Confusion and “what ifs” among the industry on Orioles’ starter Dylan Bundy are everywhere, so I’ll cut through the present state of takes like a knife: Bundy is a great starting pitcher.

Red flags and disapproval rise because of circumstances surrounding Bundy that make it easy to dislike his past, present, and even future. I get it. His struggles with injuries, and Baltimore notoriously failing to develop viable starters, are two tenets the anti-Bundy fan club champions. But when any pitcher puts together multiple oh-my-god outings at different points in a season, underlying causes for those sprinkles of success reveal important trends.

One theme in Bundy’s flashes of success is a pitch the Orioles nixed as an option in the past, fearing excessive stress on his elbow. Some call it a slider, others a cutter, and the Baltimore Sun moderates the argument with a simple hyphen. It’s a pitch that possesses average to below-average break on both horizontal and vertical planes, yet still generates impressive swing-and-miss capabilities. Bundy’s cutter-slider — the Baltimore Sun method of indifference — sits fifth in whiffs generated per swing among pitches that Baseball Prospectus classifies as a “slider” (95th percentile, >200 pitches thrown). The four names above Bundy are Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, Max Scherzer, and Mike Clevinger. Three objectively great pitchers, and an up-and-comer who I’ve profiled before.

Despite possessing average movement, the pitch might benefit from Bundy’s ability to tunnel all of his pitches.

Baseball Prospectus has taken the plunge in quantifying “tunneling” to the masses, and although intimidating at first, the theory makes intuitive sense. The “tunnel point” is the point in time where hitters have to make a decision whether or not to swing, and if hacking, where to do so. Above-average movement past the tunnel point would seemingly make a pitch harder to hit.

Bundy’s “Break Differential” — how much spin-induced movement is generated between the tunnel point and home plate — is 3.7 inches, substantially higher than the major-league average mark of 2.6 inches (87th percentile, 1,000+ pitch pairs). Bundy is also in the 85th percentile for a metric that signals how closely nestled his pitches are at the point of tunnel, known as the “Break:Tunnel Ratio.” We can’t say with certainty that his cutter-slider is the main culprit for this particular kind of niche success, but with the knowledge he uses it more often than any other non-four-seam pitch — especially in two-strike counts — we can infer it has some inflationary quality in this new-age stat.

Inflator number two might be the pitch that takes a back seat to Bundy’s cutter-slider, his changeup.

Bundy’s approach against right-handers is 75% fastball and cutter-slider usage, while versus left-handers, his mix in terms of offspeed is relatively even between the cutter-slider and his other three pitches, with this changeup basking in the spotlight of favoritism at 20%. Bundy uses this changeup when he needs a strike, as the pitch is seen more than three times more often when he is behind in the count rather than ahead, regardless of batter handedness.

After he gets back into counts with his changeup, he turns to the cutter-slider to put away hitters.

The frequency at which he uses his slider, at any point in an at bat, is what simple analysis says correlates to his overall success.

If just throwing his slider more was the reason for his recent success, Bundy’s xFIP in particular wouldn’t be half a run lower in his most recent set of games.

Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs mentions that Bundy has gone up in the zone to lefties more often in August, but the effect that approach has on his other pitchers stands out the most. Combing through Bundy’s approach to left-handers and right-handers, you’ll notice an uptick in slider usage, but perhaps the most impressive change is his new ability to strike out left-handers. While his strikeout rate versus right-handers has stayed around the 24-28% mark for most of the season — reaching a high of near 30% in his most recent starts — lefties’ ability to solve the righty have dwindled.

Meddling around 12% for the first four months of the season, in Bundy’s most recent seven starts, that left-hander strikeout rate has more than doubled to 26%. This was the missing piece that allowed him to post a 28% strikeout rate over than span. His ability to pitch up in the zone to lefties allowed for the other pitches in his arsenal to flourish, and as a result, Bundy has become more confident with his cutter-slider, evidenced by its usage. The key is not only using the cutter-slider more, but combining that usage with an approach that makes the pitch more effective, particularly to left-handed bats. Overall trends in Bundy’s game have allowed individual pitches to become more effective, and with his innate ability to deceive hitters post-tunnel point, Baltimore is seeing the potential start to blossom.

In Dylan Bundy, the Orioles have something their fan base has longed for; a 24-year-old arm with an enviable arsenal and the ability to tunnel his pitches in a way that makes each independent part more deadly. There have been growing pains, but his tools have become skills at the major-league level, and it’s hard for me to doubt his intermittent dominance isn’t a sign of greater polishing. Although it would be naive to say his cutter usage is directly tied to good starts, Bundy’s Labor Day meltdown is highlighted by reliance on his fastball and his lowest cutter-slider usage since the beginning of July — sub 20%. Whether the downtick in cutter-slider usage on Monday was because because of comfort with the pitch, or a want to focus elsewhere, at least the Orioles know where Bundy’s strengths are when he spins a great outing.

Use your offspeed, Bundy, and may the baseball gods grant you health like no other. Those are the primary factors to make the step from possessing great skills to being an elite arm.

A version of this post can be found at BigThreeSports.com

Lance Brozdowski can be found on Twitter as well, @LanceBrozdow

The Twins are one of two teams in baseball competing for a wild-card spot without a qualified hitter inside the top 50 on FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard. Venturing out beyond this window unveils two players the average baseball guru would guess are Thad Levine and Co.’s most valuable assets: Miguel Sano (injured; 2.5 fWAR) and Brian Dozier (2.7 fWAR). If “Thad Levine and Co.” was the name of an ’80s band — which I can’t confirm or deny — Eddie Rosario would be the rhythm guitarist capable of beautiful harmonies; forgotten, but essential to the end product.

Anytime a player of Rosario’s level comes into relevancy, the radar in my mind starts to tick, hoping to decipher what changed to bring about better results. Naturally, venturing to other outlets helps to answer that question quickly, leaving me satisfied and with one less idea for a future column. Other times, unsatisfied by the results of searching, a new narrative will linger in my mind long enough to expand such thoughts into a column. That’s exactly what took place with my thoughts on Rosario’s recent breakout.

If you’re looking for a deep dive into some of the finer aspects of Rosario’s changes, SB Nation’s Twinkie Town — unrelated to the apocalypse-proof snack — has what you’re looking for. I, however, was stuck on one general concept from a Star Tribune post at the end of April. In an attempt to not rob the outlet of its quote, I’ll paraphrase by citing that Rosario was looking to go up the middle and the other way more, in an effort to help him find comfort at the plate.

The midpoint of that sentence — “… go up the middle and the other way…” — is something I’ve heard so much in baseball circles that I’ve become numb to the concept. Most of the time when I see those words in citation of a change in approach, it’s backed up by said player’s batted-ball distribution. For Rosario, that was initially the case, but then something odd happened.

La Velle E. Neal III’s column for the Tribune — 80-grade name — was written at the end of April and jives with the barebones comparison of Rosario’s batted-ball distribution between 2016 and the first month of action in 2017.

2016 – Pull 36.1% / Middle 39.8% / Oppo 24.1%

2017 – Pull 26.9% / Middle 44.8% / Oppo 28.4%

Whether this created an intersection of adjustment and improvement, in a purely statistical sense, I would be skeptical. Rosario had a wRC+ of 86 in his full season of work from 2016 and April brought with it a discouraging 72 wRC+. He was pushing balls to the middle of the field more, but this dampened production wasn’t intended.

Even more spiteful of any theory linking Rosario’s batted-ball distribution the other way and casual success is breaking down the outfielder’s changes over time in relation to performance. Keep in mind the love for Rosario was spurred off the starting block recently, as the average fantasy owner got tired of struggling vets, and searched for the hot hand (Rob Arthur say what?!).

April 2017 – Pull 26.9% / Middle 44.8% / Oppo 28.4% / wRC+ 72 / 18.6% K

May 2017 – Pull 33.9% / Middle 38.5% / Oppo 27.7% / wRC+ 108 / 18.6% K

June 2017 – Pull 36.7% / Middle 38.3% / Oppo 25.0% / wRC+ 126 / 22.4% K

July 2017 – Pull 36.8% / Middle 35.3% / Oppo 27.9% / wRC+ 126 / 18.5% K

August 2017 – Pull 54.1% / Middle 29.7% / Oppo 16.2% / wRC+ 155 / 15.6% K

Total 2017 – Pull 38.0% / Middle 37.1% / Oppo 24.9% / wRC+ 118 / 18.7% K

Weird indeed. That statement about Rosario going the other way, and that concept leading to results, is a theory that just took a wrench to the gut in the form of this progression in 2017. A progressive tendency to pull the ball, met with better wRC+ numbers, and a fluctuating strikeout rate that — in the aggregate — is substantially lower than 2016.

Intuition took over as I began to formulate ideas on what exactly happened in this particular case of the missing culprit of success. One stuck, and to my dismay, it’s not as groundbreaking as I had hoped.

Seeing Rosario’s strikeout rate plummet this much, I theorized that staying up the middle, or to the other way, doesn’t always mean actually doing so in a way that results in tangible batted-ball changes. It’s all about the approach itself. By Rosario telling himself to approach the ball with anticipation of hitting it to the left-center gap, he was effectively saying see the ball deeper into the zone. This may have helped his ability to recognize pitches and judge the break on an offspeed pitch better, along with a plethora of other nuances that sum to cuts in his swing and miss tendencies of years prior.

But my theory wasn’t enough to inspire confidence in claim, so I went to an individual that I admired the presentation of at Boston’s Saberseminar, and subsequently connected with on the network that is Twitter: Dan Blewett, host of the Dear Baseball Gods podcast and pitching guru.

I asked him whether it made sense that when Rosario says he is going the other way, it may actually be a larger complex of changes taking place. His response was what I wanted to hear…

“Hitters who are dead-pull commit earlier to pitches, because they have to get their barrel farther out in front of the plate in the same amount of reaction time. This limits pull-hitters to only a small grouping of pitches that they can both hit hard and keep fair.

By taking an opposite-field approach to the plate, Rosario is watching pitches in deeper, and thus keeping his barrel in the hitting zone longer. For someone who was an extreme pull-hitter, ‘opposite field’ is somewhat relative, and lining balls up the middle with authority is a sign that his new approach is working, even if it’s not producing true opposite-field hits.

He’s making himself a vastly tougher out, and it’s a sign that he’s growing as a player.”

– Dan Blewett

The interesting thing about Rosario is that he wasn’t much of a dead-pull hitter last year, but still realized that his production lacked punch with the approach he carried. This concept of him staying toward the middle of the field and the other way is a roundabout way of saying what Dan Blewett points out above — Rosario is making himself a vastly tougher out, and growing as a player. He’s not going the other way more, but that middle/oppo approach allows him to see the ball deeper — fewer strikeouts — and recognize which pitches he can pull productively without creating the dead-pull approach that Blewett implies is futile for most.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens going forward with Rosario’s approach, as he has gotten pull-happy in the month of August, but has been unbelievably productive in the process. With hitting’s mental side as important as its mechanical side, I continue to think his April tweaks to take a left-center approach primed him for development as an asset, even as his batted-ball distribution changes like the weather.

Hearing that a player is trying to go up the middle, or the other way, is too general of a statement to capture all that a player is doing. Next time I hear those four words — going the other way — I’ll be a lot more inquisitive as to what else may actually be happening in the player’s approach. Cycles of adjustments are guaranteed in baseball; player analysis is catching those adjustments and hammering out the what and why.

A version of this post can be found on my site, BigThreeSports.com (to be published 8/27/2017).

I also tweet baseball… pretty much all the time — @LanceBrozdow