Orioles Already Toying With Zach Eflin? The Grant Holmes Experiment

Zach Eflin, Grant Holmes, Nick Pivetta

• Orioles Zach Eflin made some mix changes. Usage is always the easiest to play with when a pitcher gets to a new organization mid season. Let’s overreact to a one-start sample and see what the Orioles prefer. The biggest flip appears to be a hard lean on his cutter versus righties. Usage was 13% in his first 4 starts of July. It was 38% in yesterday’s outing, his highest of the season. It’s somewhat of an unexpected flip given the pitch has been hit hardest by righties over his last 2 months of outings. No apparent location change, still down-away. FanGraphs Stuff+ has it as his 2nd best fastball behind his sinker, which has consistently been his most-used righty pitch. ✂️

  • He only threw 20 pitches to lefties in yesterday’s outing, but his sinker usage jumped to 40% from 19%. There’s much more risk in this being a matchup thing compared to the cutter increase He threw his lowest number of four-seam fastballs in this outing as well, which is driving the rise in sinker usage to lefties. A couple things to monitor here. I would bet the cutter to righties and four-seam drop sticks. I think the sinker to lefties is a blip.

• Braves Grant Holmes experiment appears to be going… well? He was a reliever with average stuff and average locations (per FanGraphs). Braves sent him back to Triple-A and stretched him out. He went 5 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 8 K in Milwaukee yesterday in his first MLB start and just his 4th start in pro ball since 2022. His shapes “hug the line,” which is to say he doesn’t create any lateral movement on his pitches. His leans on his two breaking balls. They are broken into a slider and curveball, but they look similar in shape and are released the same out of hand (according to release tilt). A different orientation between the shapes adds drop and some sweep to the curve. The seams are doing the work. Both grade out below average in Stuff+. 🤷‍♂️

  • This is a long way to say there isn’t too much separation between the two pitches in movement or velocity, which makes me skeptical of his approach long term. But both shapes hold better-than-average xSLGs and swing-miss rates right now. The Braves have one of the highest rates of splitter usage in the minors. This could be an interesting arm to equip with one. But for now, the question is, “how much can he throw two good breaking balls to mask a meh fastball?” We’re going to find out. I’m not a believer, but I’ve seen crazier things happen.

• Red Sox Nick Pivetta increased his sweeper usage in July. It increased from 33% in June to 44% in July versus righties and from 7% to 16% versus lefties. His sweeper dominated in the final 2 months of last season, despite low usage. It seems logical to push the pitch to its limit and see how sticky the success is. A small concern is that he’s getting pummeled by righties behind in the count right now (.781 xSLG with just an 8% swinging-strike rate; .612 xSLG is league average). Perhaps there’s more room for increased cutter usage to help him out in neutralizing contact? The Red Sox seem to prefer concentrating usage on a pitcher’s best pitches and that’s Pivetta’s sweeper-fastball. 🧹