Allow me to start this post off with a couple of charts without any context about the player we are talking about.

Let’s talk about this player for a second. His name is not of consequence, yet. This player has fluctuated from being an above-average producer of runs and slightly-below-average producer of runs for close to 10 years now. This means he’s been around a long time, so his profile as a hitter is solidified; he has a reputation. Something funny has happened in 2016 and 2017 as evidenced by the LARGE upward line. That’s good! Can you guess who this player is? No? Come on, one guess. Okay, fine. It’s Mark Reynolds! Yes, that Mark Reynolds!

Mark Reynolds once hit 44 home runs. Do you remember that? When I said, he had a reputation, I meant to say that he’s well-known for the three true outcomes: walks, strikeouts, and home runs. Not much else. He’s a first baseman, which means his defensive value is minimal at best. So basically, his value is his offense. He’s signed for $1.5 million this year and is currently a top-10 first baseman in the MLB by fWAR. He’s top-8 by wRC+, and top-4 by wOBA. He’s already exceeded the value of his contract. The obvious caveat here: it’s May 9^th. The other obvious caveat is he plays for the Rockies now, which means he gets to play 81 games (give or take) at Coors Field.

I don’t know if he can sustain this. I too see the name Mark Reynolds and think, 30% K rate, with a decent amount of power. The thing is, he’s not striking out in 30% of his plate appearances. He’s not even striking out in 25% of his plate appearances. You want to know how often he’s striking out? After today’s day game with the Cubs, he’s striking out only 21.1% of the time. That’s, dare I say, below league average (League wide K% currently is 21.5%). I’m going to throw some more numbers together to try and articulate an idea: Mark Reynolds is up to something.

This doesn’t seem to be a one-year fluke. Reynolds is a slightly different player than he was two years ago. His K% has been on the decline since 2015, when it was 28%. Last year it was 25.4% and obviously now it’s 21.1%. So let’s go to his plate discipline to see what’s changed.

Looking at his O-Swing% and PITCHf/x O-Swing%, there isn’t a huge difference. They both hover in and around his rate of 26-27%, though PITCHf/x has him at 29.5%. The real difference is in his Z-Swing%, where he has decreased his percentage over the last two years. In 2015, it was around his career norm of 70% by Baseball Info Solutions and 67% by PITCHf/x. The last two years: 69.4% and 66.2% respectively by Baseball Info Solutions, 66.2% and 64.9% respectively by PITCHf/x. He seems to be pickier in the zone overall and there is a tangible result.

His Z-Contact% career average as calculated by PITCHf/x and Baseball Info Solutions is 74.3% and 74%, respectively. In 2015, he made contact with pitches in the zone 80% of the time by both systems. Last year? 81.9% by Baseball Info Solutions and 84.6% by PITCHf/x. This year? 85.4% and 84%. He’s making more contact overall for the last two years, as it’s been in the 70% range rather than the 60% range. His SwStr% has been decreasing too! It’s been below 13% the last two years, where his career average is 15.7%. This is a different Mark Reynolds.

Maybe Reynolds is trying to take more pitches in the zone so he can focus in on his best pitch. The power is there — his ISO is .339, with 12 home runs thus far. Probably not sustainable, but 30 home runs can be reached even with a return to the average.

About that park factor, though. He really hasn’t hit much differently at Coors versus away from Coors.

Baseball has been on a steady path toward being a “three true outcome” (home runs, walks, strikeouts) league the last few years. Hitters are becoming more and more centered around drawing walks or getting hard contact, but are allowing more swing and misses to achieve that. As Dave Cameron noted in this article earlier this year, in the first week of 2017, the strikeout and walk rates were record highs for a given week. The home-run rates remained relatively similar to the crazy-high ones of 2016. This article is the first in what will be a two-part segment, one with players and one with teams. So, which players have embodied the three true outcomes the most in 2017?

Only players with at least 80 plate appearances qualified for this. I took players in the 80th percentile for BB% (above 12.4%), ISO (above .239), and home-run rate (above 6.03%). Then, I filtered for players in the 20th percentile for K% (above 25.5%) and contact% (below 73.2%). I found six compatible players:

As a top prospect, the path of Joey Gallo has been monitored closely. The 23-year-old has shown tremendous natural power in his short stints in the bigs, but has also demonstrated poor plate discipline. Jeff Sullivan recently discussed whether Gallo was approaching the acceptable threshold of his swing-and-miss tendencies, but his overall numbers and 2017 have still been underwhelming (aside from the home runs). Gallo has the lowest BB% and contact% of the group, yet has the greatest K% by a large margin. The power is clearly there, as his HR% and ISO are solid among the others, but Gallo still has a long way to go to become an above-average hitter in the Rangers lineup.

Khris Davis has epitomized the continual growth of the league toward the three true outcomes, consistently increasing his HR%, BB%, and K% through his career in the majors. Davis has begun to establish himself as one of the better-hitting outfielders in the league, growing on his home-run-filled 2016 while greatly increasing his walks.

Simply put, Aaron Judge is mashing the ball for the Yankees in 2017. After a disappointing run in his late-season call-up in 2016, Judge has shown much-improved plate discipline, dramatically increasing and decreasing his BB% and K%, respectively. The 25-year-old leads the MLB in home runs, and is head and shoulders above even this group in ISO. He is achieving this all while posting the second-lowest K% of the group and highest contact%. His early start is clearly unsustainable, but Judge looks like a future star right now.

Miguel Sano is yet another young, former highly-touted prospect in this group. After a promising rookie season in 2016, a possible breakout was expected from Sano — and he has not disappointed. He leads this group in BB% and is second in ISO. Sano still has the swing-and-miss problems, as his K% and contact% are still very poor, but he has displayed the power and walk-drawing ability to become a leader of the league’s three true outcome trend.

Matt Holliday is a bit different from the previous four guys because of his MLB experience. The 37-year-old veteran has appeared in 1797 games in his career — the other four have appeared in 851 games combined. Holiday has changed his profile a little bit this season, following the three true outcome trend and posting HR%, BB%, and K% higher than his career norms. Whether Holliday is adjusting to the changing MLB with age or this is just a one-month statistical blip remains to be seen, but he has certainly played like a three true outcome guy in 2017.

Justin Upton, like Holliday, has a lot more experience than the first four guys on this list. Upton has continued in 2017 what he’s always done as a pro: strike out and hit home runs. However, he has displayed an improvement in his ability to draw walks this season, posting what would be an easy career high 14.7% in 2017. Upton is not quite the extreme power hitter in comparison to the others — he has the lowest HR% and ISO of the group — but he also has the highest contact%. He is not a league-leader-in-home-runs type of player, but Upton makes just enough contact and draws enough walks to mitigate his strikeout tendencies.

It is clear that the three true outcome trend has been dominated by the younger guys, but it is also evident that veterans are adjusting to league changes. Guys like Sano, Gallo, and Judge have made their way to the MLB by embracing the three true outcomes, while players like Holliday are possibly changing with the times. In the coming years, you will likely see the number of names in that table increase even more.

This year during the offseason, I would occasionally search “Gerrit Cole” on Twitter, mainly to ensure he was having an injury-free winter. The recurring theme of what I saw was the argument of whether or not Cole is an ace. I’m here to tell you that he is — there’s just no question about it. I get it: he can be injury-prone, as outside of his 2015 season Cole hasn’t pitched more than 138 major-league innings in a season. But about that 2015 season; how many pitchers in the last 50 years have gone at least 200 inning with 200 strikeouts in their age-24 season? Just 27. Some others on that list include the likes of Felix Hernandez, Clayton Kershaw, Pedro Martinez, Roger Clemens, and Tom Seaver. Of that list of 27, Cole’s ERA of 2.60 was matched by only 6. Okay, yes, it also included Carlos Zambrano, Kevin Millwood, and Brett Myers, but the impressive names on there significantly outweigh the not-so-much impressive names. Not convinced yet? I’ll go on.

I think everyone can agree that Gerrit Cole’s 2016 did not quite meet expectations, as he pitched 116 innings with 7.60 K’s per 9 and an ERA of 3.88. This is where those injury concerns get brought up, as he fought right-side inflammation right out of the gates, and then elbow tightness twice throughout the season, eventually ending it early. Watching Cole last year, it looked like he never got into a groove. He wasn’t able to fully prepare due to the spring-training injury, and it showed in his career-high 2.79 BB per 9, after sporting a 1.90 in 2015. As for the elbow injuries, there was never any structural damage; it was just sore. I believe the side injury was the reason for this, because for pitchers, the core is very important. Cole put more pressure on his arm because he was having trouble with his core, which in turn probably threw off his delivery a bit, which would explain the control issues. The velocity was always there, as he maintained 95.2 mph on the heater, but the control was not. The message of this 2016 injury section is that these injuries weren’t a chronic issue. It was a side injury that led to an arm injury that made up one frustrating season.

Now on to 2017! Cole’s fresh start, as he entered spring training healthy and on time. The Pirates understandably took it easy on him, bringing him along a bit slower than his peers, and he made it through spring healthy and ready for opening day in Boston. I was excited to see how he would perform, getting a tough test for his first game back, and I was relatively pleased with what I saw. He was hitting upper 90s with his fastball and cruised through the first four innings, holding the Boston lineup scoreless. Things went south from there, as Cole got hit hard with two outs in the 5th, and he gave up five runs, leaving him with a 9.00 ERA after start #1. Stay with me here because it’s the next five starts that I really want to share with you.

In those, Cole has pitched 31 innings, striking out 32 (9.3 K/9), and walking six (1.7 BB/9), with a 2.61 ERA. Do those numbers sound familiar? In case you weren’t paying attention earlier, I’ll tell you those are right in line with those 2015 numbers. Yes, he got hit hard opening day, but after that he’s allowing just 26.1% hard hits, compared to 29.5% in 2015. I know the small sample size and all, but one could argue for Cole to actually improve on his overall numbers this year, as he is becoming a more complete pitcher entering his age-26 season. He’s been focusing on his change, throwing it 12.5% of the time, compared to his previous career-high of 5.0%, and hitters are only hitting .111 off the pitch, with no extra-base hits. We’ve all known about Cole’s elite fastball, and with a serviceable change, he can now keep hitters off that heater.

The one stat that isn’t on par with those ace-like 2015 numbers is his homer rate. So far in 2017, he has a 1.50 HR/9, which is more than triple his 2015 rate, and more than double his career rate. Cole’s fly-ball rate has increased 10 points to 39%, which could be an explanation, but his HR/FB% is 15.4, once again almost double his career numbers. These numbers should stabilize closer to career norms as the season continues, especially if Cole continues to pitch the way he is with his great control. The health is the big issue people will continue to argue, but in the modern era where fewer pitchers are hitting those 200IP and 200K marks, the 26-year-old Cole is just entering his prime, and has already produced an ace-like season before. The way he looks this year, I’m telling you he *IS* an ace that still hasn’t reached his ceiling.

All stats are from FanGraphs.com

Probably not.

The Mets are not healthy. Their five best starters would combine to make one of the better starting rotations in recent history. Unfortunately, it is seeming increasingly unlikely that all five will pitch at the same time again. Steven Matz finished 2016 with a surgery to remove a bone spur in his elbow. He hasn’t pitched yet this season. Matt Harvey had season-ending surgery to alleviate thoracic outlet syndrome after a disappointing start to the season. Jacob deGrom missed the last part of 2016 for ulnar nerve surgery. Depth option Seth Lugo is out with a partial UCL tear.

Noah Syndergaard is the only one of the five to not have had Tommy John surgery. Despite pitching through a bone spur last season, he has been remarkably healthy. However, he left his opening day start this season with a blister. And now this:

Update on Noah Syndergaard. #Mets pic.twitter.com/n8JVxIBBid

— New York Mets (@Mets) May 1, 2017

As others have noted, lat strains can be fairly serious — Matz missed two months with the same injury in 2015. Syndergaard is probably out until at least the All-Star break, a big blow to the Mets. The big story here of course is that the Mets started Syndergaard even after he refused a suggested MRI. However, I believe a further, more serious injury awaits Syndergaard.

Syndergaard didn’t always throw a slider:

Indeed, he started throwing it toward the end of 2015 (his rookie season), and relied heavily on it in 2016.

There’s been a lot of work on this topic. FanGraphs’ Eno Sarris termed the pitch the Mets are throwing the “Dan Warthen Slider” in 2015. Sarris notes in his piece:

Critics might point to arm injuries on the Mets as proof that the pitch is hard on the arm, but Warthen laughs that off. “It’s easy on the arm when done correctly, it’s not one of those pitches that you try to make break,” he said. And these pitchers all throw hard, and there is a relationship between just throwing hard and arm injury. It’s impossible to split those effects apart.

Obviously there’s more contributing factors to injury than throwing this one specific slider. The Mets’ five aces throw very hard. Perhaps more importantly, they all throw breaking pitches (the Warthen slider) very hard.

This is a graph of pitchers who threw at least 250 sliders between 2015 and 2017. Perceived velocity is on the y-axis, and is correlated with release extension on the x-axis (the farther a pitcher’s arm gets from the mound, the faster the ball will appear to a hitter).

The only pitcher with a slider that has averaged above 90 MPH in effective speed that hasn’t had Tommy John surgery yet is…Noah Syndergaard. Jon Gray and Jake Arrieta are both also near the threshold.

Arrieta throws a mix of a cutter and slider. When he was traded to the Cubs from the Orioles in July 2013, his month-to-month slider usage began increasing almost immediately. In 2014, his first full season with the Cubs, he threw the pitch 29% of the time. In 2015, he threw it 29.5% of the time. However, his usage has decreased since then, and now sits at 16.1% so far this year (potentially due to his lost command of it). He threw his slider more than 20% of the time for about two years, and then decreased his usage again. It’s not too surprising that his arm has held up, especially considering his conditioning.

deGrom got Tommy John surgery at 22, Harvey 24, Wheeler 25, and Matz 19. Syndergaard is 24 now. Out of the two who had Tommy John in the majors, Harvey pitched for 1.5 years at the major-league level before needing surgery, and Wheeler had about the same amount of time as well. Syndergaard has been pitching for about half a year longer than either of them, but it’s concerning how much the timelines line up. Syndergaard is just a little past the mean age of Tommy John surgery in the last 10 years (23.28).

Jon Gray is an interesting case due to his frequent comparisons to Syndergaard. His arm seems healthy now, but he’s also only pitched for a year and a half so far. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up in the same position as Syndergaard soon, though, especially since it appears that he’s started throwing the slider even harder in limited starts this season.

Maybe Syndergaard’s injury is a blessing in disguise. There’s only one other pitcher I could find in the past seven years that’s undergone Tommy John surgery after a lat strain or tear. However, many have gotten lat strains after Tommy John (including Syndergaard’s teammate Matz). It’s certainly good that he’s not trying to pitch through it. If he does rush back or not take the injury seriously, though, it could put even more strain on his likely endangered elbow. Due to Syndergaard’s attitude about this situation so far, his desire to throw as hard as possible, and the Mets’ reliance on and mismanagement of him, I doubt he makes it through 2018 with his elbow intact.

Devon Travis is having a rough start to the 2017 season. As I’m writing this, he has “hit” .148/.207/.222, good for a wRC+ of 16 and WAR of -0.5. Fans are openly wondering if he should be sent back to triple-A. But all is not lost! If you look past the surface stats, there is hope for the young Blue Jay. Let’s explore.
Read the rest of this entry »

Eddie Butler has been a different pitcher in 2017. Through four starts with the Iowa Cubs, he is sporting a shiny 1.46 ERA, a far cry from his career 6.50 ERA after years of turmoil in the Rockies organization. The story here is an easy one to latch on to: top-shelf pitching prospect gets devoured by an offense-heavy ballpark, gets traded to the Cubs, becomes a bona fide ace. It’s the same backstory as Jake Arrieta’s, and the early returns are pointing to the same conclusion.

I am here to disagree. The further I looked into his underlying stats, the more I realized that Eddie Butler still needs to make a serious change if he wants to have any big-league success. In 2017, the “new” Eddie Butler is really the same old Eddie Butler masked by some small-sample good fortune.

Butler has never been a big strikeout guy, so he has to limit walks to survive. While his 2017 walk rate is below his career average, his strikeout rate has dipped as well, leading to a K-BB% of 3.0%. That is not good, and unfortunately, it is right in line with his career mark of 3.3%. The most recent qualified starting pitcher to post a lower K-BB% was 2012 Ricky Romero who had a K-BB% of 2.3%…which was accompanied by a 5.77 ERA. Pitchers with this profile don’t accrue very many innings, and when they do, the results show why.

If you are walking guys without striking them out, you better keep the ball in the ballpark, and Eddie Butler has definitely done that this season. He has yet to give up a single home run in his time with Iowa. David Laurila recently chatted with the right-hander about his new approach, which involves driving the ball downhill and getting back to his two-seamer, while the Rockies always prioritized his four-seamer. This new approach sounds like a recipe for a successful ground-ball pitcher, and it would explain the new ability to limit home runs. But, hold on, Butler’s career FB% is 28%, and his 2017 rate has skyrocketed to 41%, which doesn’t fit the rest of the narrative. Allowing this many fly balls is not a good sign for Butler, who has always had a bit of a home-run problem, as his career HR/FB rate sits at 18% (and no, that’s not just Coors Field – since the installation of the humidor, Rockies pitchers have posted a HR/FB rate of 11.6%). When I look at Butler, I don’t see a guy who found success with a new approach; I see a guy who is prone to home runs with a massive spike in fly-ball rate.

Butler’s success at limiting home runs thus far has allowed him to strand runners at a rate that is screaming for regression: his LOB% of 86.7% would be the highest mark for a qualified starter since Dwight Gooden in 1985. Opposing teams haven’t been able to string hits together against Butler, but that tends to even out over time, especially considering the fact that Butler’s career LOB% is below league average. When you don’t strike guys out, the ground balls eventually find holes, the fly balls eventually leave the yard, and the walks start to come around to score.

To be fair, I have not seen footage of Eddie Butler pitching this year. He might be making guys look foolish, and he might be on the path to becoming the next king of soft contact; if you have watched him pitch first-hand this year, please feel free to share your observations. He does still have the pedigree and he seems to have the work ethic to go with it, and it would make an incredible story if he could put it all together.

After all, Eddie Butler is a professional baseball player, and I’m just a guy with some spreadsheets. But right now, the spreadsheets are telling me to seriously pump the brakes on the Arrieta comps – underneath the ERA, this still looks like the same Eddie Butler.

A little over two weeks ago, Dave Cameron suggested here that the Astros might need a new first baseman. Last summer, they transitioned newly-signed Cuban prospect Yulieski Gurriel from third to first in hopes he would solve the Astros’ continual first-base issues. Gurriel did not live up to expectations, to say the least. In short, he displayed poor plate discipline as an extremely aggressive hitter, but did not hit the ball with enough authority to overcome his plate approach deficiencies (You can get the more detailed version in Cameron’s article).

However, since the exact day the article was released on April 11, Gurriel has been on a tear. He has accumulated 23 hits in 54 plate appearances, including five doubles and two long balls, to go along with eight runs scored and seven RBI. So, what has Gurriel changed recently?

In his 165 plate appearances in 2016 and up until April 11th, Gurriel posted an absurd 42% O-Swing%. The MLB average is just 29%. He paired that with a 76% Z-Swing%, nine percentage points above average. Gurriel was swinging at anything and everything thrown his way. Since then, he has lowered his O-Swing% to 34% and his Z-Swing% to 68%. Gurriel is showing much improved plate discipline, something he was vaunted for while playing in Cuba. It has not resulted in walks, as Gurriel has drawn only one walk since April 11th, but there is evidence as to why. Let’s look at this rolling average graph of Gurriel’s O-Swing% and Zone% across his career. As Gurriel has continually swung less at pitches out of the strike zone, the number of pitches he is seeing in the strike zone has grown. With more pitches in the zone, he has had less opportunity for walks.

Gurriel has taken advantage of the increase of strikes thrown his way. On his swings at pitches in the zone since April 11th, Gurriel has made contact 97% of the time. The MLB average for Hard% of batted balls from 2016-17 has been roughly 31%. Pre-April 11th, only 27% of Gurriel’s batted balls were hit hard. Post April 11, that number has skyrocketed to 44%. Gurriel is picking his spots now, and when he does decide to swing, he’s making contact. And hard contact.

Previously, pitchers were attacking outside of the zone, knowing Gurriel would swing and produce weak contact. With his decrease in aggression, pitchers have been forced to throw over the plate. Gurriel is sitting on good pitches to hit now, allowing him to make hard contact. The walks have not come yet, but if he continues to play like this, pitchers will learn not to throw in the zone to him. We are dealing with a relatively microscopic sample size here, but players don’t dramatically decrease their aggression just by chance. Gurriel’s current hitting is clearly unsustainable, as he is running a 253 wRC+ since April 11th, but if he continues to show the patience he is playing with right now, don’t expect him to revert back to pre-April 11th Yulieski Gurriel.

So, in summary, what has Gurriel changed?

Not a ton, it appears. He has simply just hit with more patience, which has trickled down into the rest of his game. Gurriel always had the ability to barrel up balls, but he was not showing it because he was not swinging at the right pitches. If Gurriel keeps doing what he’s doing, the Astros definitely won’t need a first baseman.

Out of the many differentiae that make up José Carlos Altuve’s thumbprint on baseball, from his 5’ 6” stature, to getting cut from his first tryout with the Astros but showing up the next day anyway, his groundball percentage would likely not rank toward the top for most fans of the Venezuelan. However, most of said fans have not seen this graph.

As you can see, after decreasing his rate consistently for four seasons, Altuve is hitting more groundballs and hitting more balls toward right field in 2017 than at any other point in his career. Although this is in a sample of just 88 plate appearances, and may be a statistical blip, I think that with a hitter like Altuve it is worth investigating.

Altuve’s BABIP is also a high, even for him, .393. Apart from being the most satisfying stat to say out loud, BABIP is also the one thing that alters early-season statistics more than any other, but .393 for Altuve isn’t like the clearly unsustainable .455 that Steven Souza Jr. is currently running. It’s just .044 points higher than his last season rate, so while it’s probably not sustainable (DJ LeMahieu led the league in BABIP last year at .388) it’s not lifting him to his 134 wRC+ by itself.

So what’s the reason for this? Is it a change in approach? A reaction to what other teams are doing? Teams don’t appear to be shifting Altuve, so it doesn’t look like he’s trying to beat them by hitting grounders through an open hole. It does, however, look like maybe teams are attacking him down and away slightly more than in the past. Here are Altuve’s heat maps the last two seasons.

2016

2017

There does appear to be a slight uptick in balls in the bottom corner of the zone, but it’s hard to call it a novel trend when the basic strategy against Altuve since he came into the league remains basically the same: down and away.

But the story doesn’t end there! There are two things that do appear to be starting a trend.

First, his Zone% (meaning the percent of the time that opposing pitchers throw him a strike) has been consistently trending downward since he came into the league. It’s currently at 46% according to Trackman, which is the lowest mark of his career.

Second, his Fastball%, according to Baseball Info Solutions, is at 49.7%, which is also a career low, and actually over 8 percentage points lower than the rate he’s seen in his career.

Now, this all makes intuitive sense. Altuve’s power has risen in recent seasons, and it looks like pitchers have adjusted accordingly; no surprise there. What I thinks is worthwhile in all this is that Altuve is adjusting right back. Before this past weekend in Tampa Bay, Altuve had no home runs on the year. He’s been going with what pitchers have been throwing him. They want to throw him offspeed down and away, and he’s been going with it, exchanging some of the power he took last year to keep his overall offensive profile as one of the league’s elite hitters.

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.

—

data from FanGraphs

Michael Lorenzen has made some headlines this year as a hitter. He hit a home run! He has a 232 wRC+! Wow! But here’s an interesting tidbit about him you may not have known — he also pitches occasionally! As I’m typing this, he has pitched 11 innings with a 9.82 K/9 and a 2.45 BB/9, a pretty good start which suggests that his 5.73 ERA will come down soon. The most interesting part to me, though, is that he is getting these results in a completely different manner than the way he pitched in 2016.

We took a look at Michael Lorenzen’s 2016 season a little while back and noted that while he was throwing his sliders very hard, he simply wasn’t getting any results with them. Thanks to the Statcast search at Baseball Savant we can take a look at his 17 sliders this year. The first thing that jumps out is the velocity — he is averaging 86 MPH on his slider, significantly down from the 91.5 MPH average in 2016. In fact, he’s maxed out at 89 MPH this year, which means his average slider velocity from a year ago is two ticks higher than his maximum slider velocity this year. And that’s with everyone’s velocity looking higher this year.

But the second thing that you’ll notice is that the results when he throws the slider are really good:

In 2016 Lorenzen threw 67 sliders of 94+ MPH and got four swinging strikes. He already has that many swinging strikes on his sliders in 2017, in only 17 pitches. He’s yet to allow a base hit on the pitch, and has only missed the zone three times. This is a pitch that’s really become a weapon for him, after being a serious liability last year.

Now if that were the only thing that’s different about Lorenzen, it would be fairly interesting. But it’s not. Based on results alone, he looks like a completely different pitcher than last year:

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Last year his cutter was his best pitch; this year it’s been his worst. Last year his slider was his worst pitch; this year it’s been slightly above-average. Now, just like in every other baseball article you’ll read this month, I will include the caveat that it’s early. But to see this kind of a swing in results is intriguing. I would suspect he’ll be going to his off-speed stuff a bit more in the coming months. It’s working for him, and it might help make his fastball look even faster. Don’t get distracted by his hitting — his pitching is the thing to keep an eye on. He’s put bits and pieces of it together in the past, and if he can put it all together now, watch out.