![]() Their bullpen slips to seventh-worst in the postseason over the last four playoffs, so it’s tempting to draw a straight line between these two things. Think of the Rays, whose starters throw fewer innings than anyone. That’s probably because both elements have so many moving parts. If the starters throw more innings, it doesn’t mean the bullpen will necessarily do better in the postseason. Just looking at the number of plate appearances thrown by starting pitchers on a certain team and then at how that team’s bullpen fared in the postseason versus the regular season doesn’t produce a relationship. I want our bullpen to pitch because they have to pitch, not because we need them to pitch, if that makes sense.” To me, the teams that are really, really good have the healthiest bullpens. ‘Well, the five-inning guy is nasty, but I don’t care, we have to eat four innings.’ I know how good our bullpen can be, but we can also give them the chance to go off-day, off-day, off-day. “Go talk to any bullpen arm and ask them, who do you want, the five-inning guy or the seven-inning guy. “I see the true value of depth from a starter,” he said. And if that number seems to inch upward with every pitch, look at the last column to see how a small impact start-to-start can add up over the course of a season. If you look at pitchers from 2010 to 2019, starters with more pitches faced more batters per game. Theoretically, this should mean that a pitcher with more pitches should be able to go deeper into games. It is decorrelated from my xRV which shows that it is due to familiarity and not pitchers throwing lower quality pitches. The third time through the order penalty, where pitchers get worse results as batters see more of their pitches, shows up as a residual in my models. The pitcher’s stuff (blue) remains steady, but the hitters (red) do much better the third time through the order. And that effect is probably because players get accustomed to the shapes pitchers are throwing, not because pitchers get fatigued, as you can see from Cameron Grove’s tweet below. Just throwing a third pitch even just 10 percent of the time softens a pitcher’s third-time-through-the-order penalty. There’s plenty of evidence that he’s right. I can definitely throw all my pitches all the way, but do you want me to throw in the sixth and seventh? I’m good in those innings because of how I pitch.” “For me, one of the biggest things, I almost pitch (only) two or three pitches first time through the order because I don’t want to show you everything. “I’ve talked to hitters in camp here, and I’ve heard ‘the number one goal I have when I face a guy like you is that I want to see every pitch you have in the first at-bat,’” said Bassitt. But Bassitt’s conviction runs deep, and it’s about not only what he can do for himself, but what he can do for his team. Recently, we had Spencer Strider telling us that he didn’t see value in throwing lesser pitches, that he thought there wasn’t really such a thing as too much of a good thing. “It’s always been a really good pitch for me, but when does too much of a good thing become not a good thing?” Bassitt wondered. ![]() Shouldn’t he just throw it more often than the eight percent of the time he threw it last year? But against righties, he switched up his position a little, as you can see on the right (he threw a sinker).īut why is he working so hard to multiply the looks and add pitches? According to Savant, the sweeper was his second-best pitch last season. The Orioles threw a very lefty-heavy lineup at him, and he mostly held to the first base side against them, as you can see on the left (he threw a sweeper). The day we talked, Bassitt thought he’d take it to the field, and did, to an extent. ![]() “From the third base side, I can throw it straight and let it break, like how (Max) Scherzer does it - he’s hard third base side and crossfires sliders down and away.”īelow, you can see the very beginning of bringing that adjustment from the bullpen to the game mound. “We’re learning right now that if I slide more to the third base side it improves my slider, because I have more plate to work with,” he said. This spring, he’s working on expanding his number of pitches even further by sliding around on the rubber to make the most of his pitch angles. “They are so out in front that they are underneath it - but I could be wrong on that.” “On a normal slider, if your velo is 93 (mph), normal slider is like 83, 84, and my slow slider is like 76,” said the Blue Jays righty. Do hitters swing under it because they expect it to be higher like other sweepers?
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