An Early SP Breakout Pick. Way Too Many Words About Slade Cecconi

Max Meyer, Slade Cecconi, Corbin Burnes, Jackson Jobe, Justin Verlander

We’re still grinding through the offseason! I plan to release a breakdown of what I’ll provide in my substack this season for free and for paid subscribers sometime in late February. I’m still sorting through ideas, but likely some minor changes afoot. Until then, we have some moves to talk about!

Max Meyer, RHP, MIA

Meyer has all the qualities of a fun breakout pitcher. He was terrible last season (5.90 FIP), he has one very good pitch from a metrics standpoint (119 Stuff+ slider), and his organization made some sweeping changes in their pitching infrastructure (new Director of Pitching, Pitching Coach, and Assistant Pitching Coach). On top of all that, there’s a clear tweak available: embrace the sinker, back off the four-seam.

Meyer’s fastball has a spin efficiency of 82% (92% is average). Less spin efficiency generally results in less movement. In Meyer’s case, that means less vertical break and arm-side movement. In some cases, this is fine. Teams like the Cubs love cut four-seam shapes because they’re good at limiting barrels and perhaps were undervalued by the league when everybody was chasing big vertical break. Having a low spin efficiency on your fastball opens you up to sinkers. In the modern age of optimizing seam orientation to create weird movement (aka, seam effects or seam-shifted wake) having low spin efficiency opens up the possibility for these seam effects to take place in flight. This results in things like more drop or more run on a sinker, for example. It’s not insane to take every pitcher in baseball who has a below-average spin efficiency and an issue against right-handed hitters and suggest they should be throwing some kind of sinker. That is the case with Meyer.

Apart from the poor four-seam shape, his location was aggressive, likely in the interest of strikes. He allowed a 13% barrel rate on the pitch, which would’ve been one of the 10 worst in baseball on a four-seamer if he qualified. To righties, using a sinker inner-third would allow him less aggression with the four-seam while still preserving the visual edge the pitch gives his slider down in the zone. I don’t think it’s necessary to elevate the four-seam regularly. If you want to get crazy, he could throw some kind of sweeper (82-83 mph) solely for deep-count situations versus righties.

Meyer mixed in a changeup too much (28%) versus lefties given the results on his slider (18% swinging strike rate, 16% is average). I wonder whether there’s a rework to lower the changeup’s velocity compared to his fastball and preserve the horizontal separation. This would help to increase the small velocity band he currently works in. Combine this with any approach to the fastball that isn’t just “throw it over the middle of the plate” (see below), and I think we’d see progress.

Max Meyer’s four-seam location to left-handed hitters (2024)

Meyer posted 100+ IP last season and the Marlins just lost Braxton Garrett for the year. They have all the incentive in the world to try and right the ship on their top-5 pick from 2020’s draft. Incorporating even an average sinker would progress his mix dramatically. I think he has the baseline command to be more precise with the fastball. A sweeper and anything else would be gravy.

Slade Cecconi: ARI → CLE

A source told me the Rays targeted Cecconi at least year’s deadline. That makes two sharp organizations in baseball targeting a pitcher with average stuff and above-average locations who got mauled at the major league level. Color me intrigued.

The main feature attracting teams to Cecconi could be his underlying fastball traits. It has an above-average amount of “total movement,” a simple measure of the combination of vertical and horizontal break. He averages 14” vertical and 14” horizontal for a total of 28”. The average fastball has around 23-24” of total movement. Although this total movement concept blurs with the idea of bad “dead-zone” fastballs, when you sit 94-95 mph with just above-average extension and a below-average release height like Cecconi, issues become features. Big total movement fastballs are also something we’ve seen the Texas Rangers embrace in their recent rise to relevance in pitching development (Kumar Rocker, Alejandro Rosario).

Despite my praise for Cecconi’s fastball, it was his main issue last season. His locations were mostly over the middle of the plate to either handedness of hitter. The damage he allowed overlapped with his locations (see below). This is always something that feels like low-hanging fruit to adjust and reap the benefits.

Cecconi’s fastball location and damage allowed to left-handed hitters. I want these two plots to look different in shape, not have this much overlapping red concentration. Credit: TruMedia

From a development standpoint, I think I’d first attack curveball and changeup improvement. The average curveball is around 15-mph slower than a pitcher’s fastball. Cecconi’s is pushing 20 mph. Without the performance of the pitch suggesting this gap is fine. Some slow curveballs work, I’d rather just push velo and lose some movement. For a spin-efficient pitcher like Cecconi, I’m surprised he struggles to create drop on his changeup despite a 13-mph gap in velocity between the two pitches. His grip is shown below. He’s going for more one-seam spin with a vulcan grip. Although I don’t have enough hands-on pitch design experience to know other orientations to try, optimizing for drop while holding velocity closer to 83-85 mph than 81-82 mph would be the goal.

Cecconi’s Changeup Grip (2024)

Both these tweaks would push down the risk he’s once again poor versus left-handed hitters. The Guardians are sitting on 7 rotation options entering spring and 8 when Bieber returns (assuming health). There’s no guarantee he’s deployed as a starter. If he’s a reliever, it takes some pressure off repertoire development, but he still needs to find a non-fastball that can generate swing-miss above a league-average rate. I’m unsure if that exists in his current mix at the moment.

Quick Hits…

Corbin Burnes (ARI) - I wonder if this is the season we’ll see Burnes throw his sweeper for more than a few months. It’s the best Stuff+ pitch in his mix. It would stave off some of the strikeout-rate regression he’s experienced over the last 2 seasons, particularly versus right-handed hitters.

Jackson Jobe (DET) - Heard Tigers POBO Scott Harris mention that Jobe would be “trying some new things” come this spring. I have no idea if this is delivery, usage, or shape-based in terms of adjustments. I am curious to find out. His mix is sharp overall and Stuff+ agrees. He’s right on the border of our spin efficiency window mentioned above with Meyer to add a sinker, but that could help him with the not-ideal walk rates, particularly to righties. He’s got the spin capacity necessary for a curveball if he wants to steal some early-count strikes. I’ll keep an eye on this.

Justin Verlander (SFG) - Eno Sarris mentioned this on Rates and Barrels, but I wonder if this is the year Verlander is willing to make some tweaks. His issue last year was left-handed hitters. There’s room to back off the curveball versus lefties in favor of his slider, especially in situations where he has count leverage. Versus righties, let’s see if they can convince him that modern baseball is throwing a good fastball less than 50%.