Paul Skenes' Deadly Splinker. Hunter Brown Panic Mode
Paul Skenes' Deadly Splinker. Hunter Brown Panic Mode
Paul Skenes, Hunter Brown, Tyler Alexander
Pirates Paul Skenes has been throwing his “splinker” more in the majors. The increase in usage is most striking versus left-handed hitters. He threw the pitch 11% at Triple-A. That’s up to 28% in his 2 major league starts. His location of the pitch to left-handed hitters has been pristine in the bottom shadow of the zone. There’s a small increase in splinker usage versus right-handed hitters as well. It’s jumped from 25% usage at Triple-A to 32% in the majors. Driveline has it graded as his best pitch, a 114 Stuff+. I speculated that this day would come, I just didn’t think it would happen so quick. I do believe it’s his best pitch. It’s a supercharged version of Logan Webb’s sinker. Two angles of his splinker grip are below. 🏴☠️
Astros Hunter Brown is tinkering. After his horrid April, he’s made a few changes in May, most of them to right-handed hitters. He’s moved 7” toward the third base side of the rubber. This started on May 5. On that date, he also started throwing a sinker, a righty weapon he’s throwing 30%, primarily on the inner third of the plate. He also ditched his new harder cutter with more lift to right-handed hitters entirely after throwing it 16% of the time (it actually performed well). Driveline Stuff+ has his sinker marginally higher than his four-seam (96 vs 92). The sinker looks fine, but I think he’s throwing it too much. It’s more a behind-in-count weapon to me rather than a pitch I’d lean on. He’s also pitching down and inside with his four-seam to righties as opposed to up (see below). 🥴
Feels like some desperate tinkering going on here. Complete four-seam location change, scrapped pitch that was (kind of) working, combined with a brand new pitch he’s now throwing 30% to one handedness. The most interesting thing about this is that Brown’s expected stats suggested he was getting extremely unlucky in April. It just didn’t seem like anybody had the patience to wait it out or internally the indicators were more worrisome, so here we are. I still think the bullet slider is still great and it’s performing as such. He can probably get away with throwing a bunch of splitter to lefties. I’m unsure what the righty mix looks like in another month. I had him as a breakout to start the season, but it feels like righting the ship to a league-average starter would be a win rest of season.
Rays Tyler Alexander changed both his cutter and slider this season. His cutter last year was 86 mph with 10” vertical break and 2” sweep. This year, it’s 84 mph with 7.5” vertical break and 4” sweep. It’s dropping more, is slower and is sweeping a touch more. Driveline Stuff+ of 115 on the pitch, plus offering (I think this is too aggressive of a grade). The oddity with the pitch is that he’s releasing it with a more “backspun” axis, and yet, the pitch is dropping more. Usually, the opposite occurs—more vertical or backspun axis, less drop. Despite the adjustment, the pitch’s expected damage allowed has ballooned from .447 to .557 versus righties, to whom he’s throwing the pitch 35%. 🤷♂️
The slider he was throwing last year is now a pretty standard sweeper—76 mph with 18” sweep, below-average offering per Driveline Stuff+ likely due to the low velocity (94). It’s also getting touched up, allowing a .665 xSLG to righties as he throws it 18%. Both of these tweaks don’t seem to be working? He’s been worse than last year and his strikeouts have dropped, despite pitching 7 perfect innings last night before a 2-run homer in the 8th. You could say the Rays have lost their touch, but I think this is just a case of a pitcher having low velocity and not plus-plus command.