Before Sonny Gray became the broken link in an otherwise sturdy chain.

With the renowned fall-off of nearly all pitchers when facing a lineup for the third time in one night, even the casual fan can criticise a Manager’s decision to leave a starter in past the fifth inning with objective evidence. With the strikeout prowess of the Yankees’ bullpen, peripherals suggesting a bit of bad luck early, and the slow starts of Chad Green and Tommy Kahnle (DL), even stronger evidence supporting bullpen reliance will emerge as the Yankees trek towards October.

Severino and Tanaka would headline a Yankees’ playoff rotation. After that, things get interesting. CC Sabathia has more than earned consideration for a spot, but expectations have to be tempered. That brings consideration to Sonny Gray and whether his early struggles are a genuine reason for concern to any Yankees fan already thinking of how many layers are necessary to combat New York’s October chill.

2018 Sonny Gray isn’t a fresh topic. Relevant entries into the saga already exist.

At the beginning of the season, BP Bronx’s very own Derek Albin noticed a change in Gray’s pitch usage, one that aligns itself with the philosophy of so many other pitchers across the league: less fastball, more breaking ball.

Not only more breaking balls but different breaking balls. Gray’s curveball-slider usage this year resembles his early days with Oakland in 2013 when he used his curveball a quarter of the time. The former Vanderbilt product’s tendency to shy away from two-seam fastball usage is most notable versus left-handed hitters, cut in half to 15 percent, coupled with a doubling of his curveball usage to 26 percent. His affinity for hard stuff versus right-handed hitters has remained stable from last year, but this slider-to-curveball flip is also apparent.

The issue? Gray himself might have trouble confirming any of these specific usage alterations. An essential read to understand Gray’s uniqueness was written last year by the venerable Eno Sarris. It cited how unique Gray’s offerings were, highlighting the blur that exists when distinguishing between his curveball and slider. Comparing the visuals of Gray’s breaking pitches to a two-breaking ball arm like Corey Kluber, who has a slider with a more horizontal break to eliminate the majority of classification errors. Below is a quick gif of Gray’s slider and curveball to help visualize what I’m attempting to break down in words.

If we believe what Baseball Prospectus is classifying as Gray’s curveball and slider, we can see why this discrepancy occurs. The vertical break on Gray’s curveball is fantastic, sitting inside the 90th percentile of the league, a feat likely driven by the excellent spin rate earned year to year.

I imagine the philosophy behind Gray’s tinkering comes from the realization of how superb his curveball’s vertical break is and the want to emulate a plus characteristic of his curve by tinkering just enough horizontally to generate slider classification. This is supported by the vertical break on Gray’s “slider” sitting in the 98th percentile of the league for each of the last two years – to the naked eye, it’s easy to mistake it for a hard curveball.

This is part of the thrill with Sonny Gray: accepting his ability to render pitch recognition software periodically useless. But I also suspect his reliance on feel – not having a true distinction between pitches on occasion – creates stretches of struggle, like the rut we’re in right now.

So how does one remain optimistic in the face of poor results? This comes from one of the underlying results within Gray’s overall change: his curveball has been fantastic. Even with the classification errors we’ve already discussed, we can still parse out the effectiveness of this pitch with some reservation given his tendency to tinker.

Gray’s curveball location has been properly at the knees, the pitch’s whiff rate remains above league average, and the two-plane bend he generates is another plus aspect of his unique mix. The Yankees’ intentions of wanting to develop Gray towards more comfort with his breaking ball could have been to capitalize on this pitch’s effectiveness. Unfortunately, in a utopian world, everything else would have remained intact. Including the effectiveness of both his four-seamer and sinker, to his ability to manipulate his fastball grip and generate cut (which is the “cutter” that occurs when you see a fifth pitch disclosed on various outlets).

Rothschild & Co. shouldn’t alter their course six starts into the season, especially with his curveball this strong. Tinkering with Gray’s complementary components, maintaining a focus on this curveball is what I’d love to see the prolonged results of.

His curveball’s effectiveness to left-handed hitters should be enough to prolong success versus that handedness, but versus right-handed hitters, moving away from his slider has caused a key pitch from his 2017 repertoire to fade. This is where tinkering is needed most. Without the ability to regain bite on either his four-seamer or sinker, even if Gray aligns himself with the Yankees’ push for offspeed, nothing effective preempts his heavy dose of breaking balls.

Perhaps Gray’s tinkering has taken the “feel” away from his fastballs. Perhaps Gray needs to tinker more with his fastball, leaning on his cutting alteration more. Perhaps the answer is something previously undiscovered; something a “feel” pitcher needs time to adjust towards or away from.

Whether Gray figures this out, with enough time to make the general public walk back their criticism of a potentially necessary arm for October, remains to be seen. If the Yankees trade for another starter, as the New York Daily News, suggested back in January, grave concern for Gray as a starter might be unnecessary.

The future is bright, even with how cloudy it currently seems.

On December 16, the Pirates were pushing for top prospect Gleyber Torres. A week later, four more Yankee prospects were tossed around in some combination: Estevan Florial, Justus Sheffield, Clint Frazier, and Chance Adams. Lately, the name swirling around Cole-to-New-York rumors morphed into Miguel Andujar, yet some speculate the Yankees offered packages around Clint Frazier for similar, cost-controlled pitchers like Chris Archer and Michael Fulmer. As you can tell from this spotty progression of events, no crystal ball exists to help fans determine how upset or thrilled they should be in regards to another pinstriped hurler.

That crystal ball also escapes us when guessing how Gerrit Cole’s evolution will proceed come 2018.

Now 27 years old, the former number one overall pick in 2011’s MLB Draft took under 200 innings of seasoning across three levels of the minors before debuting in 2013. When Cole’s slider use ticked north of 20 percent and he subsequently posted a 3.10 DRA in 2015, expectations vaulted into perennial-ace territory – and rightfully so. The Pirates, coming off a 98-win season, had their years of prior struggle to thank for the draft pick used on Cole, and the long night finally turning to day for a struggling team.

But the best laid plans often go awry. 2016 was an injury-riddled year for Cole, with minor velocity blips and a substantial dip in Cole’s swinging-strike rate (down 1.7% to 8.5%, well below average). That opened the floodgates on question marks coming into 2017, yet Cole did his due diligence to squash some concerns.

While I often shy away from omitting a chunk of a player’s career when looking ahead, Cole’s 116 innings in 2016 with his injuries create some confusion around what proportion of his struggles were driven regression versus health. For that reason, comparing Cole’s 2015 to his 2017 has its limits, but can still provide insight into the evolving tendencies of the potential Yankee.

***

The most noticeable difference in Cole’s results revolve around how often he relinquished home runs. His home-run-to-fly-ball rate jumped from 6.5 percent in 2015 to 17 percent in 2017. While this issue emerged regardless of the opposing hitter’s handedness, left-handed hitters were homering at an absurd 1.7 times per nine innings come the end of last season. Considering Cole’s ability to neutralize lefties and righties at relatively even rates in 2015, this deviation from 2015 makes me wonder what changed.

I started, as I often do, with what the pitcher altered in his repertoire.

The former UCLA Bruin became less of a fastball-dominant pitcher. While Cole’s sinker usage stayed steady versus lefties and righties, his four-seamer ticked down about seven percent across the board. How he reallocated his pitch selection is particularly interesting.

Instead of pushing towards his dominant offspeed pitch that catalyzed his hype in 2015, Cole’s slider, the righty embraced his changeup, further bolstering an already deep repertoire. While this alteration started during 2016, the pitch drew nearly even in overall usage against left-handed hitters with Cole’s slider – something I doubt many would have predicted after his dominance with his slider in 2015.

Logically, one might be tempted tie together these two points…

A: Cole was ineffective to left-handed hitters.

B: Cole’s changeup became a featured offspeed pitch to left-handed hitters.

C: Thus, Cole’s changeup was a reason he became ineffective to left-handed hitters

Ahh, If only it was that easy.

The funny thing about Cole was his changeup became his most effective pitch in 2017, trumping his slider when looking at Fangraphs “pitch info pitch values.” A pitch that was Cole’s worst offering in 2015 per this metric, became his best in 2017 relative to his other four pitches (four-seamer, sinker, slider, curve).

Cole acknowledge the elevated use of his changeup as well. Noting in this MLB.com report that he wanted to feature the pitch more in 2016, but injuries bogged his feel for the pitch down; 2017 emerged as the opportune time to execute this plan.

While MLB.com leads off in that linked report by saying Cole didn’t alter his changeup, but rather gained a better feel for it, I submit that getting a better feel for a changeup is effectively altering the pitch. Some say that the only way to improve your changeup is to increase its usage and dedicate yourself to getting a better feel for the pitch. It seems basic, yet the science of changeups is an enigma. Harry Pavlidis, however, has taken a stab at uncovering the mystery. (I detailed some thoughts in another one of my recent columns about the Brewers’ lefty Josh Hader.)

Brooksbaseball pitch movement numbers seem to agree.

Comparing Cole’s changeup to its 2015 version, the pitch’s horizontal movement increased. For right-handed pitchers implies more run inside to right-handed bats, increased by nearly one inch. While that minor change is not likely a major component of the increased effectiveness, it shows that the pitch changed its tendency ever so slightly, which I venture a guess has to do with this elusive “feel” for the offering.

On top of that, consider Cole’s nearly pristine location of the pitch to left-handed hitters.

Yet this deliberation doesn’t present a reason for the collapse of Cole’s ability to keep the ball in the park and neutralize, even marginally, left-handed hitters. It merely presents backing that the effectiveness of Cole’s changeup might be here to stay.

Another attempt I took to discover the reasons behind Cole’s emergent platoon issues deals with the use, movement, and location of Cole’s fastball, which became the main pitch attributed to the home run barrage against Cole in 2017. While pitch use and movement presented no proprietary insights, before even looking at Cole’s four-seamer location, I took a guess that he elevated the pitch more to both handedness of hitters, or became inconsistent with his location of the pitch.

My latter thought holds some merit.

The larger, dark-brown area represents Cole’s 2017 four-seamer location, while the pinpoint concentration just off the center of the plate in the subsequent picture is Cole’s 2015 four-seamer location. The larger blot of brown shows, to some extent, that Cole didn’t locate as consistently, possibly making this pitch less effective, which we can confirm, and playing at least some role in his home run spike, which is harder to confirm.

This could be another “feel” issue, as Cole moves towards becoming an offspeed-dominant pitcher, but with BP’s grading of Cole’s four-seamer at 70 with a future of 75 back in 2015, I remain skeptical that the pitch deteriorated that much after once being touted so highly, even after only two seasons.

While another 1,000 words could easily be scribed regarding Cole’s various usage decisions between 2015 and 2017, and with that might come a clearer answer for his struggles. Often the process of trying to discover a culprit regarding an issue can provide some insight; I often enjoy the journey as much as the result.

This journey makes me interested to see if Cole alters his usage again to either handedness of hitter in 2018. He could call back to the shape of his 2015 slider, which if combined with his present-state changeup would make me a proponent of acquiring Cole for a high price. Or Cole could continue to tend towards off-speed dominant and never regain the effectiveness his fastball possessed in 2015. Or it could be a mixture of both, with a balance reached that produces an in-between result. A mixture of Cole’s dominant 2015 and less-dominant, but still effective 2017, could still produce north of 3 WAR.

My interest for Cole will come in 2018 whether or not he dons pinstripes for 2018.

Statistics via Baseball Prospectus (DRA, general stats), BrooksBaseball (Pitch usage), and Baseball Savant (Location, GIF data). 

Photo Credit: Brad Mills / USA TODAY Sports

Our visual model is the cosine wave. Starting in the positives from square one, it dips below zero into the abyss, only to remerge and reach the same peak it originated at 360 degrees ago. Judge started on cloud nine, fell to cloud negative nine, and heading into the final weekend of 2017’s season, finds himself back where he started.

Narratives surrounding Judge’s slump, for the most part, remain mundane. Find any rolling game log of Judge’s stats and you will observe a gradual peak and subsequent decline for stats like strikeout rate, swing-and-miss rate, with the inverse true for more advanced metrics like Wins Above Replacement Player (WARP) and True Average Value (TAv). Industry minds have punted reasoning for Judge’s mid-season valley to an inevitable decline given how impressive the two tails of Judge’s season have been.

But a black hole occupies the space between. So what happened? The story begins with a decision – or lack thereof.

Joe Girardi & Co. – as reported by the Daily News, NJ.com, and New York Post – considered a cortisone shot as an option for the ailing Judge, and for good reason.

“Cortisone shots are pretty amazing – they’ll take an incredibly painful area and reduce it to pain-free. The first cortisone shot I got felt literally like magic – my elbow pain was an 8/10, and as the needle entered, it was immediately down to a 1/10.” Dan Blewett, a former pitcher for the Atlantic League’s Long Island Ducks and current owner of a baseball academy in Normal, Illinois, admitted to me. Blewett had surgery twice to repair a torn Ulnar Collateral Ligament in his throwing arm, becoming an unfortunate expert on nagging injuries.

“Every team is different as far as the treatments they offer their players, but in crucial times – such as approaching the playoffs – they’ll often do what is necessary to keep a player on the field, as long as it doesn’t jeopardize their overall health.”

Judge’s shoulder remained tattered, mired in a grotesque slump. Shortly after, the public received insight that Judge would rest for multiple days, starting on Monday, August 28. He returned to the Yankees’ lineup as a pinch-hitter during the first half of an August 30 doubleheader, proceeding to to start the nightcap. That same day, reports – like three I linked above – started to emerge. To my knowledge, what doesn’t exist is confirmation that two days of inactivity completely healed his nagging shoulder; a common citation for his midseason void of production.

Travis Swachik, author of industry-leading book Big Data Baseball, does a fantastic job pointing out what changed during this downturn in Judge’s season. More fastballs, higher in the zone, more spin on said pitches, with a developing tendency to pitch Judge off the plate. This is a common adjustment pitchers make against hitters who graduate from “just another guy” to one of the game’s greats. With players of Judge’s size, high-and-tight usually prevents extension of a hitter’s arms and ability to drive the ball. Matt Olson, the Oakland Athletics’ first baseman, is another player with similar deficiencies that I’ve pointed out in the past.

While Judge routinely appears atop hard-hit metric leaderboards, the 25-year-old achieves even more immortality from the size of his strike zone. Mark Simon, an analyst for ESPN, notes not only how large Judge’s zone is, but how umpire tendency towards calling his zone have changed as calendars flip towards 2018. Judge went from seeing more called low strikes to called high strikes after the first two months of the season.

Evolving pitcher approach coupled with umpire adjustment did not provide any bridges for Judge to cross back to relevance. While there is rarely one reason for a hitter’s slump, singling out these changes adds context to Judge’s improvements after his two-day break.

From July 1 through August 27, Judge barreled eight of the 360 four-seam fastballs he saw in 200-plus plate appearances (under three percent). A “barreled” ball is a classification of batted balls that fall in the most beneficial windows of launch angle and exit velocity (Tom Tango is the visionary on this topic). Since Judge’s two-day break – August 28 and 29 – Judge has barreled 16 fastballs in just over 100 plate appearances; nearly half the amount of plate appearances and double the production.

To capture the entirety of Judge’s slump, we can move our July 1 parameter back two months. From May 1 through August 27 – nearly 500 plate appearances – Judge barreled 15 four-seam fastballs.

Nearly five times the amount of plate appearances as his post-break window, and nearly the same level of success. After that break, Judge became a menace against four-seamers.

However, it’s where these barreled fastball were struck that enlightens fans.

The flat, dark-brown line in the gif above are Judge’s 15 barreled fastballs from our large sample of games stretching from May 1 to August 27. This flatter picture morphs to show Judge’s torrid stretch of games in 2017’s final weeks since those two days off.  These barreled fastballs are noticeably higher in the zone compared to our prior period, and rest in the same part of Judge’s zone where pitchers and umpires seemed to collude against the righty earlier in the season.

Judge evolved.

But why are barreled fastballs an indicator of this evolution? For one, if you are barreling a ball its exit velocity exceeds 98 mph, about eight miles per hour above average. To generate that kind of kick off your bat, you need bat speed, especially given knowledge that bat speed provides six times more of an impact on exit velocity than pitch speed. More exit velocity is rarely a detriment for hitters.

If Judge’s bat speed increased during the period subsequent to his two-day break – where he began to barrel more fastballs up in the zone – we are observing a potential reason for his resurgence.

This change in Judge’s results could be the product of mechanical tweaks independent of his health, or Judge could have put his shoulder and other bodily issues behind him during his break in pursuit of productivity.

The essence of hitter analysis is how often changes this material lack one, all-encompassing reason, but that uncertainty provides ample room for theories to emerge.

“The front shoulder is a crucial player in a hitter’s swing. If [Aaron] Judge was having trouble elevating his front shoulder, he’d have trouble getting to pitches up in the zone.” Blewett and I tied our conversation on cortisone shots back to hitting mechanics, with this claim helping to clarify the possibility that Judge’s lack of shoulder health impacted his ability to hit elevated pitches. Among his other ailments from the season’s grind, Judge’s front shoulder remained a central reason for his late-August break.

Unless the Yankees opt for some retrospective transparency on Judge emerging from his slump in the coming weeks, fans will head towards playoff baseball with appreciation for Judge’s rebound, but a dwindling interest in confirming how, or why, he turned the corner. Narratives, like this one, will provide ample food for thought in the meantime, with hopes they corroborate with any revelations.

(Statistics all from open-source platforms BaseballSavant.com, Fangraphs.com, and BrooksBaseball.net. GIF created from graph outputs via BaseballSavant.com. Thanks to Dan Blewett for taking the time to speak with me.)

Photo credit: Ron K. Murray / USA Today

No, it wasn’t because of the Home Run Derby. That explanation – to use one of many terrible workplace buzzwords – is low hanging fruit. We’ve seen writers like Devan Fink of SB Nation’s Beyond the Box Score break apart that myth, leading us to a word wholly foreign to 2017 for the superstar.

Aaron Judge might be in a slump.

I emphasize “might” because other forces have muddied the waters of understanding the problems in Judge’s bat. That force is the Red Sox idea to pitch Judge noticeably different than their predecessors: up in the zone. Whether other teams begin to adopt the same approach will dictate the future of the word “might” in my phrase above.

Here is a handy little GIF comparing heatmaps between all of the pitches Judge saw between June 1st, 2017 and the All-Star break, with the 97 he saw in their most recent series against Boston. Why opt for just over a month’s worth of data instead of the whole season? I wanted to bake in the changes pitchers have already made as Judge’s season has progressed. My intuition is to visualize if the Red Sox actually had a distinct approach, or merely copied a trend from prior to their court date (come on, you knew I was going to sneak one in eventually).

This looks promising. While the heaviest concentration of pitches doesn’t migrate wildly from what Judge faced in our June 1st to All-Star break bucket, there is a clear movement north. Heatmaps like this are indicators of concentration, so while your eye might dismiss anything that isn’t movement in the darkest part – highest frequency – it’s important to look at the surrounding, lighter colored inkblots for a better sense of trends save the obvious. Elevated pitches, particularly those above the belt and slightly away, seems to have been the gameplan for Farrell and company.

Dangerous hitters are often met with breaking balls low and away, as pitchers would rather take their chances with a less threatening bat lower in the lineup. So why would the Red Sox elevate to a hitter like Judge?

That’s a shot of Judge’s whiff rate in our June 1st to All-Star break timeframe. You’ll notice some of the deeper red – higher whiff rates – find themselves up in the zone. From the looks of it, the Red Sox saw where Judge was struggling recently, and said, “Hey, we bet you can’t adjust.” It turns out they were right.

Actually, that claim may have seen its knees buckle if it wasn’t for Jackie Bradley Jr.’s unbelieveable robbery of Judge late into last Sunday night’s battle. And more importantly, I would have been tasked with adding a clever qualifier to pull out that 417 ft out from our sample if Bradley Jr. was a few inches shorter. Whether the Red Sox determined holes in a player’s swing over small samples actually are predictive is beside the point; their approach worked.

Let’s pay some attention to another aspect of the Red Sox’s philosophy employed to stymie Judge. Not only were they elevating pitches, but their staff made sure to lean on fastballs even when they weren’t living at the letters. The phrase, “Challenge him with a fastball,” veered from use on a scattered basis, to use in every Judge at-bat.

Only 11 total pitches – roughly 13% – of what Judge saw over the weekend were classified as offspeed; for what it’s worth they were all sliders. The other 87%? 62% four-seamers and 25% two-seamers. Compared to the same bucket from earlier in this column that took us to the All-Star break, Judge saw only about 53% mixed fastballs, a 35% increase. It’s hard to believe the Red Sox merely stumbled into an approach that stands out both visually and statistically. Premeditation is one of the intangible keys to pitching, and I’d venture a guess this idea was championed by a Red Sox who logs a lot of clicks on BrooksBaseball.net in their free time.

In wondering if the Red Sox’s model would become the norm moving forward – like a similar theory did to combat Mike Trout early in his career – the Twins provide our first indicator that teams may not have taken notice.

Below I’ve taken the GIF from above and added a third heatmap to the end. It shows all 46 pitches Judge saw against the Twins in their mid-July series. While the Red Sox’s model continues to distance itself from others, it confounds whether their model was actually more effective, or if Judge is in fact in a slump.

Minnesota opted for a much more perplexing approach, yet it didn’t prove substantially less effective. With the Twins living inside and over the plate – both, on the surface, seem like terrible ideas – Judge was 2 for 8 with two singles and two walks. Not nearly as disappointing as the 1 for 18 against the Red Sox, but not exactly breaking out of a rut. This group of pitches from the Twins’ staff is somewhat deceptive because it’s such a small sample, so while I’d like to conclude that the Red Sox’s Model is how you should pitch Judge, we’re going to need a bigger post-Red Sox sample before drawing any profound conclusions.

What we can conclude is that the Red Sox did pitch Judge differently than the month prior, and while correlation isn’t necessarily causation, I subjectively think it may have had some effect when combined with the context of Judge’s recent whiff rate up in the zone. While the Twins’ didn’t follow suit in terms of focusing on pitches hard and up, whether the Mariners will adopt the philosophy in their coming series remains to be seen.

The most valuable evidence to support the effectiveness of the Red Sox model is to see Judge revert back to his early-season self, while the Mariners either adopt the Twins’ perplexing pitch distribution, or assimilate themselves to the June 1st to the All-Star break bucket. Or they can go full Red Sox on Judge and prey on his eye-level temptations, and see if the model holds more water than a small-sample skeptic might think.

This season has been one of riches for fans of the Yankees. The 3 1/2 games the club sits behind the Red Sox in the AL East heading into the All-Star break don’t do the first 96 games justice. Expectations were low coming out of spring training; another year into a soft rebuild was apt terminology for initial feelings. All that wishy-washy confidence for the future was quickly squashed in favor of the “now” after a 15-8 start to the season and numerous days atop the division. Propelled by the unlikeliest of heroes, there has been more than enough reason to watch Yankees baseball, especially with the injection of endless youth. With the debuts of Miguel Andujar, Dustin Fowler, Tyler Wade, Kyle Higashioka, Tyler Webb, and most recently Clint Frazier, one would think there is minimal talent left in their minor league system. For once, it’s a great to be sorely mistaken.

Jeff Paternostro and the BP Prospect Staff released their mid-season top 50 list on Thursday, and three notable Yankees made the cut.

Gleyber Torres – (#7, #15 preseason)

I’ve written about Gleyber three times (1, 2, 3) in hopes of the trifecta of columns upon Torres’ MLB debut, but the best laid plans often go ary. A torn UCL in his non-throwing arm has sidelined the Yankees’ top prospect for the rest of 2017, meaning New York won’t see Torres in a third jersey this season, or watch him showcase his talents at the 2017 Futures Game (more on that event later). What we do know is that Torres has shown a refined approach at each level, resulting in appealing slash lines and projectability greater than any prospect we’ve seen debut in pinstripes in some time. The only real bug in his game is speculation on whether the raw power he has shown, can at some point turn itself into realized game power. If it doesn’t, we’re still looking at a viable second or third base option, but not with the caliber of upside shown by others prospects inside the top 15. Keep in mind, he was a 20 year old at AAA before the injury, and that speaks volumes for just how much to take this premature criticism with a grain of salt.

If second base is Torres’ position, he’ll feature one of the more advanced approaches up the middle from square one, with Starlin Castro’s $10 and $11 million owed in 2018 and 2019 respectively, the only barriers to eclipse. If third base – my personal guess for his early-career reps – becomes home, Chase Headley would likely be the odd man out and that doesn’t seem like it will be hard news to break to fans. Torres arrival in New York will be the most anticipated of any prospect the Yankees have stashed away in the recent years. More hyped than the debuts of Judge and Sanchez is correct.

Chance Adams – (#37, not ranked preseason)

Unlike Torres, there is an opportunity for Chance Adams to reach the Bronx this season. While the knocks on his game are height and the lack of number one starter upside, ceilings aren’t the only factor considered on a prospect lists. A mid 90s fastball, combined with an advanced, low 80s slider are his go-to offerings, while he mixes in a good changeup and a fringe curveball. Eric Longenhagen mentions that Adams’ command has been suppressed through his career due to his release point leaning on the side of inconsistent. Backed up by the similar 9-11% walk rates between levels during the second half of 2016 and early into 2017, success stories like Marcus Stroman always come to mind if you desire reasons for even more optimism. The inconsistent release point remains one minor reason why Longenhagen is concerned that Adams never finds the command to be a more than his floor indicates, but there is still so much to like with the 22 year old.

This feels like a rank based on floor to possibly even out some riskier picks by the BP Prospect Staff, but one I can’t criticize in the slightest. Adams sits ahead of higher-profile arms like the Cardinals’ Sandy Alcantara and Red Sox’s Jason Groome, and just behind a player whom I’ve personally grown fond of in the Indians’ organization, Triston McKenzie (32.4% strikeout rate, 2.91 ERA in 90 High-A innings). With the risk embedded in starting pitchers across the board, Adams’ 2.50 ERA across 55+ AAA innings and little worry about health are great signs, and likely the reasons why he has vaulted into the top 40 prospects on BP’s list.

Justus Sheffield – (#47, #52 preseason)

Most notable is the leap Adams made over Sheffield to the number one pitching prospect in the organization. The move was warranted after seeing the results this lefty had at AA Trenton compared to Adams, and gaining the knowledge that Sheffield has yet to find his way to Scranton-Wilkes Barre. Although his 3.09 ERA looks near pristine, the present concern is the career-low strikeout rate of 20.2%. He’s also shorter than Adams – who as we now know gets knocked for his height – and tinkered with his repertoire early this season, which could make assuming too much off his early 2017 stats a big error in the aggregate.

I like the fact Sheffield’s stock hasn’t taken a hit due to the results not resembling that of Adams. One way of looking at it is that hope for Adams increased while Sheffield’s stayed the same. That alone bodes well for the confidence surrounding his makeup, and before we know it, this southpaw might be replacing Adams at AAA due to the higher-ranked prospects promotion. Sheffield’s promotion won’t be far off afterwards.

Note: Sheffield was placed on the Minor League DL Wednesday, July 7th, with an oblique strain.

2017 Futures Game 

The Yankees had two representatives in the kick-off event of All-Star weekend: Pitcher Domingo Acevedo and outfielder Estevan Florial. The most interesting perk for a baseball nerd like myself? MLB’s Facebook page live streaming batting practice for each of teams. That’s where I got my first look at Florial in a resolution that wasn’t home video quality, and even though the common “five tools” tag on another farmhand becomes redundant, it’s tough to nix the assessment.

The first thing I noticed was the natural uppercut in Florial’s swing, similar aesthetically, but less exaggerated than the bat path of Freddie Freeman. It’s a swing that will lead to a decent amount of swing and miss, but also a lot of game power. Both were confirmed after observing the 30% strikeout rate and .502 slugging percentage he has through 74 games in A ball. In the game itself, the 19-year-old slotted in for two at bats, both against southpaws. He struck out against the Royals’ Foster Griffin and walked against the Athletics’ touted draft steal A.J. Puk. Each at bats gave us six pitches to look at, and from MLB.com’s pitch tracker, only three of the 12 were actually in the zone. Griffin elevated everything to Florial, while Puk buried everything away. Florial handled Griffin’s breaking pitches well, but whiffed on a great slider from Puk. Tough to infer much from the at bats themselves with such little exposure, but anytime a 19-year-old fits in with the caliber of young talent in this game, it’s a great sign.

Acevedo on the other hand faired much worse after allowing three runs on four hits and failing to showcase the power fastball he leverages from his 6’7″, 250 pound frame. The big righty has struggled since his promotion to AAA this season, after mowing through Trenton with ease. Only 12.1 innings into his final step before the Bronx, higher-level competition seems to have faired well off him, but as the the New York post highlighted after the game, Acevedo acknowledged the lapse and wants to learn from the experience. Compared to the youth in the Futures Game and in the Yankees’ system, Acevedo can be considered a veteran at 23 years old, and his wisdom may help to overcome any struggles sooner than later.

Some of this column’s details were reiterated from BP’s top 50 mid-season prospects list that I’ve linked to within, and will do so again here. Massive thanks to Jeff Paternostro and the BP Prospect Staff for their hard work and expertise. 

Judge has the hardest hit ball of the Statcast era, the longest home run of the season, the most home runs in the majors, everything in that chart above; the list goes on and on. Yet two of the more widely referenced stats when it comes to regression – HR/FB% and particularly BABIP – currently hold Judge well above the rest of the pack. His BABIP is .420 (26 points higher than Miguel Sano, second highest), with a HR/FB% of 41.3% (8.4% higher than Cody Bellinger, second best) heading into Tuesday night’s action.

It may seem irrational, but for one of the first times in my memory, I’m heavily perplexed by how much I should put in projection systems looking towards what Aaron Judge will do by season’s end. Boiling this argument down to the most rudimentary, non-statistical language I can; if we haven’t seen Judge’s batted-ball accomplishments before, how are we to believe that a projection system of historical data, can effectively factor in the feats in guesses at Judge’s average or slugging percentage? If it believes in the smoothing of perceived “outliers,” what happens if the 6’7″ Judge is simply going to hit baseballs this far and hard for the rest of the season, and perhaps, his career?

As we understand it, exit velocity stabilizes relatively quick for hitters, reliable over 70% after 50 batted ball events – Judge has 169 of such events. In 2016, we saw only one player above 95 mph in terms of average exit velocity. That individual was a free swinging, strikeout-prone player by the name of… Aaron Judge. The closest two samples we have to Judge’s 2017 exit velocity since 2015 are Giancarlo Stanton in 2015 (95.9 mph) and Miguel Sano this season (95.1 mph) — via Baseball Savant. While Stanton and Sano have already achieved unbelievable heights in the exit velocity stratosphere, Judge has done so with an advanced ability to barrel-up baseballs — 5% more than Sano (2017); 1% more than Stanton (2015) — and connect for line drives – roughly 5% more than both Sano (2017) and Stanton (2015). What do we know about line drives? They result in a hit about three times more often than either a fly ball or ground ball. Implying, to some extent, that the crazy high BABIP Judge carries at .420, still has time to come down, but nearly 100 points to the projected .325 level I’ve seen in the industry feels like that “breaking” I talked about way back in paragraph one.

Players with Judge’s 2017 projected .325 BABIP last season include the following…

By now you can instinctively see the difference between Ryan Braun and Jose Abreu, compared to Aaron Judge. The homegrown Yankee talent hits the ball substantially harder and produces more line drives than Braun and Abreu. So why the low BABIP?

It could stem from the one inherent flaw in my optimism regarding Judge; line drive rates take more than a year and a half to stabilize, and we’ve only seen around 300 plate appearances of Judge. Given that in 2016, Judge had a line drive rate of 14% through his very unproductive 95 plate appearances, there is concern that Judge won’t be able to maintain an elite, top-10 BABIP in the league. Contrary is that we’ve heard numerous times Judge is a different hitter. Giving us confidence that reliance on 2016’s now tiny sample isn’t the most astute thing to do. If we take a look at players with over the last three seasons with at least 1500 plate appearances and a BABIP of .350 or better, the 11 names are present through a mix of distinct factors. Six are elite talents: Paul Goldschmidt, J.D. Martinez, Joey Votto, Mike Trout, Miguel Cabrera, Freddie Freeman. Three rely on their legs: Starling Marte, Dee Gordon, Lorenzo Cain. One plays in Coors (DJ LeMahieu), and the last is Christian Yelich.

If I split the difference between Judge’s current BABIP and projected BABIP, I’m left with a .373 number that would exceed Paul Goldschmidt’s league-leading .369 from our three year stretch of 2014 to 2016. While it’s easier to bet against this feat over the next two and a half years, an argument in favor of a .370+ BABIP’s possibility hinges on Judge’s exit velocity being legitimate, and the stabilization of his line drive rate around its present 25% mark. Then, I’d have to worry about the other two factors BABIP is notorious for considering, luck and defense, both out of Judge’s control.

All this talk about BABIP and whether Judge can maintain it at an elite level plays into the expectations for his end of season line.

Let’s remind ourselves of what Judge has done to this point in the season and what Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA is thinking might follow suit.

Through June 26th – 26 HR, 59 RBI, .330/.443/.693, 3.8 WARP

PECOTA 50th Percentile, Rest of Season – 16 HR, 48 RBI, .251/.343/.470, 2.2 WARP

PECOTA 90th Percentile, Rest of Season – 21 HR, 64 RBI, .291/.389/.545, 4.3 WARP

Am I betting that Judge’s .330 average continues for the rest of the season? No, but I’m not betting on a .251 average either, even with his swing-and-miss tendencies. I wouldn’t consider a BABIP in the .360-.370 window out of the question, which means independent of a change in luck and defense, Judge’s average can realistically sit in the .280-.290 window without the sky falling. This average is more in line with the 90th percentile projection, but my confidence in his batted ball profile and exit velocity plateauing, with even a minor drop, is more optimistic than any projection system is willing to assume.

I’m more than excited to compare Judge’s rest of season projection above, to what actually occurs from June 27th to October 1st. Maybe Judge is a flash in the pan, or maybe he’s bound to be the Anti-Michael Pineda. Outperforming peripherals and soaking up all the glory that comes with it.

Torres will undergo Tommy John Surgery to repair a torn UCL in his non-throwing elbow. An injury sustained Saturday as he slid into home plate head-first, in a game against the Toronto Blue Jays’ AAA affiliate, the Buffalo Bisons.

A column from the New York Daily News brought with it some insight into the timetable for his return, as well as the sly dismissal by Brian Cashman that Torres was an option to see time in the big leagues at some point in the next few months. Torres should be ready for Spring Training 2018 and even with my love for Cashman, we can call his bluff on the Torres debut that could have been.

The corresponding move to take Torres’ roster spot is the promotion of fringe top 10 prospect Miguel Andujar to AAA. I say fringe because Baseball Prospectus has him ranked as a “lottery ticket” while other sites place him just outside their top 10. Raw tools and upside are a combination of characteristics often mushed together, blanketing a good majority of prospects in any team’s organization, but it’s an apt descriptor for this Venezuelan righty bat. Andjuar possesses well above average bat speed, with raw power to his pull side, but is prone to the weak fly balls; a knock on a lot of hard swinging 22 year olds. With an arm that grades out at 70 per Jarrett Seidler (20-80, 70 is “plus-plus” aka, very good), he has the ability to stick at third, but needs to polish up his actions to become a viable option at the hot corner.

Almost as if it was meant to be, I had the pleasure of watching Andujar in Hartford, CT last Thursday, with his now former team, the Trenton Thunder. After reading scouting reports post-game, I couldn’t speak more to the athleticism he showed, and also the raw and mildly immature actions Seidler and company have cited as the key to smoothing out his game. I love the upside he possesses, and find myself instinctively attracted to any prospect with plus raw power and a sub 15% strikeout rate at AA. I’ll be keeping a close eye on Andujar as he showcases his talents in Scranton-Wilkes Barre. Seidler closes his Andujar blurb with a great catch-all statement.

“If nothing else, he’s a walking highlight reel complete with enthusiasm and hustle…” – Jarrett Seidler (link)

With Andjuar’s showcase set for AAA, it’s important to point out the order of names Cashman rattled off when presumably asked about the Yankees’ third base situation (NY Daily News). Chase Headley, Ronald Torreyes, and Tyler Wade. The former two we’re all too familiar with, while the latter – I would bet – eventually sees some time in pinstripes. Let’s start with Headley.

The issue I think we have with the perception of Headley is that mediocrity is not the best medicine when you have a 20-year-old phenom who can do the same thing, sitting the in the minor leagues (RIP 2017 Gleybermania). It’s not that Headley has been atrocious, he’s just below average in the things that matter: offense and defense. Difficult to infer on aesthetics alone, his base-running and six stolen bases through 62 games seem to be buoying his overall production metrics. Projecting out to be a 2 WARP player, there isn’t anything less exciting for fans who have the honor of watching Aaron Judge take batting practice, than also watching Headley do the same. Is former MVP candidate a liability? I would argue not, but if Cashman ever wanted to induce a bit more flare than the name Headley will ever have sharpied onto a lineup card, the other non-Torres option in the minors is Wade.

Regarded as an outfielder with a middle infielder’s hands, Wade possesses plus game speed, with 46 steals over his last two minor league seasons. The decision for Wade to see time at third base – nine games in 2017 (AAA) – is a bit perplexing especially given his tag as an above-average utility man, but the arm strength allows for a fit in small doses from my perspective. Currently slashing .324/.384/.466 in 63 games at AAA, Wade’s profile is one that will indeed be unique for a utility third baseman, which Cashman seems to imply as another depth option in his chat with reporters. Better than Headley? Well, I’ll give him different than Headley, and with some upside in every young bat, different may suffice without Torres. Wade’s offensive profile is one that might remind some Yankees fans of Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner, and I think the faithful would stomach that over the current option.

Whichever path Cashman decides to walk, regardless of his skirting around the topic to journalists, my guess is – hold onto your seat – it won’t be as exciting as Torres. But if average production is all that the Yankees can muster, mixing and matching between Headley, the plus glove of Torreyes, or the speed of Wade, isn’t the worst of situations to be in. Especially with an offense that is firing on all possible cylinders.

Get well soon Torres, New York wants to fill the hot corner with a fresh face to purify the once sinful hot corner of New York.

The current state of the Yankees’ third base position is a Russian nesting doll. In our hands rests two pieces of Gleyber Torres’ much more appealing, freshly painted shell, which we can’t wait to use in covering up the battered, yet still relatively productive Chase Headley doll.

Relatively productive is the key. As I read through a story by Randy Miller citing a source that claims the Yankees are priming Torres to take over at third base this season, I thought to myself, “Is he really better than Chase Headley right now?” Sure there is the neatly placed caveat the eventual promotion is, “…contingent on Torres becoming Major League ready sometime over the next two months…” followed by the qualification, “…which the organization fully expects to happen.” While I’m all for developing prospects in the minors, I would be surprised if the already mature and baseball IQ wealthy Torres is substantially different after two months with the RailRiders.

Natural instinct, inflated by the lore around prospects around the majors in recent years, would bubble a hasty “yes” to the surface in answering my productivity question above. But, haste is often the bearer of irrational thought, and if there is anything more detrimental to expectations for a 20 year old player it’s exactly that. Between two levels this season here is what we’ve seen from Gleyber.

AA (32 games) – .273/.367/.496, 5 HR, 5 SB, 22 R, 18 RBI, 12.2% BB, 15.1% K, .223 ISO, .325 TAv

AAA (10 games) – .212/.366/.242, 0 HR, 2 SB, 3 R, 3 RBI, 17.1% BB, 26.8% K, .030 ISO, .250 TAv

Both too small of sample sizes to draw radical conclusions off of, but I think one of the better tells is in a stat that stabilizes quickly – Torres’ 17.1% walk rate – right in the window of comfortably above average we want it to be. Even when he goes through inevitable slumps at the major league level, the safety net of walks shouldn’t be riddled with holes. So why don’t we take a look at what Baseball Prospectus thought production could be from Gleyber preseason over 450 plate appearances, conveniently a bit more than Gleyber would muster if called up today.

2017 PECOTA 50th percentile – .231/.297/.382, 12 HR, 9 SB, 52 R, 47 RBI, .240 TAv

It’s relatively pessimistic, but acts as a bucket of cold water for anybody expecting elite production out of the gate as we’ve seen with other prospects. Our original Headley nesting doll is projected to post a .259 TAv for the rest of the 2017 season, perfectly league average, with another average asset in his fielding metrics (.4 FRAA – fielding runs above average). Removing the development and progression we’ve seen from Torres’ 42 games in 2017, Headley is expected to be league average and Baseball Prospectus’ number 15 overall prospect expectations would fall below average.

Magic happens when we fill in the gaps with information from what we’ve seen in Torres during this neglected 42 game, 2017 sample.

For one, Baseball Prospectus’ FRAA metric believes he improved defensively. After not exceeding the 1.0 mark at any point last season, Torres has improved to post a 2.2 FRAA at Trenton and a 1.7 FRAA at Scranton Wilkes-Barre. Important to note is that after only one appearance away from shortstop last season, he’s started 45% of his games between levels away from short. This seems consistent with the scouting report that Gleyber would be a below-average glove if he stuck at his drafted position. Edge to Torres, as it seems his glove will outplay Headley’s defensive expectations.

Speaking of bats, is it crazy to expect Torres to achieve Headley-level league average production with any improvement we’ve seen from 2016 to 2017?

PICTURE HERE

There is nothing we can admire more than incremental improvement as Torres refines his approach. Everything is pointing in the direction we want and contextual extra credit with the promotion to AA only helps to solidify the case that Torres’ bat is already advanced. If PECOTA were to re-project what to expect from Torres, I’d guess it falls somewhere into what Headley is projected for, a TAv right around .260 with a nice OBP, some pop, and probably a tinge more production on the stolen base front.

Mark Barry wrote a great comparison between Torres and Athletics’ prospect Franklin Barreto, two players with debuts I would bet fall close to each other in the second half of 2o17. Although the analysis a fantasy baseball minded approach, the takeaways are important in trying to gauge just how much of an impact Torres’ bat can have out of the gate and beyond. In Barry’s player-versus-player comparison, Torres wins OBP, homers, and counting stats, while Barreto takes average, steals, and the overall profile. Easy to debate Barry’s ultimate decision, but most notable is the speculation on one skill that I would bet gave Torres the number two spot on MLB.com’s competing prospect list; the development of power. Settling into the 12-15 home run range as Barry predicts isn’t exactly number two prospect material, so my assumption is that MLB.com believes more in the 20-25 potential that is ever so hard to gauge. If Torres takes the Francisco Lindor route of fly balls and homers, we’re looking at one of the game’s greats. But settling on something similar to Dansby Swanson’s power profile will leave New York with some thoughts of what could have been in Torres’ early 20s.

Our new Russian nesting doll covering Headley’s spot at third in the coming weeks isn’t a crazy leap to make. If Torres debuts in 2017, he’ll be unable to celebrate a potential playoff series with Champagne, fresh faced, and pinstripe clad; with – I hope – less media pressure to perform now that Aaron Judge has wrapped his arms around the city like the 6’8″ teddy bear we all knew he was. I encourage the fanbase to give Torres some time to settle in upon promotion. The initial difference between Torres and Headley may be smaller than perceived.

I wrote a post titled, “It’s Not Gleyber Time… Yet,” earlier this season, marking the first in this eventual trifecta of columns. Closing this circle, I’m glad to inform you upon Torres’ arrival, a post titled “Yes, It’s Gleyber Time,” will make its way to the medium of your choosing.  

Sometimes it happens discretely, unnoticed until an 0-for-16 stretch provides us with a casual small sample size to overreact to. Other times it’s sudden, buoyed by an other-worldly week of at bats that make the following week’s productivity seem relatively worse than it actually is.

Then there is Aaron Judge’s May.

After one of the best one month stretches in MLB history, we knew nothing could be done to extend the 60 HR pace, or record shattering .447 isolated power number, but here at BP Bronx, we’ve had multiple great writers cover the positive signs that made New York optimistic this wasn’t a complete flash in the pan (most notably, Martin Nolan and myself). Judge developed into not only a patient hitter, but a hitter who basically broke Statcast when he decided to leverage the limbs extending from his 6’7″ frame to warp a five ounce ball into the shape of his choosing.

Our May sample of how pitchers have approached Judge is our first look at what has changed.

What I did was simply charted the difference from BrooksBaseball.net of Judge’s April and May (up to May 18th’s games) and examined the differences. If there was a part of the zone that Judge was seeing more pitches in month-to-month, it’s colored green with a positive percentage, implying an increase. Zones colored red show a decrease in percentage month-to-month.

The biggest takeaway is that pitchers adjust beautifully to where they have even the slightest inclination a hitter may be weak. Even in Judge’s monster April, he had an issue with pitches down-and-in, particularly ones outside of the strike zone. Our bottom left square shown above in green (0.67%) is where Judge swung and missed the most in April among any other part of his zone profile where he saw 10+ pitches in the month (28% whiff rate).

So what have pitchers done in May?

They’ve attacked that part of the zone. Still referencing our change in zone profile picture above, the bottom left grouping of four squares, all colored green, amass some of the largest increases in where we’ve seen pitchers throwing to Judge in May (+2.22%, +1.86%, +0.88%, +0.67% squares above). The other quadrant where we notice an increase in targeting sits in the upper part of the zone, another minor hole that April allowed us to see was an issue (+1.71%, +0.99% squares above).

Can Judge adjust back?

This will be particularly hard to do as it’s a common belief hitters with such large frames like to get extended and drive the ball, as we’ve seen on any number of Judge’s bombs. Fiers’ pitch in that linked video was out over the plate, but imagine how much more difficult it would be to generate the same extension and power if that pitch was inside, and closer to his knee.

A simple fix would be to lay off those pitches, but as we’ve seen with any above-average, high variance power hitter, that’s easier said than done. Simply telling a player like Judge, Joey Gallo, or Keon Broxton not to swing at certain pitches may not be the best way to go about improvement. As we’ve seen with Judge, it’s more about one’s approach as a whole, pitch recognition, and various other factors that go into not swinging.

From April to May so far, here is what Judge is pulling the trigger on.

Even with the surprising fact that pitchers have chosen to challenge Judge with fastballs more in the month of May than April (54% to 57% fastballs seen), Judge has actually swung at more offspeed pitches this month. Perplexing to some extent, sure, but the big point to make is that he’s swinging at more pitches both inside and outside of the zone for the month of May (In zone swing % is up 5%, outside of zone swing % is up 4%). It seems to me like an effort to both recognize and react to offspeed pitches across the spectrum. While it hasn’t produced incredible results so far, I like the ability for him to react back to pitchers when they react to him.

It’s a battle of changes for Judge at the moment, and when a 25 year old can change with nothing blatantly egregious as a result, I’m encouraged for the next few months of the Yankees’ new stud.

In the month of April, Judge’s OBP was .411, through May 18th, he was riding a .452 OBP. Walking more in May has been glossed over since Judge’s strikeout rate ticked back up to the 30% mark for this 18 day stretch. More encouraging is that he’s only swinging and missing at about .3% more pitches in May than he was in April. As long as in the aggregate, Judge can stay in the 25-30% strikeout window with his walk rate as high as it is (14.5% in May), success and extremely valuable at bats can be had.

I’ll leave you with the player we initially thought was a bad comp for Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, and the tale that it took him 800+ games to get below a 25% strikeout rate.

Bronx’s budding star sits ahead of  titans on the velocity front, eclipsing names like Stephen Strasburg, Chris Sale, and Jacob deGrom. Severino’s average fastball velocity of 97.7 mph this season is one half mile per hour ahead of Gerrit Cole and more than a full mile per hour ahead of James Paxton. If the city of New York was looking into alternative sources of energy to power the city, they might want to tap into this 23-year-old’s electric heater.

Fellow BP Bronx writer Austin Yamada astutely pointed out the widening of Severino’s ‘velocity gap’ between his fastball and his primary offspeed pitch, the devastating slider we’ve come to love (Yamada also made a great comparison to Rays’ ace Chris Archer, which I cannot steal from him, but sure as heck want to). I’m here to also point out the other velocity gap that widened since last season and has led Severino to the promised land of left handed hitter domination.

An issue with simply looking at percentage pitch usage is that we often glaze over changes in how a pitcher is throwing a certain type of hitter. We may look at the aggregate usage of a certain pitch versus all hitters and see a decrease, but remain blind to an increase when splitting up the usage by a simple factor like left handed versus right handed bats.

This theory of mine applies conveniently to Severino. On the left below we have Severino’s change in changeup usage to all batters between 2016 to 2017. Our graph on the right shows his changeup usage just to left handed bats between 2016 to 2017.

Sure it’s a small fraction of an increase, but that uptick is important, especially if you look at how virtually unhittable the pitch has been to left handed bats…

Lefties possessed a .263/.331/.416 off Severino in his 71 innings of work, which has bottomed out to a dismal .178/.213/.352 so far in 2017. Trusting his changeup more to lefties has allowed him to escape the tag of a pitcher with heavy lefty/righty splits, forcing managers to rethink throwing a lefty heavy lineup at the Yankees’ young star and praying for a few misplaced offspeed pitches.

Severino has tinkered with his approach to both sides of the plate, and it’s working. More changeups and fastballs to lefties, more sliders and virtually no changeups to righties.

Back in Januray of last year, the great Jeff Long called back to a Baseball Prospectus column by Harry Pavildis that broke down what makes a good changeup. You can read the article here, but I’m going to cherry pick the high level points Long summarizes in his column. There are four factors in a pitcher’s repertoire that help to make a changeup effective.

1. Faster fastballs result in more whiffs on the pitcher’s changeup.
   1. Severino’s velocity is up (96.7mph to 97.7mph from 2016), but he isn’t seeing a noticeable increase in either his swinging strike rate or strikeouts as a whole with his changeup (whiff % is down, 7.3% to 3.6% from 2016 to 2017).
2. “Velocity gap,” or the difference between a pitcher’s fastball and changeup velocity also results in more whiffs.
   1. This gap for Severino has increased a noticeable amount, just like his fastball-slider velocity gap. In 2016 this difference was about 7mph. This season it’s up nearly 3mph, to just under 10mph of difference between his fastball and changeup.
   2. Oddly enough, even though Severino is 2-for-2 on these changeup traits, we’re still sitting on a decrease in whiffs with the pitch.
3. Pitchers with higher changeup whiff rates, throw their changeups more.
   1. We have to disqualify Severino on this one because as I’ve already pointed out twice, Severino’s changeup whiff rate has actually decreased. We’ll get to the bottom of this, I promise you.
4. The vertical drop of changeups relative to fastballs increases both the whiff and groundball rate.
   1. This is a factor we haven’t touched on with our young stud, but a good one to consider. Severino’s changeup vertical movement increased from 5.6″ in 2016 to 6.9″ this season (more “sink”). With his fastball vertical movement steady from 2016 to 2017, the extra sink on his changeup relative to his fastball can add more whiffs and grounders to the pitch’s results.
   2. Ah! There is what we have been searching for. More grounders! Severino’s changeup has in fact seen a nice increase in grounders per ball put in play. Last season it was at 46.2% while this season it has edged up nicely to 54.6%.

One more thing to consider in order to further understand why we’re still not seeing more whiffs with the changeup is to realize the velocity at which Severino is throwing his changeup.

In the article I linked to above from Jeff Long, he mentions the wonky relationship between whiffs and grounders with changeups, noting that changeups with higher velocities actually result in more groundballs realtive to whiffs. Our big takeaway here is that even with the nice drop in velocity on Severino’s changeup, widening the velocity gap between the pitch and his fastball, the pitch itself is still a high velocity offering compared to the rest of the league. At 87.9mph, he has the 15th hardest changeup in the league among starters who have thrown the pitch 50+ times.

Nestled right in the 83rd percentile for changeup velocity, the overlooked pitch of Severino’s arsenal deserves some respect as it has kept him honest against left handed bats. With the concept in hand that higher velocity changeups lead to more groundballs, I’m not concerned one bit that Severino isn’t getting enough swinging strikes to maintain his success against left handed bats. Combine this with the increased velocity gaps between both his fastball-slider (previously discussed by Austin Yamada), and his fastball-changeup discussed here, and it’s no surprise we’re looking at a pitcher with a pristine 1.64 DRA.