Now that the dust has settled on the MLB trade deadline, it’s a great time to turn to the little vignettes, the conversations that don’t turn into big stories but deserve a little attention. Here’s a look into the adjustments players are making on a day-to-day basis to stay at the top of their craft.
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George Kirby’s evolving command
Between the beginning of 2022 and the end of 2023, no pitcher in baseball threw more pitches in the zone than Seattle Mariners right-hander George Kirby. His offerings were in the strike zone 56.1 percent of the time. That served him well, as he had the lowest walk rate of qualified pitchers over that time, and he was a top 15-type pitcher despite throwing fewer innings than the rest of the guys at the top of the leaderboard.
But Kirby is always trying to get better. He wanted to strike out more guys. And the key to unlocking more strikeouts this year lies outside the zone.
“Getting guys with two strikes, I was too much in the zone,” Kirby said of his previous approach. “I’m trying to stay out of the zone a little more.”
Here’s a heat map of where he threw his pitches with two strikes in 2022:
And here’s the current season in the same counts:
It’s a subtle difference, but particularly above the belt, he’s been more aggressive outside the zone. His zone percentage in two-strike counts has gone down steadily from 49 percent to 44 percent. His slugging percentage in two-strike counts has gone down from .393 to .356, and his swinging-strike rate has gone up. It’s been a good adjustment for him, with few bumps.
“Practice helped,” he said. “I work through batters in my bullpen. It’s more game-like that way.”
Generally, the key to that practice was making everything like his fastball.
“I throw my splitter like a heater with my index finger curled. Don’t think about it too much,” he said of a pitch he’s throwing almost twice as often this season. “Mostly it’s intent. If I have that, it comes out the right way. Trust the grip, don’t try to manipulate it.”
When you see that the velocity is up on his slider, his curve and his splitter, that’s all part of throwing them like his fastball.
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“I’m looking for both velo and movement. I think I have that with my slider and my curveball, and my splitter is a little harder,” he said. “When I throw harder, there’s more intent behind my pitches, and everything’s just a little better.”
Now, Kirby has to be thought of as a top contender for the AL Cy Young Award. What a pitcher!
“I feel like I have a pretty good idea of how to make adjustments,” he said, dry as ever.
Heliot Ramos likes going the other way
Pulling the ball is enticing, especially in the air. Pulled balls in the air have resulted in a 1.408 slugging percentage this year, and opposite-field fly balls have produced a .290 slugging percentage. San Francisco Giants rookie standout Heliot Ramos knows all of this, but he’s not going after the pulled fly ball.
“I still like to let it travel,” said the large Giant. “I know I can hit it oppo and still hit a double or hit a homer.”
And he’s right about that, as he’s slugged .583 on fly balls to the opposite field, almost a top-10 percentile outcome this year in baseball. Of course, he’s slugged 2.500 when he’s pulled fly balls, with five homers on eight pull-side fly balls. So… he’s not tempted at all to go that way?
“Sometimes, when the time is right, I feel like I can just change the contact point and get a little bit out in front,” he admitted. “I try to.”
The problem is getting too itchy to get the ball out in front and committing too early.
“When I get too far out in front I get disconnected, and I start chasing,” Ramos said late last month.
And that’s the part of his game that might be the most important to manage. With a Barrel rate just short of the one sported by Tyler O’Neill and Corey Seager in the top 15, he hits the ball hard. He’s in the top third of the league in foot speed, and once he moves back to the corner outfield, his glove will be an asset. His strikeout rate, though, has pushed into the 30 percent range at times, and that’s still a dicey spot in the major leagues, with only eight qualified hitters reaching that range. This year, Ramos has cut his strikeout rate below 27 percent, making him more of a force at the plate.
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“It’s easier to let the ball travel and see it,” he said about the relationship between contact and power. “As long as I start early with my load, I’ll get there at the right time.”
So it’ll be more of this, even if that’s a deep part of a cold park in San Francisco.
Maybe he’ll be the first righty to hit a splash hit into McCovey Cove after all.
Tyler Glasnow’s new/old wrinkle
In Pittsburgh, Tyler Glasnow threw a sinker as his primary pitch. He tried to work the ball in and out and get good sink on the pitch. It didn’t work well, as his strikeout rate was mediocre and his walk rate ballooned. When he got to Tampa Bay, the Rays changed how he used his pitches, switching him to a four-seamer, ditching the two-seamer and giving him one glove target: high middle.
“That helped a lot,” Glasnow, now a Dodger, said last month of the simplified targets. “Tampa was trying to get me to be a little bit more vertical in terms of how my stuff plays, too,” and it was in Tampa Bay where he halved the walk rate, jumped his strikeout rate into the stratosphere and became a dominant pitcher.
But now he’s bringing back a little bit of that old Pirate: He’s thrown the sinker (he calls it a two-seamer now) 170+ times this season, more than he has in years.
He’s not quite throwing it like he used to.
“I’m throwing it like a normal four-seam in terms of mechanics,” he said. “I throw a bit different than I did in Pittsburgh. I was a little more mentally left-right back then. Now I’m throwing the sinker as if I’m throwing a rising four-seamer. Maybe I tried to get sink back then.”
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Another thing that’s changed from Tampa is that Glasnow is now more comfortable with a catcher showing him multiple targets.
“I like an up target,” he said. “Now I can use a couple different targets. I’ll use an up-and-in target sometimes for the two-seamer. I’m not throwing as down hill anymore, so that target can help.”
That’s what you see from Will Smith in the video above; he’s not giving Glasnow the high/middle target he had in Tampa Bay. For a pitcher trying to add a little east/west back into his north/south game — the sinker has over seven inches more horizontal break than any other pitch he throws — having that up-and-in target may help him get the right movement on the pitch to complement his repertoire.
Just another Cy Young Award candidate, making the little adjustments that can be a big deal.
Griffin Jax is not just about a sweeper
The Minnesota Twins reliever with the best pitch in the bullpen might be Griffin Jax and his sweeper. It’s a top-three slider by Stuff+, which looks at the physical characteristics of a pitch, and it’s got the best expected results of any pitch thrown at least 100 times in that Twins pen. It was worth asking him to model the pitch and its mechanics just because of its dominance.
I asked Griffin Jax to model his vaunted sweeper and discuss the mechanics. pic.twitter.com/sS4PaESxu1
— Eno Sarris (@enosarris) July 13, 2024
But Jax has something else going for him: He’s one of a handful of relievers who has four pitch types with above-average stuff. His command is good. Could the former starter go back to his old role? That’s a question for the offseason, but you have to wonder, considering how it’s gone for other converted relievers this year.
It hasn’t shown up in the splits yet, but Nolan Arenado is doing something a little differently recently. Only two qualified batters have increased their bat speed more in the last month compared to the first couple months of the season than Arenado. Swinging harder has worked well for others in the top 15, like Jarren Duran (whose slugging percentage keeps rising), Bryson Stott (at least lately) and Luis Garcia Jr. (who has been slugging over .600 since July 1), and it also seems to have singled a return to health for Yordan Alvarez and Manny Machado. Maybe Arenado can still salvage some of his season when the Cardinals need it most.
Maybe it was a bit aggressive to anoint Yusei Kikuchi the best starter traded at the deadline, but the lefty now on the Houston Astros has delivered in his first couple of starts, allowing four runs in 11 innings with 19 strikeouts and six walks. His command has always been the question mark, so his reduced curveball usage in Houston has made sense. His last two games have seen some of his heavier sustained changeup usage despite his lack of command on the pitch, but he’s looked the part of a high-stuff, iffy-command, strikeout pitcher so far, and he has been the balm that rotation needs.
Don’t be surprised if Michael Kopech is closing for the Dodgers before long. He easily has the best four-seam fastball in that bullpen, and the Dodgers have him throwing a cutter over his slider to improve his weakest point — command.
“The cutter is a pitch that I can just rip a little more like a fastball, stay through it a little easier and throw it in the strike zone and let the action play rather than the slider, where I’m trying to turn it over and be a little finer,” Kopech said of the new pitch. He added that there will be a place for the new cutter and the slider eventually.
His location numbers have jumped dramatically in a small sample with his new team, and if the new pitch is the source of that, he’s a more traditional fit in the ninth inning with his dominant fastball.
(Photo: David Butler II / USA Today)