When the season started I said that Vince Velasquez would be the future of the Phillies…if he could wrangle his fastball usage.

He hasn’t. And after only the first quarter of the season, that might not seem quite newsworthy. His last start was pretty much exactly what we’ve come to expect from him: 6 strikeouts, 2 walks, and 5 earned runs in 5.1 innings. But after the game Velasquez said, “I don’t know. I’m just clueless right now. I’m just running around like a chicken without a head.”

Those are the comments of a player worn down by his own consistent, tepid performance like running water does to the sides of a canyon. Manager Pete Mackanin had his own thoughts after the game. Per Corey Seidman of CSN Philly:

“He just has trouble commanding his secondary pitches,” Mackanin said. “He needs to command his secondary pitches. Once he does that, hitters can’t sit on his fastball. He’s got a real high swing-and-miss percentage on his fastball. I think he’s second to (Max) Scherzer.

“Players don’t square up his fastball but when you can’t command or show the command of your secondary stuff, then they just keep looking for the heater. And if you make mistakes with it, it gets hit. So his challenge is to start gaining better command of his breaking balls.

“If he throws a slider to a hitter and he swings and misses at it and it’s out of the strike zone, he’s got to have the ability to throw another one in the same location instead of just throwing a fastball.”

As of this writing, the Phillies have lost 19 of the last 23 games. They’re in the middle of a rebuild, a phase where they’re expecting the first wave of the next generation to start producing. Velazquez is a critical piece. With how the big picture and current moment are swirling, Mackanin’s comments are worth examining.

Yes, Velasquez needs to throw less fastballs. His approach is nearly identical to last year. In fact, with two strikes, he’s throwing the heater more often. Given that, even having command of his secondaries may not influence his results much.

And we may not be in a position to say he’s not confident in his secondary offerings because he’s thrown them so irregularly. He’s employed his fastball at least four times more than all of his secondary pitches in two-strike counts this year.

The relaxed environment built by the team seems to have enabled certain guys to grow into, or maybe even outgrow, expectations. Freddy Galvis, Odubel Herrera, and Cesar Hernandez all fit that description. But Velasquez could require additional structure. There might already be a successful player in the league to use as a template, too: Chris Archer.

Archer is mostly a two-pitch pitcher. His fastball (used 47.4% of the time this season) and slider (45.1%) account for nearly every pitch he’s thrown in 2017. He sprinkles in a changeup (6.6%) as the game goes on to keep hitters honest when they see him a second and third time. He’s used his slider in two-strike counts this year just about as much as Velasquez has used his fastball, so there’s already some semblance of a formula Velasquez knows that could help him transition his mental approach.

By movement, Velasquez’s slider is basically a flatter, faster version of his curveball. It hasn’t been effective. He’s thrown it less this year than last, but further reducing its use would leave him with an electric four-seamer, a sharp curve, and a solid changeup.

The repertoire would be different from Archer’s, and the effectiveness of its differences could be debated, but the goal would be straightforward: simplify Velasquez’s game, so that when he does find himself in a two-strike count, his fastball could play up like Archer’s slider. Get him out of his head and let his stuff do the talking because it is capable of speaking for itself.

Once he feels comfortable with this strategy, Velasquez could add to the velocity gap between his fastball and changeup, which could provide some much-needed guile to his game. And while it might seem foolhardy to think of step two of a plan for a struggling player before they even start step one, it’s vital, because he’s never had more than one step to his approach.

It’s been apparent for some time that Velasquez throwing only the fastball wouldn’t be enough, no matter how good it is. Now we know he knows it, too, and we’re all waiting for the next step.

Stating exactly what Luis Severino would be at the start of the season was a puzzle. He flashed such different versions of himself over the previous two years that there was no telling if he’d stick in the rotation or be relegated to the bullpen, whether because of his own lacking presence or a less deniable one among other in-house competition. But after six starts, he’s given us — and the Yankees — an emphatic answer.

Luis Severino is a starter. And maybe more.

We’re at the point where the basis for these numbers has largely become reliable for what we could expect moving forward. There are a couple key components. Austin Yamada explains how two-plane movement in Severino’s slider has been giving hitters fits. Matthew Mocarsky forecasted at the season’s start that Severino’s changeup could be critical to balancing his line drives and grounders, which is exactly what’s happened.

Pitches are rarely distributed dead equally. Acknowledging each one’s weighted value as if they were can provide a solid picture of just how much impact a certain pitch is having in a guy’s repertoire. And for Severino, his changeup has been crucial.

The caveat with weighted pitch values is how the amount thrown directly dictates how often a hitter has the chance to knock it around. Severino hasn’t thrown a ton of changeups and that certainly contributes to the offering’s weighted value. But the numbers suggest that when he has thrown it, he’s paced play with it.

We could wonder what would happen if he started throwing it just a little more and his fastball just a little less, but let’s zoom out. Let’s regard what Luis Severino is showing us in 2017 as his first well-planted foot in the majors. He’s already shown he can make adjustments, so let’s also consider he’s got one or two more in him that elevate his game.

What would that mean for the Yankees?

Severino could represent a home-grown anchor in their rotation, and that’s something they haven’t had in a long time. Chien-Ming Wang’s best work was a flash in the pan that wasn’t completely supported by his peripherals. Andy Pettitte was more impressive for his steadiness than his dominance. And before that? You’re going back to at least the 70s.

It would be interesting to see how the Yankees would approach Severino’s contract if he continues on his current course. They haven’t really been in a position to sign a young star to a sweetheart deal like, say, the Rays. They also have the financial wherewithal to not feel such pressure.

But the fact remains that he could be more important than any other player in their young core, and how they decide to go about keeping him in New York could have sizable implications for the franchise.

We can say it’s only six weeks into the 2017 season, but Luis Severino is a big reason the Yankees have one of the best pitching staffs in baseball. And he’s a big reason it could stay that good, too.

Jacob deGrom struck out 10 batters in his fourth start of the 2017 season. He also walked six and gave up three earned runs on eight hits. The statline alone might tell you it was his weirdest game of the year, and maybe his worst.  

Before that, in his third start, he went seven innings and struck out 13.  He allowed back-to-back dingers early and then took control of the game, allowing only three more baserunners the entire night. His pitches were humming like a barbershop quartet. That statline makes it sound like his best start of the year.

But it wasn’t.

No, that would be his second turn, on April 10 at the Phillies, where he only struck out three. He also walked two and gave up six hits in six innings. That sounds terrifically pedestrian until you realize how he did it.

We can start with his fastball, which was a big reason he labored through 31 pitches in the first inning (he only threw 96 all night). Compared to where he’s located it through his career (left), it was all over the place that night (right). It contributed to six men reaching base in the opening frame. He also gave up both walks then, one of which came with the bases loaded. And then Brock Stassi came to the plate and worked a 2-2 count. deGrom threw a changeup, induced an inning-ending double play, and transformed for the rest of the night.

Equal pitch distribution is always interesting. It can speak to a lack of predictability and according effectiveness. But seeing it so even among the slider, curveball, and changeup in this way is more than interesting; it’s relatively unprecedented. Historically, I couldn’t find anyone whose pitch mix has broken down that way for their career.

That’s significant for a few reasons. First, it could explain why Phillies hitters ended up struggling when deGrom seemed to be on the ropes. I could hardly believe they didn’t do more damage as Stassi hit into the double play. But the rally faltered because deGrom had already started to adapt, and in a way that hitters simply aren’t exposed to. In that context, and considering the Phillies aren’t exactly Murderer’s Row, it’s not so strange.

The slider-change-curve pitch mix also speaks to the importance of an effective fastball. With an unreliable four-seamer, deGrom basically ignored his two-seamer. Maybe he did that because if he couldn’t locate the straight one, he figured the alternative that has four to five more inches of movement was no good, either.

But more than anything, deGrom’s adjustment that night was compelling because we’re in an age of sport where we constantly hear about guys unleashing their egos to achieve eminence. And he went the other way.

Alec Fenn of BBC delved into ego’s place in sports. He spoke with confidence coach Martin Perry, who tells how some of the most exceptional players “don’t see risks; they have a bulletproof certainty they’ll produce and [with that] supreme level of confidence, magic can happen.”

Perry compares ego to the stuff of Harry Potter and Disney World, around which entire entertainment universes have been built. For all the mystique ego can produce, it’s no wonder we speak about it so lustfully and embrace it so openly.

A pitcher is provided more opportunity to drive a game with his ego than any other player because of his involvement in every play. On that night in Philadelphia, Jacob deGrom was determined to assert himself and beat the Phillies by establishing his fastball, as any pitcher would try. When it didn’t work, he walked away from his ego but maintained bulletproof certainty. He went with the flow. He didn’t get the win but was a huge reason the Mets did, and gave us a glimpse at an alternative route to success in the process.

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data from FanGraphs

On April 7th, Vince Velasquez pitches the Phillies’ home opener. His electric talent makes him a linchpin for the team’s plan to return to contention, and his four-seam fastball could be the key. It’s his best pitch, and it had the 12th-best weighted value among pitchers who threw at least 130 innings last year. MLB’s 5 Statcast Storylines for the team features him and the 27.4% swinging-strike rate he got on it, tops in the league.

And oddly, even more than his dubious health, it could be his biggest obstacle to stardom.

Corinne Landrey at Crashburn Alley found that Velasquez was in the top 15 for overall fastball usage last year, and top three in two-strike counts. Immediately, we could reason he threw it too much, even when acknowledging the rankings above. But it’s worth noting how, exactly, it looked.

380 of his 428 two-strike fastballs were four-seamers. They accounted for 60% of his two-strike pitches. It’s not just that he threw a ton of heat when hitters had their backs against the wall. It’s that he didn’t use his secondary offerings to keep hitters honest.

The top 10 qualified pitchers by K/9 last year  —  and some of the best pitchers in the game  —  present various paths that can be taken with two strikes. The range between their most used and second-most used pitches in those counts goes from 1.1% to 27.3%. The range for Velasquez screams from the page: 43.7%.

It might be easiest to think of this like kids on a seesaw. His four-seamer was like a particularly stout kid (maybe Billy Butler) and his curveball was like a particularly scrawny kid (say, Jose Altuve). The way he used these pitches in two-strike counts didn’t lend itself to a fluid, balanced approach during the most advantageous situations.

The problems Velasquez’s fastball created were subtle because overall it was so good. Guys weren’t driving it out of the park or putting up crooked numbers against it, but they were letting him wear himself out. While he got a whiff nearly 26% of the time in a two-strike count when using his four-seamer, there was also better than a 2:1 chance the at-bat would continue because it was either fouled off or called a ball. The foul balls were a major reason he worked a ton of deep counts last year, and what made making it through even six innings a coin flip all year.

There’s a chance that could be due to where he was locating his heat, too.

A look at his heat maps shows Velasquez hammered the zone with his four-seamer when behind (left). When ahead, as he would be with two strikes, he threw it higher (right). That’s generally good when thinking about sequencing, changing the eye level of hitters, and possibly the concept of having a pitch to spare.

But Velasquez’s fastball is a riser  —  it averaged 9.75 inches of positive vertical movement last year, or about a full inch more than the league average. While the maps of different counts will show slightly different locations, the big picture suggests his four-seamer could have been easier to take when higher in the zone because hitters and umps alike perceived it was already up.

Landrey also found that Velasquez was beginning to favor his changeup toward the end of the year as a lead secondary offering. While that’s positive, it’s bizarre that it took so long to show up in the majors since it was lauded through the minor leagues. Right now, the opposition knows he’s dynamic but can be worn down and sent out before the sixth inning. As he matures, he could become a force they genuinely dread.

Why are we so weird?

We don’t have 13th floors in hotels, walk under ladders, or pick up coins facing tails-up because all of these things are bad luck. People knock on wood when they talk about the future. They say “God bless you” if you sneeze, for fear of your soul escaping.

And as if those habits weren’t odd enough, ballplayers and baseball go and take superstition to a whole new level of silly and agitating.

The worst is the concept of the jinx during a no-hitter. Under what circumstances does uttering some passing phrase about a pitcher’s no-hitter suddenly doom it? Even if it’s deliberate, how does that change a guy’s ability to paint the black or shoot a blooper? Maybe it’s some cosmic understanding that goes over the head of simpler folks. But baseball is a game that is constantly relying more and more heavily on numbers, odds, and percentages. A no-hitter is one thing we can accurately acknowledge in the moment and without in-depth analysis. Doing so is no foible.

A pitcher’s team not talking to him during a no-hitter is just fine, though. It makes out a single game as something special, and how often do we get to do that during the regular season? That pitcher is on a mission that has been accomplished only 252 times since 1901. Currently, there are nearly 2,500 games in a single season. If a guy’s doing something that’s only been done a fraction of a single percentage in all the games in modern history, there’s no reason to goof with him like it’s just another day at the park. To that point, it hasn’t been.

Other superstitions are ones that have become prominent because of the volume at which they occur. Guys skip over the chalk at the start and finish of every inning on the way out of and to the dugout. It’s okay to think, “But what would happen if they did hit the line just once? No one is going to get hurt. It isn’t going to break a teammate’s mother’s back like stepping on a crack.” Let’s remember, though: the inning is over. Commercials are about to start. That silly moment is an easy one to tune out, so we’d be best off doing just that when we find ourselves fixated on it.

But when the game is back, and a player’s getting ready to pitch or step into the box, we’re paying attention. And we notice those ridiculous, idiosyncratic tics that turn into superstition which so many guys maintain. They work them into their mechanics and if they don’t perform them they’re thrown off. I’m looking at you, Matt Garza. Your little glove twitch has been the visual equivalent to a throw-up burp. It’s unpleasant and people might take a drink of the nearest beverage just to forget it.

Though he’s retired, Nomar Garciaparra remains the king of batting-glove love. Each time he stepped to the plate he might as well have played pat-a-cake with himself. It’s nothing compared to Moises Alou, though, who refused to wear batting gloves and would pee on his hands to toughen them up. Gross.

In all this strangeness, through all this exercised peculiarity, there might be some logic, even though the very definition of superstition tells us there isn’t.

In an episode of Fresh Air titled “Habits: How They Form And How To Break Them,” we learn about something called the habit loop from Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business. There are three steps to it: a cue, a routine, and a reward. The cue enables the brain to let a behavior happen, while the routine is the actual action, and the reward is the brain enjoying it all and making it easier to remember.

That process becomes automated rather quickly. Scientists attribute it to the basal ganglia, which “plays a key role in the development of emotions, memories and pattern recognition.” You might realize how none of this speaks to the actual decision of players to do quirky things like skip over foul lines or fiddle with their equipment a certain way. That’s because the part of our brain that makes decisions — the prefrontal cortex — checks out once a behavior becomes automatic. It appears that once someone starts a habit, in many cases they’re not actually choosing to continue it.

Habits do provide comfort, though. And habits held in the belief of good fortune are why we get silly baseball superstitions that we can laugh at or hate. Whether they’re rare or regular occurrences, they’re one more way the game gives back to us.

Last week I explored how exciting it is when certain things happen in baseball that shouldn’t. Some of the moments are quirky, like Ben Revere homers, while some of them are static shocks of excitement, like a guy getting on despite being behind in the count. They’re all enjoyable though.

But let’s be fair. Sometimes hitters are up at the plate with the advantage. They’re ahead in the count, have the pitcher behind the 8-ball and the defense extra up on its toes, but then…womp womp. They strike out, hit a weak fly ball, or tap a grounder to short, and the at-bat ends with the curt sound of a deflating balloon. And we’d be remiss to not acknowledge the guys who left us deflated most in 2016.

Like last time, that’s the top 10 from last year, plus their previous two years for some context. This list is just as interesting because it’s just as diverse in terms of position, age, and spot in the lineup. Certain guys do stick out though. You can’t help but think how the consistency in the numbers for Albert Pujols could speak to his decline. From 2008-10, which are the first three years of data available from Statcast, his BABIP when ahead was .389, .313, and .288. Those are also the last three years his batting average was .300 or better, which is understandable if you consider the possibility that pitchers have become less fearful of him when they give him advantageous counts.

Then there’s the Curious Case in the Collapse of Jason Heyward. Nobody expected him to be so bad so quickly in his first year with the Cubs. How much of it had to do with his BABIP loafing on the Mendoza line when ahead? As such an aberration, does it suggest he could bounce back with anything more than terrible luck? Probably at least a little.

And let’s not forget Francisco Lindor! He’s the only guy to show up on this list and the best-when-behind list. Perhaps that speaks to his relative youth — maybe too much comfort when ahead and focus that wants to make up for it when behind. That will be interesting to track as he moves into the next phase of his career.

Collectively, these guys were all more comfortable when ahead, as you may have guessed. Pujols sticks out again in terms of how the ball comes off his bat. While he’s been making outs at a high rate when ahead the last three years, he’s also still squaring up the ball pretty darn well. As for Heyward, his launch angle when ahead might be another reason he could improve in 2017, even if his exit velo is almost definitively average. Unless his combo of loft and soft-ish hitting gives defenders enough time to get to the ball. Then maybe he’s doomed forever.

Kyle Seager has the highest launch angle when ahead and second-highest in other counts. While he clearly likes to put the ball in the air, his decent-but-not-exceptional exit velo might make for a lot of long outs. And at the other end of the spectrum, Christian Yelich’s numbers tell us he’s hitting it low and hard a ton. That makes it easier to grasp why he made 80 outs when ahead in the count last year, but he also more than doubled his career home-run total last year, so he’s starting to put some loft under the ball.

Based on the numbers immediately above, Carlos Santana might get on base even more in the coming season. Hitting it as hard and at the angles he did in 2016 makes it seem unreasonable that he made the most outs in the league when ahead.

And finally, we examine when these guys made their outs when in hitters counts. Like the best-when-behind list possibly provided some inkling when to tune into a game or one of those players’ at-bats, this data might tell you when to tune out. Unless you’re into disappointment or schadenfreude.

Only two guys made more outs in the last three innings than they did in the first or middle three: Eric Hosmer and Jason Heyward. It’s intriguing that everyone else trended down as the game went on. I don’t readily buy into the idea of players being “in the zone” or “a great place mentally.” However, I am curious about the possibility of mentality making an impact on action in this context because I do believe mind and body are one. That they might come together as the stakes get higher would speak to the crux of how any of these hitters have become professionals.

I don’t think these numbers are as informative in the players’ approaches when ahead as much as they are a matter of BABIP. And by no means do I think that’s bulletproof. They still tell us how they hit the ball and when, which means they leave open opportunities to examine where tweaks might occur, though. With the variability of average on balls in play, it’s unlikely these players post the exact same numbers, but if any of them come close, it could account for roughly 20% of the total outs they make all year. Or 20% of the reasons you see what other games are on.

Some of my favorite moments in baseball are provided by players who, for one reason or another, absolutely should not have done what they just did. Ben Revere hitting a dinger. Vlad Guerrero swinging in the middle of an intentional walk. Willie Mays Hayes sliding short of the bag. Those moments are magical and hilarious.

And perhaps less amusing, but more exciting, there are guys who don’t give a flip if they’re behind in the count and don’t have any leverage. They’re still reaching base at a strong clip, providing small thrills by getting there when it looks like they’re all but back in the dugout. Below are the guys who did it most in 2016.

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Brandon Finnegan tweaked his changeup late last year, and the result was a significant boost to his overall game. Eno Sarris detailed how he threw it more while taking some zip off, widening the velocity gap between it and his fastball to about 10 mph. That led to an ERA well below three and a strikeout percentage of 30%, which are very baller numbers.

I don’t think it was just the velo difference that led to Finnegan’s outstanding results, though (I don’t think that’s what Sarris was saying, either). The pitch seems to have totally changed. Like, new address, new clothes, new cologne. New everything.

It didn’t just get slower. It became less erratic, less a noodle and more a frozen pea. It reminds me of when Cole Hamels wrangled his own changeup, where it went from seducing hitters with its movement to stifling them with its precision. I’m not saying Finnegan’s change now mimics that of Hamels, but it certainly became more wily at the end of last season.

The trajectory of it makes it look like it’s straight and narrow, right? And by itself, it is. It stands to reason that if Finnegan threw the changeup with more consistent trajectory, that it was located more consistently as well. That’s what appears to have happened. In the scope of sequencing his pitches, that’s extremely important, because it means he could rely on it more while hitters could accordingly rely on it less.

Source: FanGraphs

Finnegan turning down the velo and fine-tuning the location of his changeup are good things in a vacuum. But what those adjustments really did was make the pitch more closely resemble a four-seam fastball, and one left up in the zone, at that. He took his changeup and made hitters think it was a mistake. They accepted it graciously until it was too late. The results were essentially the same as when Lucy pulls the football out from under poor old Charlie Brown.

It’s important to acknowledge sample size here — six games isn’t much at all. But the adjustments produced results that should certainly encourage Finnegan to keep the altered approach with his changeup from the end of last year. What I’m curious about is how he builds off of this.

Only three other pitchers in the majors last year threw at least 2500 pitches between their four-seamer, sinker, slider, and changeup: Ervin Santana, CC Sabathia, and Chris Archer. Finnegan used his changeup more than them all year long, but that’s especially true from the end of August through season’s end. It was also the best of the group — by nearly three runs per 100 thrown!

Archer and Santana don’t throw a sinker, which leaves only Sabathia as a comparison for Finnegan through this context. There isn’t necessarily a lot that makes the two comparable aside from their arsenal, but there might be something Finnegan can learn here from his elder statesman.

He threw a fastball at a nearly identical rate as Sabathia did at his age. (Sabathia also wasn’t throwing a sinker yet, which was another step in his evolution.) This doesn’t speak to any grand finding, but it does acknowledge a pitcher’s youth. As time moved on, Sabathia learned to rely on his fastball less and less — 13 years later, he was throwing his four-seamer nearly 35% less often. In the case of Finnegan, he might take an additional step by relying on his sinker less and less, and, given the way his changeup fools hitters, he might benefit by throwing more four-seamers.

Maybe it’s intuitive that a pitcher should better balance his offerings to make himself less predictable. That doesn’t mean he’s going to figure it out, though. In terms of adjustments, baseball is paradoxically a game of “dance with who brought you” and “tinker ‘til you’re at the top.” Brandon Finnegan already seems to be getting more confident with the idea of tossing his pitches more equally. But it could also indicate advancing beyond what got him to the majors, to where he’s finding what can keep him there for a long time. The work he’s put into his changeup is just the first step.

Before spring training started, Scott Lauber at ESPN explored whether Rick Porcello could match his 22-win season from 2016. The short answer? No. Probably, almost definitely, not.

Conventional wisdom would swiftly say that, too, though. Three pitchers netted 20 wins last year, two in 2015, and three in 2014. And over those three years, none of the pitchers repeated the feat.

With wins speaking to much more than simply the pitcher on the mound, there are two things to consider when digging into the question: What could Porcello repeat, and what could the Red Sox offense?

Let’s start with the offense. Lauber’s article acknowledges that the Sox scored a league-leading 5.42 runs per game last year, and 6.83 per Porcello start. The biggest difference between this year’s and last year’s team is Mitch Moreland replacing David Ortiz. You could close your eyes and dip your hand into a bowl of cold spaghetti like it’s a Halloween Horror House and pull out the contrast between their production. As is, Moreland is projected to be worth about half a win next season. Alone, that suggests how the Sox could have struggles producing the same way in 2017.

But there are other questions to answer, too. How will top prospect Andrew Benintendi fare? Will Pablo Sandoval make any difference or continue to be negligible? I’m not suggesting the Sox won’t be good. It would be hard for them not to be. But they have enough variables going into the year that Porcello getting another 20+ wins is largely on him, which could be difficult for reasons beyond conventional wisdom.

These numbers tend to feed into each other, which is why they’re useful in seeing just how good Porcello was, and how well things broke for him last year. His pitching profile was relatively similar to past seasons, though. It’s not like Drew Pomeranz discovering a new pitch or Brandon Finnegan changing a grip. Porcello’s sinker (or two-seamer, depending which stat site you reference) gets a lot of the credit for his exceptional performance, but differences in his curveball may reveal reasons for it, too.

None of these changes are insignificant. The h-movement tells us Porcello’s curve ran away more from right-handed hitters and in on lefties. The v-movement tells us it dropped more. Add in how it was three mph slower and it rounds out how the pitch fell off the table more. He worked the zone more up and down over the plate than he did side to side in the two years prior, so it could have messed with batters more when the rest of his pitches moved as they have.

According to Lauber, Porcello mimicking anything close to 2016 will come down to “keeping hitters honest with his off-speed pitches.” Opponents hit .190 against his slider and .174 against his changeup. That could concern pitch-sequencing. Take a look at how he distributed his offerings in general, and then when ahead or behind in the count.

While the numbers don’t detail specifically when each pitch was thrown, they indicate that Porcello was eerily similar no matter what the count was. Sequencing isn’t about finding a magic combination of pitches; it’s about making sure a hitter can’t tell what’s coming. It certainly seems he was successful at it.

This data shines light on the tiny changes that might make a big difference in the game, which is one of the most fascinating aspects of baseball. But even more interesting is a quote from Dave Dombrowski in the ESPN piece, where he said, “I don’t think [Porcello] will try to do too much anymore.”

By itself, that reads like a generic sports-interview statement. But think about what the concept of “trying to do too much” really means in baseball: trying to do too much of one thing. A guy tries to hit a five-run homer or hit 100 on the gun every time; really tries to impose his will over the game by doing something impossible. Porcello wasn’t relying on any one pitch in 2016. And what Dombrowski is hinting at here, intentional or not, is there’s a certain amount of surrender that’s necessary for faring well in baseball.

Lauber tells how Porcello best explains his 2016 success by saying he “better understands what makes him effective.” Maybe that has to do with knowing how much the game controls versus how much he can, which let him harness his own abilities more.

I fear a lesser 2017 from Porcello could be called a disappointment by some, but an advanced understanding doesn’t always mean advanced success. The reality is it was a great year aided by good luck, probably buoyed by the cognizance that has allowed Porcello to be a contributing major-leaguer since he was 21. Maybe he isn’t as good this coming season, but it doesn’t take away from the player he is.

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career and pitch movement data from FanGraphs; pitch usage from Baseball Savant