Joe Boyle's Nasty New Splinker. Shane Smith's Has a New Trick
Joe Boyle, Shane Smith, Kodai Senga
Rays Joe Boyle looked fantastic in his 2025 MLB debut (5 IP, 2 R, 2 BB, 7 K). The Rays don’t have him throwing the sweeper or curveball he had last year. He’s only using his short, hard bullet slider. He’s also throwing a new splitter (splinker?) with insane shape. It’s tagged as a sinker, given the 2300+ rpms on the pitch, but it looks like more of a splitter grip to me (see below). It’s 93 mph with 2” vertical break and 16” arm-side movement from his above-average 6’ release. The only splitter this season with less than 3” vertical break on average (a lot of drop), above 90 mph from an average release height is from Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Boyle’s fastball shape has become a bit less cut-carry, adding 2” arm-side movement compared to last year. 🖖
Boyle has also reworked some of his release traits. This is the primary driver of his fastball shape change. His extension and release height are both down, implying a drop in his arm angle. Usually, when extension decreases, we see a pitcher’s release height increase. Boyle’s arm angle was ~48° last year, well above average. We’ll get arm angle data soon for 2025 on him, but I expect it to be more ~40-44° degrees this season. He was still out of the zone a ton (45% in-zone rate), but his strike rate was more below average than abysmal. I’m super encouraged, even if the walk rate remains poor, the Rays had a plan with his rework and executed it. He’s a high-variance arm that is trending up.
White Sox Shane Smith has a new sinker. He broke it out today, exclusively versus Alex Bregman the second and third time he faced him. The shape looks good—93.5 mph with ~7.5” vertical break 17” arm-side movement, more arm-side than the average sinker at slightly below average velocity. I’d expect this pitch to be used more on the inner third versus other righties, especially to set up his slider down-away to righties. Smith’s four-seam is still somewhat of a limiter, relying on off-barrel contact in-zone for his overall level of success. He’s been aggressively locating the pitch middle to either handedness. The success of that pitch is where my concern lies from a full-season POV, but if the White Sox get ~1.5 WAR out of his arm over ~130 IP, it was a smash of a Rule 5 pick. 👍
Mets Kodai Senga made his cutter his primary weapon to right-handed hitters. He’s used the pitch 35% through 3 starts compared to just 22% back in 2023, and it’s eclipsed his four-seamer this season. His swinging-strike rate is down versus righties compared to 2023 (15% to 10%, small sample), but he hasn’t allowed a barrel to a righty all season, which I would imagine is the goal over whiffs. Workload is the thing to watch here. Senga made just one start last season and didn’t pitch in the postseason. I’d imagine the Mets want his arm for the 2025 postseason in a starter’s capacity, especially if Holmes converts back to a reliever late in the season. 👻
Was charting Senga’s start and to me he’s almost throwing 3 different slider shapes?? I can’t tell if it’s intentional or just variance like some Japanese pitchers will have.
Against LHBs he was throwing a vertical almost Death Ball Slider and then sprinkling in more of a sweeper shape to them along with the obvious Sweepers to RHBs. The variance is cool and I think he’s around the zone with his breakers just to be competitive with them. It’s also neat that he throws the slower 12-6 curve as a wrinkle too.
The cutter is the main contact suppressor but he has some options now in his arsenal for someone who’s splitter/fork is as nasty as it is.