Ryan Pepiot Hates His Four-Seamer. Tarik Skubal's Arm Angle is Higher. Zac Gallen's Weird Fastball
Ryan Pepiot, Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, Zac Gallen
Rays Ryan Pepiot has backed off his four-seam usage this season, basically a 20 percentage point haircut to lefties and righties. It’s down from 46% to 26% versus lefties and 57% to 38% versus righties. A boost in his changeup usage to both handedness has been the main pitch making up for the cut in four-seam usage. I was curious to see where his walk rate trends with the fade in four-seam usage. He didn’t zone anything above a 50% clip last season that wasn’t his fastball. This season, however, he’s zoning his changeup an insane 69%, up from just 41% last season. His changeup location versus lefties is where the more aggressive zone approach is noticeable (see below). ☀️
I think this strategy will work. He’s using his changeup as a strike pitch early and a deep-count offering below the zone for whiffs. For a while, it was widely believed that fastballs are what pitchers command the best, period. Some critical thinking has led to more innovative non-fastball strategies like this one, which usually pay dividends.
Tigers Tarik Skubal is leaning on his fastball and changeup to righties to start the 2025 season. He’s thrown the two pitches a combined 84% through two starts compared to just 67% last season. His sinker and slider to righties are both taking a back seat right now. Skubal’s four-seam arm angle has also increased 4.8° compared to last year (he’s throwing from a higher slot). It’s one of the highest increases among starting pitchers this season. 🐅
The byproduct of the higher arm is that he’s getting more carry on his four-seamer. His four-seam vertical break is up from 16.2” to 17.7”. His extension is up slightly as well, which has allowed him to maintain a similar release height. The result is a recipe for a better four-seam shape. FanGraphs Stuff+ has bumped the pitch from a 108 last season to 116 this season. Even if he gives back some of these gains, the pitch should still grade better. It’s easy not to worry about the 5.91 ERA, especially if he expands back out his mix. I still want to see him push the velocity on his slider and locate it down-in to righties.
DBacks Zac Gallen was cutting the heck out of his fastball last night in the Bronx (6.2 IP, 3 H, 13 K). He averaged 17” vertical break and 5” arm-side movement last season and posted a similar shape in his 2025 debut at Chase Field. Yesterday, his four-seam had 20” of vertical break and 2” arm-side movement. It’s the most vertical break he’s averaged in a game on his fastball since April 2023. I would guess he accessed this shape through (unintentionally) cutting the pitch. We can see this through the lower arm-side movement of the offering shown above. More evidence of this cutting is that his curveball picked up 5” of glove-side movement over his 2024 season average, turning into a sweepier pitch.
Gallen backed off his fastball, especially to lefites, despite the much stronger shape. Perhaps the different life on the pitch threw off his feel for location on it? It’s an odd quirk that I think played a part in his success in this outing. If he held these shapes, Stuff+ would like him more than it does. But I don’t think that’s likely.
Red Sox Garrett Crochet tricked me. I was convinced he would lean heavily on cutters to right-handed hitters this season instead of his four-seam. In each of his spring starts and his Opening Day outing, he was around 50% cutter usage, up about 15 percentage points from last season (that’s a lot). Yesterday, he went back to the four-seamer 56% to the Orioles righties and shoved. 8 IP, 4 H, BB, 8 K suggests the approach worked. But did it really?! He threw his four-seamer 50 times and only generated 3 whiffs, although the small-sample contact quality looked great. 🧦
My bet is that he still leans heavily on his cutter to righties moving forward. I wonder if this was some in-division zagging for the lefty against a team that had a top-5 xwOBAcon on lefty four-seamers last season. You can’t show them your whole hand this early in the season.
I read this every morning.
The "zagging" on Crochet's fastball vs. the orioles is funny, very funny to see the more "fog of war" aspects of actually playing baseball show up in the data