David Festa's Rubber Move. Sonny Gray's & Nick Martinez's Gems

David Festa, Sonny Gray, Nick Martinez

• Twins David Festa has had a rough time in the majors. Even after a good outing yesterday (5.2 IP, 5 H, 9 K), he’s sitting on a 5.40 ERA after 7 starts with peripherals suggesting there’s dim light ahead (4.68 xFIP). In last night’s outing, it appears he moved ~7” toward the first base side of the rubber. The result was his four-seam moved slightly more to his glove-side with the new rubber position (more away from righties, more inside to lefties). The results are promising, but we’ll need more sample on his four-seam location from this new rubber position to be excited about some progress. 🤷‍♂️

  • The largest change from Festa’s early-season MLB innings to now is that he’s featuring more changeups. His 40%+ righty slider usage has become a more modest 24%, while his right-right changeups have increased about 10 percentage points in June. Lefties are seeing 44% changeups, higher than his ~35% usage in April. Even though his changeups are generating big swinging strike rates, he has allowed a 4 barrels on the pitch in June, so the net xwOBAcon is higher than you’d expect for a pitch with this much usage.

  • I had Festa as my 25th-best SP prospect entering 2024 and then jumped him to 12 this most recent season, right in front of Will Warren and Kumar Rocker. I’m still pretty confident this is an MLB starter, but I’m more concerned about the upside given how secondary-heavy he’s become. My perceived quality of his four-seamer from past iterations of prospect lists appears suspect. A sub-4.20 ERA rest of season would be a win. We’ll see if this rubber move jolts something.

David Festa’s changeup (2025)

• Cardinals Sonny Gray with a stellar start in Cleveland (9 IP, H, 11K). This pushed his ERA down from 3.72 to 3.36. Nothing has materially changed from a shape or usage perspective between May and June. What I found interesting is the subtle drift of his four-seam, sinker, cutter combo to left-handed hitters toward the inside part of the plate in June (see below). This has cut his overall xwOBAcon by ~80 points between the two months and allowed him to generate more ground balls. I wrote back in May about Gray’s shift in cutter shape and its relative success. He continues to track toward the ~3.50 or lower projection that I thought was more reasonable than the high 3s most models have him pegged for. 🔥

Sonny Gray’s four-seam, sinker and cutter locations between May and June. Look at each pitch individually. Notice how the deepest red concentration in each plots shifts up and/or to the left?

• Reds Nick Martinez was moved to the bullpen for a pair of outings after allowing 11 earned runs across 11.2 innings. He returned to the rotation yesterday with a dominant start—8 IP, H, ER, 2BB, 6 K, carrying a no-no into the 9th. There wasn’t much change in his approach versus lefties, but versus righties, he backed way off his four-seam fastball and heavily leaned on his sinker and changeup. Those two pitches were used 66% compared to just 40% in his last four starts before being demoted to the pen. Curious to see if the righty rework was a directive from his bullpen demotion or if this tweak was more matchup-based. Projections mostly have Martinez with a ~4.30 ERA rest of season. I took the under there back in late May, and I’ll continue to do so a month later. 👍