa. Maybe the ERA is providing more signal than we think. It’s just hard to see what about his mix or shapes would allow him to control balls in play and damage this much. 🤷♂️
In these recent four starts, he’s cut back his slider usage from 35% to 27% after the pitch allowed 5 barrels to righties over a 3-start stretch in early May. Given the lack of Stuff (FanGraphs Stuff+ of 85) and reasonable command than plus, he becomes a weird pitcher to project comfortably. Almost all projections see him as a 4.40+ ERA starter … are you confident in taking the over there?