Kyle Bradish's ineffective fastball

[Can_of_corn]

Fangraphs piece from today.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/kyle-bradish-is-a-young-oriole-trying-to-get-outs/

Quote

Laurila: Can you say more about the movement profile of your fastball?

Bradish: “I get anywhere from -2 to -7 inches of cut on it. I’ve actually tried [to learn a true cutter], but it didn’t really… I mean, my fastball is a better cutter than when I’m trying to throw an actual cutter.”

Quote

Bradish: “I actually get pretty good ride on my fastball. The average is around 17-and-a-half [inches] and it will get up to 20. Then I have my slider, which is kind of in between a cutter and a slider.”

 

[baltimoreO's22]

I watched a video where Corbin Burnes was able to make a couple of minor tweaks to the way he gripped the ball and went from throwing a 4 seamer to throwing a cutter and sinker. Since his changes, he's been one of the best pitchers in the MLB. Hopefully Bradish can make some adjustments as well, otherwise I don't think he can be anything other than an arm out of the pen. 

[Tony-OH]

5 hours ago, Chelsea_Phil said:

Damn, I feel like I am back in my ‘Rate Distortion Theory’ Electrical Engineering graduate school class that I took at U.of MD in the early 80s, in which I just nodded my head in class while not understanding one bit of what the lecturer was saying.

That's why I summarize at the end.  

[Tony-OH]

4 hours ago, TommyPickles said:

https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/1532143569498152967 

His slider is filthy, at least.

But, yea, these fastball numbers are not super promising.

The slider is a very good pitch, no doubt. I think his promise lies is in this pitch. Right now, the only issue is he misses a little too much with it and he's giving up an above average EV off the pitch and 4 home runs. He's only been throwing it now as his main off-speed pitch since late last year in AAA.

In the pen, with his ability to throw 97-98 along with the slider, he has a chance to be good out there, particularly if he can work that fastball up in the zone mostly.

[Tony-OH]

3 hours ago, wildcard said:

Probably because they didn't need to address his fastball until now.  Bradish was a fast mover through the O's minors after he was acquired from the Angels.   Barely played at Bowie before being moved to Norfolk in 2021.   The biggest priority was to improve his breaking pitches.   Which late in 2021 he did.  He looked very good in ST. 

We are just over 2 months into the season and the fastball appears to not be effective as it needs to be.   Changing the grip to get more movement and have command of the pitch may be hard to do during the season without increasing the risk of an arm injury.   Its may be something Holt and Bradish address in the off season and in ST next spring.  JMG.

The orioles have statcast information on all of their prospects every game. Why would they not have seen this lack of movement? Now, the lack of movement could be that he cuts it once in awhile but not enough to be considered a cutter. That slight movement to the left could make his overall average really straight.

To me, that's the only explanation unless it was something that started to happen after spyder tact was taken away.

[Tony-OH]

2 hours ago, Can_of_corn said:

Fangraphs piece from today.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/kyle-bradish-is-a-young-oriole-trying-to-get-outs/

 

Apparently this is why you don't listen to a pitcher talk about his movement. None of that has shown to be true at the big league level statcast info.

[btdart20]

He only throws the first pitch for a strike 53.2% of the time (vs. 60.7% avg).  At that point, he's done.  He's also below league average at getting hitters to chase (25.6 vs 28.3).  Hitters sit on the FB and don't chase the SL early.  Then when he gets behind and in a hitters count, he serves them up a nice non-moving FB with expected results... (as evidenced by the 10.4% barrel rate).  

67% of 88 CH were thrown early in the count.  Only 37.5% were in the zone (about avg).  

87% of 69 CB were thrown early in the count.  Only 40.6% were in the zone (about avg).

50.3% of 195 SL were thrown early in the count.  Only 35.4% were in the zone (vs. 42.5% avg).

52.6% of 401 FB (vs 57.5% avg) thrown early in the count.  When he's behind in the count he's throwing in 41.6% (vs 29.3% avg).  

To summarize - I think the O's see the lack of movement in the FB since he's already pitching backwards more often than league average.  But those pitches aren't being thrown for strikes.  Short of improving his FB movement/velo/control, that's a decent first step of what he needs to do.  Maybe throw the SL more center of zone instead of low/away on the first pitch.  

Edited June 15, 2022 by btdart20

[Tony-OH]

3 minutes ago, btdart20 said:

He only throws the first pitch for a strike 53.2% of the time (vs. 60.7% avg).  At that point, he's done.  He's also below league average at getting hitters to chase (25.6 vs 28.3).  Hitters sit on the FB and don't chase the SL early.  Then when he gets behind and in a hitters count, he serves them up a nice non-moving FB with expected results... (as evidenced by the 10.4% barrel rate).  

67% of 88 CH were thrown early in the count.  Only 37.5% were in the zone (about avg).  

87% of 69 CB were thrown early in the count.  Only 40.6% were in the zone (about avg).

50.3% of 195 SL were thrown early in the count.  Only 35.4% were in the zone (vs. 42.5% avg).

52.6% of 401 FB (vs 57.5% avg) thrown early in the count.  When he's behind in the count he's throwing in 41.6% (vs 29.3% avg).  

To summarize - I think the O's see the lack of movement in the FB since he's already pitching backwards more often than league average.  But those pitches aren't being thrown for strikes.  Short of improving his FB movement/velo/control, that's a decent first step of what he needs to do.  Maybe throw the SL more center of zone instead of low/away on the first pitch.  

Excellent information gathering and analysis!

[Hallas]

5 hours ago, Tony-OH said:

Apparently this is why you don't listen to a pitcher talk about his movement. None of that has shown to be true at the big league level statcast info.

 

I'd want to get more in-depth breakdown on his fastballs.  I want his pitch movement shown as a histogram by movement.  If he's in fact throwing an occasional cutter, you should see 2 spikes in the histogram on either side of the horizontal movement chart.  This would tell me that pitch tracking is not properly tracking his fastball and cutter.

 

As it is, his fastball is breaking very mildly in the direction of a cutter, which is decent evidence that his averages are getting screwed up because his cutters are misclassified as 4 seamers.

[btdart20]

1 hour ago, Hallas said:

 

I'd want to get more in-depth breakdown on his fastballs.  I want his pitch movement shown as a histogram by movement.  If he's in fact throwing an occasional cutter, you should see 2 spikes in the histogram on either side of the horizontal movement chart.  This would tell me that pitch tracking is not properly tracking his fastball and cutter.

 

As it is, his fastball is breaking very mildly in the direction of a cutter, which is decent evidence that his averages are getting screwed up because his cutters are misclassified as 4 seamers.

Whatever the label is, it still doesn’t change the reality of the batted ball profile.

[Hallas]

8 hours ago, btdart20 said:

Whatever the label is, it still doesn’t change the reality of the batted ball profile.

You're right it doesn't, but it's still incomplete info if we don't have it broken down between the two pitches.  If both pitches are getting hammered by righties then it would drastically change the expected course of action versus if only one of the two were.

[foxfield]

This right here is excellent HO discussion.

 

[BRobinsonfan]

On 6/14/2022 at 9:39 PM, jdwilde1 said:

Problem solved. 

 

How do we get this to Bradish???  

[btdart20]

5 hours ago, Hallas said:

You're right it doesn't, but it's still incomplete info if we don't have it broken down between the two pitches.  If both pitches are getting hammered by righties then it would drastically change the expected course of action versus if only one of the two were.

Maybe.  It would have to be a distinctly different pitch coded as one type of pitch to be the case though.  I guess that's the missing piece.  Do we have evidence that he's throwing two distinctly different pitches?

Sometimes the statcast tools will record a pitch wrong.  I may be missing something, but (from my understanding) it's usually one of two reasons:  1) it profiles similar to something else (like a 2-seamer is coded as a cutter, etc.) or 2) there's some type of glitch/field of vision issue that messes with the AI that the computer can't interpret and the pitch is identified wrong.  The first scenario is the point above regarding the label of the pitch.  If it acts the same to then it's functionally the same from the batter's perspective too.  The second scenario is such a small sample size that it wouldn't move the needle on the overall statistics.

[Hallas]

5 hours ago, btdart20 said:

Maybe.  It would have to be a distinctly different pitch coded as one type of pitch to be the case though.  I guess that's the missing piece.  Do we have evidence that he's throwing two distinctly different pitches?

Sometimes the statcast tools will record a pitch wrong.  I may be missing something, but (from my understanding) it's usually one of two reasons:  1) it profiles similar to something else (like a 2-seamer is coded as a cutter, etc.) or 2) there's some type of glitch/field of vision issue that messes with the AI that the computer can't interpret and the pitch is identified wrong.  The first scenario is the point above regarding the label of the pitch.  If it acts the same to then it's functionally the same from the batter's perspective too.  The second scenario is such a small sample size that it wouldn't move the needle on the overall statistics.

His 4 seamer's average horizontal movement is very slightly glove-side.  I would consider that evidence that his pitches are being misclassified.  Its possible that his natural movement on his 4 seamer gives it a slight cut, but it seems really unlikely, and typically any glove side run would be grounds to reclassify the pitch as a cutter.  Otherwise, the main possibility here is that he is throwing both a cutter and a 4 seamer with movement in opposite directions, and the resulting average is close to 0.  At the very least I would consider this to be a good reason to go in depth as to why his average 4 seamer is behaving like a mild cutter.

Statcast doesn't think he throws a cutter at all.  So any fast pitch is getting thrown into the 4-seamer bucket.  I don't know if pitch types are a manual input on statcast's end or if they figure it out based on pitch data.  If it's the former then it looks like they need to reconfigure his pitch types, and it's really difficult to ascertain any useful information on his pitch movement until they do so.  If it's the latter then it's possible that he doesn't have much movement on either his 4 seamer or cutter, so they're getting lumped in together.  Which would mean that he still doesn't have enough movement on his pitches, but it's not as bad as statcast is showing.