What's Up With Justin Verlander's Fastball? What Did Tampa Do With Jake Diekman?
Jake Diekman, Justin Verlander, Kyle Bradish
Rays Jake Diekman’s last 6 appearances have been great, 5.1 IP, 5 K, and 1 baserunner. He made his first appearance with Tampa on May 11 after being released by the White Sox, where he had a 7.36 ERA in April. Always fascinating to see what the Rays do with a pitcher and so far, it comes down to 2 things: 1) velocity and release height and 2) trade cutter for changeup.
His release height is down ~2.5” which has led to a .5-1 mph increase in fastball velocity (I’m guessing these are related). He averaged 96.3 mph on his four-seam yesterday, which is his second-hardest fastball velo of the season, his hardest coming in his second start with the Rays. The shape of the four-seam is the same, even with the release height down. Swing miss is up from 23% with CHW to 33% with TB, xwOBA down from .374 to .156. They’ve also evened out his fastball usage, throwing his four-seam and sinker in even proportion. He was throwing his four-seam more with CHW.
Tampa immediately scrapped his cutter, which was oddly his best pitch with CHW. His changeup usage has jumped from 10% to 26%. Like his fastball, the shape and location of the changeup are the same, but he’s upped the swing-miss from 0% to 26%. The changeup is now his most-used secondary, overtaking his sweeper. Rays have a secret changeup factory and I think they worked some magic here (guessing it’s a seam orientation tweak). ☀️
Mets Justin Verlander is having fastball issues. You can track most of his struggles this year back to the deterioration of his fastball quality. He averaged 95 mph last season with 19.5” vertical break, 10” arm-side from a 7’ release, FanGraphs Stuff+ had this at a 119—plus pitch. This year, he’s down to 94.3 mph with 18.6” vertical break, 8” arm-side from a 7.1’ release, FanGraphs Stuff+ down to a 99—average pitch.
We’re looking at a few subtle changes that add up to a worse pitch. Usually, if release height is up, you’d expect more vertical break, so the 1” drop is magnified because the approach of the pitch is steeper. The swing-miss isn’t down, but the contact quality is, going from a .279 xwOBA last year to a .380 this year, more fly balls on it and they’re being hit harder. In his last 3 starts, the pitch is down to 17.7” vertical break and the xwOBA is all the way up to .491. Nothing seems insanely off to me? Which makes me wonder whether this is still his ramp-up. Mets didn’t sign him to throw 200 regular season innings. 🐐
Orioles Kyle Bradish with some subtle fastball changes yesterday. In his prior 3 starts, he averaged 13” vertical break with 3” glove-side at 94 mph (his four-seamer borders on cutter territory because it actually moves glove-side). Yesterday his fastball jumped to just over 14” vertical break with 0” of horizontal, could posit that he was behind the ball slightly more, leading to less of that natural cut and more ride. This could have been connected to a small release height drop, as his release was down 1.5-2” across the board, affecting his fastball the most. This feels like it’s in the realm of normal variation, but it stood out to me because Driveline Baseball’s internal Stuff+ model gave the pitch its highest grade (102) since Opening Day. In his prior starts, it was sitting around a 77. It’s not quite the four-seam he had on opening day, which had 17” vertical break at 95 mph, but this is probably the closest he’s had since then. ✂️