The idea of a “three true outcomes” (TTO) hitter, a batter whose plate appearances typically end in a walk, strikeout, or home run, is nothing new — Rany Jazayerli proposed the idea all the way back in the forgotten year of 2000, when the Backstreet Boys dropped their latest hit album “Black & Blue” and Dora the Explorer debuted.

In that article, Jazayerli describes how the Rob Deer Fan Club (of which I am a card-carrying member) had just discovered the newest prophet for the gospel of TTO — Russell Branyan, who seemed poised to demonstrate the TTO philosophy on the big stage, had just been named the Indians’ top prospect by Baseball America.

While Branyan lived up to the TTO promise, it appears as though he may have been a false prophet — Branyan struggled to stay in a starting role, jumped around the majors for a bit, and never made a significant impact while he played.

Worry not, for the Rob Deer Fan Club (or as it is otherwise known, the RDFC) was not without a champion during the 2000s. I present to you our holy savior, Adam Dunn. Dunn surpassed Deer as the king of the TTO, finishing his career with a TTO% (HR+BB+SO/PA) of 49.9% to beat Deer’s 49.1% figure. Dunn clubbed 462 home runs, drew 1317 walks, and struck out 2379 times — finishing 35th, 42nd, and 3rd respectively all-time despite only playing 14 seasons. He out-Deer’d Deer!

Nevermind the fact that the RDFC was blessed with the presence of Jack Cust, who set the TTO% single-season record in 2007 with a TTO% of 58.2% (among qualified players). Or Jim Thome, who in his quiet and humble way, finished his career 4th in TTO%. How about Mark Reynolds? Or Ryan Howard? Or Pat Burrell? All of them are worthy disciples of the school of TTO.

But it has been years since we’ve seen someone live up to the TTO promises of Mark McGwire’s 1998, where he finished with a TTO% of 56.8% and a wRC+ of 205. Why did the gods of TTO forsake us?

Mercifully, our prayers have been answered, in the form of Miguel Sano. Sano is on pace to the be the first player since McGwire to finish with a TTO% of 55% or more and with a wRC+ of 150+. In fact, Sano is on pace for the highest TTO% ever: 59.4% entering Monday.

This raises the question: how is Sano doing this?

Sano has a few things going for him, namely his contact. Sano is seemingly no longer hitting balls softly — end of story. Not only is Sano posting the lowest Soft% ever (3.9%, besting Joe Mauer and Briant Roberts’ 2006 figures of 5.1%), but he’s also second in the majors in Hard%. Sano is leading the average exit velocity charts by 3.6 MPH — our lord Rob Deer must be smiling down upon him.

Sano’s plate discipline has also quietly improved. This season represents the high mark for his Z-Swing%, and the low mark for his O-Swing%. This is crucial to executing the TTO philosophy — by swinging less at pitches out of the zone, Sano draws more walks, and by swinging at pitches in the zone, Sano avoids taking strikes.

Sano is still striking out at the same rate that he’s done in his career — his 35.2% figure for 2017 is roughly in line with his career 35.7% figure. But by improving his discipline, Sano has managed to bolster the weakest portion of his TTO game — walks. Sano has seen his BB% skyrocket from 10.9% last season to 18.2% this season. Furthermore, Sano made an adjustment to his swing this offseason that may have sent his swing from one of the hardest in the game to the hardest in the game — by miles.

We are only a quarter of the way through the season, which means that we still have three-quarters of the season left to see players regress, get injured, fall into old habits, etc. But it also means that we’ve seen Sano sustain being the best TTO hitter since McGwire for an entire quarter of the season.

Sure, Sano is hitting with a .463 BABIP and a 28.6% HR/FB%. But he’s also making the best contact of anyone that FanGraphs has ever measured — so such a crazy high BABIP and HR/FB% might not be as unsustainable as you think.

Regardless of how Sano finishes the season, I and my fellow Rob Deer Fan Club members are thanking the holy trinity of Home Runs, Walks, and Strikeouts (hallowed be thine names) for blessing us with Sano, who stands to be a treat to watch for the foreseeable future.

I’ll admit it, I watch Christian Yelich far too closely, and so far this season, it hasn’t been good for my state of mind.  Not because watching the Miami Marlins nearly everyday is like staring into the abyss (I embrace the darkness), but because the 2017 Christian Yelich I dreamed of, one that was going to seamlessly continue the rapid ascent he began in 2016, one that was going to stop pounding the ball into the ground and start pounding it out of the park, one that went on a hitting streak batting third on Team USA in the WBC, hasn’t quite shown up to the plate yet in 2017.

It hasn’t been totally bleak, of course.  As of the writing of this article on May 21, he has hit six home runs, which puts him solidly on pace to beat last season’s total of 21.  And being the leggy brunette and intelligent baserunner he is, he’s scored 28 runs (Mike Trout has 29).  His fielding in his new full-time position of center field has been anecdotally good (if slightly goofy), and he’s certainly shown he sees the outfield wall as no obstacle.  But Christian Yelich is a hitter, and as a hitter in 2017, he’s been largely unremarkable.

So, what’s wrong with Christian Yelich?  With my naked eye and human brain, I would tell you that he’s swinging when he shouldn’t, he isn’t walking, and for some reason he keeps pulling the same weak ground ball straight to the second baseman.  Over and over the outcome of his plate appearance seems to be a futile trot down the first base line and back to the dugout.  And if not that, it’s a strikeout and a slightly cringe-worthy display of perfectionist angst perpetrated against his bat.  (Or a cursing match with the home-plate umpire, who was wrong, by the way.)

That’s what my flawed human brain would tell you.  What do the numbers say, when compared to his 2016 Silver Slugger season, his career averages before the onset of 2017, and the rest of MLB this year?

The numbers would say that his production is down, and as a hitter in 2017 he has nearly been (gasp) league average.  Surprisingly, though, he’s striking out less than my impressions would have me believe, less than his own average, and the league’s.  He isn’t striking out too much, which is good, but he isn’t walking nearly enough, which is bad.  Clearly, he must be putting his bat on the ball, and somewhere between his bat and the opposing defense, his hits are disappearing.

So is there something obviously wrong with the quality of his contact, or is he merely having bad BABIP luck?

If I were to sum up Christian Yelich in a single type of batted ball, it would be a hard-hit grounder to the opposite field, so it shouldn’t surprise me that Christian’s ground-ball tendencies are back with a vengeance, despite a slight remission in 2016, but I’d hoped for a lower number.  Weirdly, though, the persistence of his nearly 60% ground-ball rate hasn’t hampered the growth of his fly-ball rate, which has risen to a career high over 25%.  This rise is encouraging, and harmonizes with the pace at which he is hitting home runs.  More balls in the air, however, have come at the expense of his line-drive rate, hollowed down to a troubling 14.6%, which I am inclined to blame for his uncharacteristically low BABIP and overall drop in production.

Another interesting difference, in addition to the disappearance of his line drives, is the overall right-ward shift of his spray chart.  Continuing his trend from 2016, he is hitting more balls to right and center field.  Christian Yelich is still Mr. Ground Ball, but he’s no longer Mr. Opposite Field.  This, combined with an increased fly-ball rate, suggests that he has tinkered with the timing and angle of his swing.  Has his approach at the plate changed as well?

His plate discipline data reinforces the idea that he is making a lot of contact, and his O-Swing and O-Contact rates, which are closer to league average than they’ve ever been in his career, could explain the regression towards league average in his production.  Pitchers aren’t pitching around him much more than usual (though they do pitch around him more than the average batter), but he is swinging more, at pitches inside and outside the zone, and since he is Christian Yelich and his bat is drawn to the ball like a magnet, he is making contact with pitches that he’d probably be better off missing.

The conclusion I’ve come to, after turning off MLB.tv for the afternoon and meditating on the data, is an optimistic one.  Christian Yelich is swinging more, and earlier, and at slightly different angles, I think, because he is experimenting, and this doesn’t worry me because I trust that his talent, instincts, and mechanics are sound.  I’m encouraged by the six home runs I mentioned earlier (evenly distributed to all parts of the field, mind you, including one 442 ft dead center in Marlins Park), the stability of his above-average hard contact rate (his average exit velocity is 90.7 mph according to Statcast), and his outstanding ability to see and make contact with pitches inside the zone.  I think we’re merely witnessing the awkward larval stage of his evolution into the franchise player Jeff Sullivan prophesied, and I expect his experimentation to pay off soon, perhaps as soon as the second half of the current season, as long as the woes of his franchise don’t hold him down.

Aaron Judge has been one of baseball’s best players this season, as well as one of its biggest surprises. After slashing a sub-replacement level .179/.263/.345, good for a 63 wRC+, he has jumped out near the top of the leaderboards with 2.2 WAR (7th) and .388 ISO (4th) at the time of this writing. Much has been written about the adjustments Judge has made to get to this point, but I may have something to add to that analysis.

Travis Sawchik began documenting Judge’s strikeout improvements back in March, and has since expanded upon those changes here. Judge mentioned in the original piece that his offseason philosophy focused on swing path: “For me, it’s just kind of getting into my lower half, and getting my barrel into the zone as soon as I can and keep it through the zone as long as I can. If my bat is in the zone for this long [demonstrating with his bat] my margin for error is pretty high.” That rebuilt swing helped him cut down his spring strikeout rate, a development that has continued so far this season, as Judge has posted a 28.3% K rate this year after his disastrous 44.2% in 2016.

Travis focused on the bat path changes, but Judge hinted at another adjustment when he mentioned “getting into my lower half.” Let’s look at two screenshots of Judge’s stance (from videos here and here), one of his first career home run in 2016, and the other of his 2nd jack on April 28 of this year:

It’s impossible to know, but Judge’s great start could be attributed solely to his switching to the pants-up look. Comfort and breathability can go a long way towards improved performance; just ask George Costanza.

Uniform changes notwithstanding, look closely at the differences in Judge’s setups. The first picture shows Judge more upright. Not only are his legs fairly straight, but his torso is more erect, as well. The stance from the bottom picture is noticeably lower, with increased bend in the knees and a slight upper-body lean over the plate, maintaining a similar balance. As he said in spring training, Judge is more in his lower half.

One effect this change may bring is a smaller strike zone. One of the concerns with Judge as a prospect was, ironically, that his enormous 6′ 7″ frame would create a strike zone too large for him to consistently control. Judge seems to have addressed this issue slightly by getting lower in his stance, thus decreasing the area above the plate he is responsible for. Kris Bryant is another big guy (6′ 5″) who noticeably crouches in his stance, albeit for different reasons.

Judge has gotten lower in his setup, sure, but what really matters is how he looks as he is about to enter the hitting zone. Let’s look at he top of his leg kick and plant:

Look at the height of the leg kick. Judge has made his kick much smaller this year, and while that would usually result in a slight loss of power, something tells me he has enough in reserve to make that trade-off.

When the foot lands, he gets to similar positions both years. To my eye, he has a little more knee bend this year, and his lean over the plate is slightly increased, creating a smaller strike zone as he is about to launch.

The results of all these changes have been staggering. Judge has increased his Contact% from 59.7% to 71.5%, with nearly all of that improvement coming in the zone (Z-Contact% improved from 74.3% to 85.0%, while O-Contact% improved from 40.7% to 41.0%). He is swinging in the zone more, chasing less, and has decreased his whiff rate. All together, this means more contact, and more balls put in play really, really hard.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that getting lower in the setup triggered some breakthrough for Judge that allowed him to miss less. When players tinker with their swings, it is seldom one big change that unlocks massive potential, but rather a series of smaller adjustments that work in tandem and add up to improvements. Think about Eric Thames, who not only worked on meditation, visualization, and tracking when struck with boredom in his apartment, but also greatly improved his flexibility. For Judge, getting lower in the stance did make the strike zone smaller when he was about to swing. It also decreased the amount of head movement he had as the ball was in flight. Judge’s head noticeably lowers from stance to plant in the screenshots from 2016, but there is virtually no movement in 2017. A stable head makes it easier to track a moving baseball. The smaller leg kick contributes to the improved head stability, and the increased simplicity makes it easier for Judge to be on time. All of that, in addition to an improved swing path that stays on plane with the ball longer, led to more contact.

It will be interesting to see where the league goes from here regarding Judge. He has made his adjustment, and now it is up to pitchers to start attacking him differently. My guess is that pitchers will start throwing him fastballs up and in off the plate to prevent him from extending his gargantuan biceps, and A LOT of soft stuff away. Hard in, soft away; innovative, right? The problem, as Jeff Sullivan has noted, is that Judge is so otherworldly strong that he can get beat in off the plate and still inside-out a home run the other way. Someone will figure Judge out and adjust. Judge will struggle, then adjust, as he has shown he will do at every level of pro ball he’s been at.

The narrative of Houston Astros starting pitcher Lance McCullers has been well-documented. In his first couple seasons in the major leagues, he flashed electric stuff, but did not have the health or consistency to be considered a top pitcher. One of those consistency issues was his road pitching performances.

Up until May 5th, McCullers was sporting a 5.32 ERA on the road against 2.11 ERA at home. But across his last three road starts, he has accumulated 19 innings and given up no runs, allowing just nine hits and walking only four. He may able to attribute the success to one thing: his changeup.

McCullers has had a changeup his whole career, but it was used only 7.4% of the time in the 2015-16 seasons. McCullers, along with Rich Hill, has sort of redefined curveball use, as he thrown more curveballs than fastballs the last two years. McCullers essentially threw two pitches his first two seasons in the majors, and the changeup was needed simply because any starter needs to throw more than two pitches. The changeup showed promise, but McCullers just did not have the command of it to make it a prevalent pitch.

Most of you have probably seen this, but if you haven’t, well, just watch. Yes, a 94mph changeup (kind of). McCullers tantalized us with that in 2015, but the changeup sort of disappeared after that.

It is back now, and in a big way. McCullers has thrown the pitch 22.2% of the time over his last five starts, the last three of which were those dominant road performances. His first start with the changeup increase didn’t go so well, as he gave up five earned runs against the Cleveland Indians. But McCullers has stuck with it, and he is dominating now.

Hitters are batting just .192 against the changeup this year, a massive improvement from the way it was smacked around to a .458 batting average last year. To give you an idea of what the pitch is doing to batters — McCullers throws the changeup in the zone only 27.2% of the time, but is drawing a swing 41.2% of the time, which is more often than on his fastball. At 89.3 MPH on average, McCullers has thrown the hardest changeup in the league among qualified starters. His K%-BB% on the pitch in 2017 is 22.2%. Simply, the changeup is dominating players. McCullers overall K% has dropped from 27.3% in his career to 24.2% in his last five games, but this has not been a negative.

McCullers’ fastball has not been a strength in his career, as it’s average against in 2015-16 was .334. His success lived off the curveball in those years because of his lack of an effective fastball or changeup. Surprisingly, the more changeups thrown has not caused a decline in fastballs thrown, but rather in curveballs. McCullers has thrown the curve nearly half the time in his career, but has thrown it only 38.0% of the time in his last five starts. He is throwing roughly the same amount of fastballs, but with much improved results.

His fastball GB% is up to 61.2% this year, much improved from his 37.2% mark in 2015. The average against is way down from .334 in 2015-2016 to .200 this year. Most importantly, though, McCullers has halved his BB% on the fastball from his first two seasons. Hitters were destroying the fastball in the zone and not chasing on it out of the zone. McCullers is getting fewer strikeouts because he is throwing fewer curveballs, but the overall pitching results are better. He is drawing softer contacts and walking fewer guys at the cost of a couple strikeouts.

McCullers decided to change up his extreme curveballing ways with some more changeups, and it is working beautifully. The changeup is dominating hitters, creating strikeouts and soft contact without walking guys. But perhaps most importantly, an effective third pitch from McCullers is finally keeping people on their toes, and they can no longer sit on the fastball. But don’t forget about his curveball, which is still one of the best in baseball.

The consistency at home and away from Minute Maid Park is finally there, and McCullers is pitching lights out right now. Health is still a concern, but McCullers is yet to have an issue this season. If his health keeps up, Dave Cameron may be saying “I told you so!” come November.

While Albert Pujols is the active leader in RBI and is 13th all-time with 1,849, there is something different about how he is getting them this year. He has 32 RBI, good for second-best in baseball, despite the fact that he has a meager .247/.293/.370 slash-line. Even considering the fact that Pujols has the exclusive luxury of batting after Mike Trout, my brain has a hard time comprehending how this could happen without breaking the matrix that is baseball correlations. So let’s dig.

First of all, high rates of RISP is, in fact, a major contributor: Pujols has had a runner in scoring position in 54 or 174 plate appearances this year, good for a 31% rate. As a mark of comparison, his career rate of RISP is 28%, so he’s getting a little boost this year. However, the interest is in the parity of those plate appearances, where he has produced a .326/.407/.478 slash-line compared to a .216/.242/.328 in situations with no RISP.

But it doesn’t stop there. Let’s go deeper into these ABs with RISP. In situations with at least two men on, Pujols has 30 plate appearances and has hit a vintage Pujolsian .370/.433/.630! This results in an OPS+ of 183, which is roughly equivalent to Barry Bonds’ career OPS+. Not bad. In contrast, however, with fewer than two men on, Pujols has hit .222/.264/.319 in 144 plate appearances this season, for an OPS+ of 59, which is equal to the career OPS+ of Rey Ordonez. D’oh!

So there’s life in the old dog yet! Or maybe the Central American Cichlid is more like it. A species that pretends to be dead only to lure unsuspecting prey. Time will tell if Pujols will remain this great with RISP (and this bad with no RISP). If it does hold up, it’s too bad that Pujols has a full no-trade clause to go along with the 114 million dollars he’s owed through 2021, because he could be a great pinch-hitter for a National League team. In the meantime, it is really going to drag the Angels down if they continue to plug “clutch Rey Ordonez” in the 3 or 4 hole every night.

If you predicted that Chris Sale and Max Scherzer would rank among the top five pitchers in WAR through mid-May, you aren’t likely to receive much more than a perfunctory pat on the back from your peers. If James Paxton was among your predictions to join Sale and Scherzer in that group, you might just be Jeff Sullivan. But if you foretold that 34-year-old Kansas City Royals southpaw Jason Vargas would rank among the league leaders over a month into the season? Well, my friend, come join me in line for Powerball tickets…

Not many pitchers “find themselves” so late into their careers, and, as a pitcher who hadn’t exceeded ten starts in a season since 2014, Vargas wasn’t exactly on the top of anyone’s spring training Comeback Player of the Year Award list. With that being said, Vargas had never been a bad starter as a Mariner, Angel, or pre-2017 Royal. Between 2011 and 2015 (Vargas only made three major-league starts in 2016 due to Tommy John surgery), his FIP fluctuated between 3.84 and 4.30, and although his xFIP indicated a slightly worse underlying performance, Vargas demonstrated value as a solid back-of-the-rotation starter. This year, of course, he has been anything but mediocre; posting a 1.01 ERA and 1.6 WAR through May 16, Vargas has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise uninspiring start to the Royals’ season.

What’s most interesting to me about Vargas’s recent ascendance onto the league leaderboard is that his pure “stuff” doesn’t appear to have changed much, if at all. Again, pitchers in their mid-thirties rarely “find themselves” — let alone pitchers who recently underwent Tommy John surgery — and with over 1,200 big-league innings on his arm, Vargas isn’t going to find an extra five miles per hour on his fastball anytime soon. None of his pitches’ horizontal or vertical movement has significantly changed this year, nor have their velocities.

What has been different this year, however, is the effectiveness of his changeup. Throughout his twelve-year career, Vargas’s changeup has consistently been his best pitch, but so far in 2017, the pitch has been far better than at any point prior. Opposing batters have achieved a slash line of just .109/.149/.125 and have struck out at nearly a 33% rate against the pitch. With a standardized linear weight of 4.63, Vargas’s changeup ranks third among all changeups in the majors, and with an unstandardized linear weight of 9.4, Vargas has been the owner of the most valuable changeup in the league.

As noted earlier, none of Vargas’s pitches, including his changeup, significantly differ this season in either movement or velocity. Further, according to PitchFX, the movement on Vargas’s changeup ranks favorably relative to other pitchers’ changeups, but not incredibly so; this season, Vargas’s changeup has the 14th-highest H-movement in the league, and has the 28th-highest V-movement. Therefore, while the pitch’s “stuff” is impressive, it doesn’t quite tell the whole story.

Instead, the secret to Vargas’s changeup transformation appears to be how finely he’s been able to command the pitch this year:

Compare that to his changeup in 2014, which had a much wider spread around the lower right-hand corner of the strike zone:

While batters haven’t swung at Vargas’ changeups any more in 2017 than they did in the past, they, put simply, haven’t been able to make consistent contact against it. When the pitch has been in the strike zone, batters have made contact only 55.7% of the time — even lower than their contact rates on Vargas’s out-of-zone changeups (57.5%). Combine this with the fact that Vargas has been throwing a higher percentage of his pitches for strikes (50.5%) than any season since 2007 — also five percentage points higher than the current league average — and perhaps the explanation for his success is simpler than expected. One should also note how Vargas’s delivery has changed within the last few years, which may also be contributing to his newfound success:

As many readers are already aware, Vargas probably isn’t going to continue pitching at such a high level throughout the season. As a pitcher without an elite strikeout rate, Vargas won’t be able to maintain anything resembling an 88.7 LOB%. Also, even in the vast expanses of Kauffman Stadium (the third-worst stadium for home runs), Vargas’s 2.0 HR/FB% is all but guaranteed to rise, especially considering that his 2017 FB% is actually in the upper third percentile of qualifying pitchers. As a result, xFIP offers a far more modest view of Vargas’s 2017 performance than does FIP (3.72 vs. 2.17).

All things considered, it’s not unreasonable to expect Vargas to keep posting strong numbers this season. While those who expect him to end the year with a sub-1.10 ERA will be disappointed, Vargas hasn’t shown signs of losing any of his command thus far, issuing a total of just six walks in his last three starts. If his changeup continues generating swinging strikes at such high rates, it’s not implausible that the Royals will possess one of the most surprising (and valuable) trade chips come July.

A little over a year ago, readers of this site were introduced to Hector Neris and his excellent splitter. Articles published early in the 2016 season by Craig Edwards and Jeff Sullivan explored how he was using the pitch, and Neris continued using his splitter to great effect for the rest of the year. His was the third-most valuable splitter in MLB, in a tier with Masahiro Tanaka’s and Matt Shoemaker’s as the only splitters with double-digit run values. He allowed just a .155 opponent batting average and had a 59.6% ground-ball rate with his splitter. It was also his primary punch-out pitch, using it to get 66 of his 102 strikeouts last year. Coming into this season, more cynical observers posited that only the value of saves and his upcoming arbitration negotiations were preventing Hector Neris and his splitter from dominating the ninth inning as the Phillies’ closer.

In case you forgot what it looked like, here he is striking out Bryce Harper with the pitch last September:

Just nasty. A lot can change in a year, however, and in the young 2017 season his splitter hasn’t been nearly as good.

Those numbers aren’t encouraging. He’s getting half as many called strikes while throwing more balls. His hit percentage has doubled, his LD% has jumped, and his GB% has dropped. He’s already allowed half as many home runs as in all of 2016, and we’re only halfway through May. Additionally, his O-Swing% has dropped, from 46% last year to 41% in 2017. Not the results you would hope for from your best pitch, let alone one of the best splitters in the Majors one year ago.

He’s not throwing it any more or less than last year and he’s not really allowing more contact or balls in play. What’s more puzzling is that his swinging-strike rate is almost identical to last year, just over a healthy 21%.

So what’s going on?

As Craig and Jeff wrote, the pitch was so effective because of where he was locating it. He located it down in the zone, ducking under bats for Ks or grounders and sneaking in for called strikes when batters laid off the pitch.

His 2016 heatmap shows a consistently executed pitch; one that gave opposing batters fits. What has happened so far in 2017?

Oh.

While the footprint hasn’t changed much, after 146 pitches there’s definitely a disturbing trend developing. His splitter is creeping up towards the middle and down under the the strike zone, instead of living right on the lower edge like it did last year. If the pitch is thrown too low, perhaps batters are able to lay off it more, which would explain the drop in O-Swing% and called strikes as well as the rise in balls. If the pitch misses up, well, this happens:

Where was that pitch located?

Right down the middle.

To develop into the dominant late-innings pitcher that his 2016 performance suggests he could become, Hector Neris is going to have to regain command of his best pitch. Here’s hoping that he finds it soon, because MLB is missing one of its best splitters.

Zack Greinke is a really good pitcher. That’s why he signed a monstrous $200+M deal in Arizona before the 2016 season. Unfortunately for Zack Greinke and the Arizona Diamondbacks, he wasn’t really good during the 2016 season.

Something went wrong in the desert. Part of it could have been that Greinke was pressing, trying to live up to his big contract and the largest per-year salary in baseball history. Part of it could have been adjusting to a more hitter-friendly home park (he had a 4.81 ERA at home versus a 3.94 mark on the road in 2016 with FIP and xFIP showing similar spreads). Whatever his issues were, the Diamondbacks and their fans were hoping for more out of their expensive ace in 2017.

Through seven starts, the results have been encouraging. He has pitched to a 3.09 ERA (and a 3.15 FIP/3.05 xFIP) despite his GB% and HR/FB% remaining the same as 2016. One thing that has changed is that he’s allowing 30% fewer walks while striking out two more batters per nine innings. Another thing that has changed is that he’s throwing his slider more than ever before.

After his most recent start, a win at Colorado on May 5 where he threw seven innings and allowed two earned runs, Greinke was asked about his slider usage in the game. He replied:

“I threw a decent amount, I don’t know how much more than normal, against righties, but, it was working. Could have thrown more, might have had better results, it was just working really good. I throw it more to righties and they had a lot of righties in their lineup today.”

In fact, he threw a higher percentage of sliders than in any other start in his career, and the highest since 2011. According to Brooks Baseball, in 2017 he’s thrown a higher percentage of sliders than in any other year in his career (25.7%). In terms of raw pitch counts, he threw more sliders in April (144) than in all but two other months in his career. He is throwing more sliders than normal.

He was right about one thing, though: the pitch is working. Facing the Rockies at Coors, Greinke threw 38 sliders with a 26.3% whiff rate while only allowing one hit. So far in 2017, he’s getting a 26.1% whiff rate with his slider after only getting 21.5% in the last two years. He’s also getting the highest Swing% of his career, and had his second-highest month of raw whiff counts in April.

So what has changed about the pitch besides its usage?

He is not throwing it as hard as in recent years, while also seeing an increase in horizontal movement. Brooks Baseball has his slider velocity at its lowest and his horizontal movement at its highest since 2013.* Additionally, he is locating the pitch closer to the plate than he has in years, while maintaining the same height in the zone. He is also getting a higher percentage of called strikes this year than in 2015 or 2016, years in which his horizontal location moved away from the plate.

It is not a completely new pitch, but it has changed, and he is using it differently. Located closer to the plate, and moving more, the pitch is getting more swings and calls, leading to more strikeouts and fewer walks. There is little wonder that he has thrown it as much as he has.

*I omitted his Colorado results because as we know, Coors suppresses movement. If you look up his Brooks Baseball movement chart you will see a massive dip in horizontal movement for May 2017 as we only have the Coors start to draw data from.

Jacob deGrom has been one of the better and most consistent pitchers in the league across his short career, posting ERAs of 2.69, 2.54, and 3.04 in 2014-2016. He accumulated a 12.0 WAR in those seasons, 13th in the league and sandwiched between Dallas Keuchel and Stephen Strasburg. Good company.

He has been great, but he has not exactly been a strikeout maestro. He averaged 9.24 K/9 in 2014-2016, a good mark and solidly above the league average of 7.86 in that time, but also nothing to write home about. However, his K/9 has skyrocketed to 12.66 in 2017, ranking 3rd among qualified starting pitchers. What is behind the spike?

First, here is a table of deGrom’s pitch usage across his career:

In 2017, deGrom has thrown considerably fewer two-seam fastballs and made his curveball an afterthought, greatly increasing his slider usage. In 2016, deGrom’s most effective strikeout pitch was his slider, with a 27.5% K%. His two-seam fastball induced the fewest strikeouts by far, posting just a 13.1% K%. deGrom has also slightly increased his four-seam fastball percentage, which has been his second-most effective strikeout pitch.

The pattern here is obvious — deGrom is throwing more of his strikeout pitches and less of his others, explaining the strikeout spike. But the change is curious. As deGrom struggled through injury in 2016, his velocity fell. A change in approach to mitigate the velocity loss would make sense in that season, but that did not occur, and he struggled to some degree in 2016 because of it. deGrom’s velocity is back to old form this season, but now he has strayed from the approach that made him so effective in 2015.

deGrom’s infatuation with the slider began during 2016, but he did not throw it nearly as often as he has this season. It was by far his most effective pitch last season. It was sort of his savior that year — his slider allowed a minuscule .168 average while his other four pitches were hit to a .276 average. deGrom clearly decided that his slider was his best weapon, and chose to make it a more prevalent pitch in 2017.

However, whether by design or mistake, with the increase in sliders, deGrom has also altered the location of his slider this season. (Comparisons will be made with 2015 season because of deGrom’s 2016 health). Here is a heat map of deGrom’s 2015 slider location. Pounded low and away from the arm side, like a typical slider. But now, take a look at the heat map of deGrom’s 2017 slider. It’s all over the zone, but placed particularly often at his arm side.

In 2015, deGrom had three primary offerings. The four-seam, the two-seam, and the slider. This is a heat map of his four-seam/slider combo in 2015, and this is the heat map of the 2015 two-seam. He attacked almost entirely glove side with the four-seam and slider, up with the slider and down with the two-seam. To counter, he pounded the extreme inside of the zone with the two-seam for a balanced offering. But look at the heat map of his 2017 four-seam/slider combo, his two primary offerings this season. deGrom is attacking across the entire zone with his two main pitches, but does not have that same vertical variance that he did previously. Instead of using the slider as an edge/out-of-the-zone wipeout pitch, he is trying to establish it as an in-the-zone pitch, but it has not been nearly as effective.

deGrom is attempting to attack the arm side with the slider instead of the two-seam, while also trying to attack the glove side with the slider to create balance in his approach. While it’s reaping benefits in terms of missing bats, it is not keeping hitters on their toes. Look at this table of deGrom’s slider profile:

One can see the massive spike in strikeouts and whiffs, which looks great. But people are also offering on the slider less because of the lack of deGrom’s balance with the two-seam, and it is leading to a lot more walks than in 2015. We see the exact same thing with the four-seam fastball:

The strikeouts are nice and all, but they are coming at a hefty cost in other areas. deGrom is not commanding the strike zone like he did previously. He has not lost his pitch control, as his Zone% in 2015 and 2017 are nearly identical, but he has lost some of his authority over hitters and is not manipulating them.

But it is not just the walks that have been more of a problem. In 2015, deGrom’s Hard% of 26.3% ranked 19th among qualifying starters. In 2017, he is sitting at just 69th out of 94 qualifiers with a 35.6% Hard%. Also, deGrom has given up six home runs in his last five starts. He gave up 15 in 30 starts in 2015.

This could all be an overreaction, of course. We are only seven starts into 2017, and deGrom could just be getting acclimated to his new approach. And it is not like deGrom has been getting walloped — he is pitching all right. However, this could also be an overreaction on deGrom’s part. With decreased stuff and velocity due to injury in 2016, deGrom saw a dip in his strikeouts from 2015. He may have lost confidence in his previous approach after his minor struggles last year, and has overcompensated in 2017 by trying to miss bats all the time. The new approach has not been quite effective this season, as deGrom has sacrificed command and soft contact to create more whiffs.

Offense is at a seemingly unparalleled level in baseball this season: balls are jumping off of bats, folks are debating the juiced-ness of balls, swing paths have been all the rage, and pitchers have resorted to crashing motorbikes to avoid the mound.  There are 53 (!) players with 7 or more home runs at the roughly 1/5 mark of the season, despite a few sluggish sluggers dragging everyone else down (Mark Trumbo, Brian Dozier, Jose Bautista, and Edwin Encarnacion to name a few).  So, naturally, we’re here today to examine those hitters who missed the bus to wRC+ town and have instead flailed away to no avail.  Abandon hope, all ye who enter.

1. Dansby Swanson paces the undesirables with a .231 OBP, only .89 lower than the current MLB average of .320.
2. There are currently 25 players who have as many or more home runs than this group combined.
3. The group runs a combined .155/.216/.247 line, or put another way, roughly what one would expect out of Mike Trout if he became a full time left-handed hitter.
4. The 26.6 K% and 6.6 BB% might be respectable, were the group not worth -2.5 WAR in a combined 152 games.

Danny Espinosa

Espinosa has always been an enigma.  Two 3+ WAR seasons early in his career set the bar that he has yet to reach again, and this year is the most confounding of all.  He’s never been considered as necessarily a dangerous bat, but he has generally been able to post league-average offense with a little pop.  This season, nothing is doing at all.  Like the remainder of guys on this list, his BABIP is ludicrously low, well below his career .288 average.   However, a possible explanation of his lower BABIP is an increase in the number of fly balls he’s hitting.  Espinosa has seemingly jumped on the fly-ball bandwagon, with a FB% of 46%, well above his career average of 38.4%.  That, juxtaposed with his underwhelming average exit velocity of 85.86 mph (league average this year is 87.76 mph) isn’t enough to give him a significant power spike.

Dansby Swanson

Swanson arrived to the big show last year and performed well, getting on base at a .361 clip and being worth 0.8 WAR in essentially a quarter of a season.  Expectations were fairly conservative, with ZiPS and Steamer projecting him for 2.4 and 1.7 wins, respectively.  That Swanson, however, has not arrived this year.  It would be unfair to not mention the .195 BABIP he is running, but there is still cause for concern among Braves fans who were hoping for a franchise cornerstone.  Swanson has stopped hitting the ball as hard as he did in 2016, with his hard-hit percentage dropping from 34.7% to 26.6%, and he too is hitting more fly balls than last year.  His line-drive rate is down 5% from last season, and his overall contact profile is much more meh than projections expected.  On an optimistic note, Swanson is walking in 9.1% of his plate appearances, salvaging his performance to an extent and reflecting a good control of the strike zone.

Alcides Escobar

Escobar does not hit the ball hard.  His average exit velocity sits at a paltry 83.44 mph, but given his glove-first profile, that has generally been acceptable to keep him on the field.  But Escobar spits in the face of consistency, and he has has, intentionally or not, made a tragic mistake with regards to his ball-in-play profile this year: he has attempted to join the fly-ball revolution.  Until this season, 30.2% of his balls in play have been fly balls, with his highest being 34.2% in 2010.  But not this new Alcides, no sir.  Say hello to the Alcides Escobar who hits 41.8% fly balls, the man whose most comparable ball-in-play profiles this season have been Anthony Rizzo and Nomar Mazara.  Not to mention, he’s hitting more balls than ever to center field, and there is perhaps some doubt that Escobar has anything but warning-track power to center field.  Needless to say, it isn’t particularly working in Escobar’s favor.

Curtis Granderson

The Grandyman can’t.  In this context, ‘can’t’ refers to hit the ball out of the park.  Or out of the infield.  Or anywhere hard.  He’s been a mess.  His career hard-hit percentage of 33.3% has dropped to 29.4% this year, and he has also, regretfully, been drawn to the dark side of the fly ball.  A former career 44.1% fly-ball hitter, Mr. Granderson now hits 57.1% of his balls in the air, where no amount of slow-motion camerawork can push them over the fence.  A staggering 16.7% of his balls in play have been infield flies.  There’s not a lot to love about how Granderson is hitting the ball right now, and it unfortunately looks like Father Time is winning another battle.

Devon Travis

I like Devon Travis.  It may be because he’s a fellow short guy, or it could be because he’s just a fun player to watch.  Well, he was a fun player to watch.  This year most Blue Jays fans have probably looked away when he steps to the plate.  In 2015, his first taste of the bigs, he looked like a potential star, running a 135 wRC+ to 2.3 wins in only 62 games.  2016 was a bit of a reality check for him, but he still managed to rack up 2.5 wins in 101 games.  2017 is going…differently.  Travis, of all the players listed here, appears to be hurt by his low BABIP the most, given that his career BABIP entering the year was .354, which has effectively been cut in half this season.  In 28 games he has managed to be worth -0.7 wins, with little to no value having been produced at all. His contact profile and batted-ball results are comparable to his career averages, and he hits the ball just as hard as your average major-leaguer, with an average exit velocity of 87.36.  Add to that an 8.6% increase in line drives this season, and Travis should, of all the worst hitters, be fine.

There you have it.  These guys have all, at one point or another, been excellent major leaguers, but this year have been the absolute worst hitters of all qualified batters.  Baseball is a fickle sport, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if these guys go on to make everything I’ve said seem dumb in retrospect and finish their seasons strong.  But for at least a little while, we can horrify ourselves with some scary numbers and dread the thought that our favorite team has an irredeemable scrub on the roster.