Sarris expecting improvement from Bradish and GRod

[Sports Guy]

https://theathletic.com/4510375/2023/05/12/sarris-four-underrated-starting-pitchers/?source=user_shared_article

He identified 4 starters he thinks are going to get better…2 of them are Os.

 

Grayson Rodriguez, Baltimore

After elite Stuff+ numbers in the minor leagues, and even in his debut, Rodriguez is settling in with league-average Stuff+. Strange, and it gets stranger if you look under the hood, as he has a really good four-seam (104 Stuff+, average is 99), a good slider (102 Stuff+, below average against sliders but still fine), a plus curve (116 Stuff+, 27th-best among starters), and an average change (97 Stuff+) that has allowed a .214 batting average and .300 slugging so far … it’s a really good arsenal still!

Strangely, after all that preamble, this possibly below-average cutter (77 Stuff+) is the pitch he’s now starting to throw more often.

 

He is throwing it inside to lefties, but also to this spot against righties. And it’s not doing well! Either way! .500 slugging from lefties, .636 slugging from righties, and the Stuff+ model doesn’t like it.

Why is he doing this? It’s super strange because he’s not doing for a swinging-strike weapon against lefties, as his change functions well against them. Perhaps he started doing it because his fastball (.421 slugging) and curve (.500 slugging) haven’t been performing well against lefties, but he definitely shouldn’t be doing it against righties, where most of his weapons are doing just fine.

The hope with Rodriguez is that he starts to use the cutter less against righties, and finds a ‘just enough’ usage for the cutter against lefties to keep them from diving out on his changeup. The overall Stuff is still there, and even the strikeouts minus walks (18.2 percent) and other ERA estimators agree that he should be doing better than this.

Edited May 13, 2023 by Sports Guy

[Sports Guy]

Kyle Bradish, Baltimore

Here’s a bet where the standard peripherals don’t think you should buy. Bradish has a below-average strikeout minus walk rate (9.7%), and the ERA estimators fall in line with a high-fours, low-fives number that wouldn’t be very useful to anyone but the Orioles, and even only in a back-end sort of way for them. But Stuff+ tells the same story that made him a sleeper going into the year, which is that he has an elite slider (fifth-best among starters) and curve (10th-best among starters) and below-average fastballs (82 Stuff+ on the four-seam, 91 on the sinker) — he’s trying to figure out how to make this mix work.
 

And it looks like he may be circling around the same answer that set him up for success late last year: throw the slider over and over again and sneak the cheese by when the opportunity arises. Look at how last year and this year both started similarly with the pitch mix at least.
 

 

The good news is that he seems to be coming to the realization faster this year, really ramping up the slider usage in the last two starts, which has provided him with nine strikeouts in 9.2 innings. Of course, he’s also had an ERA over five in those two starts, but it’s early going still. Last year, after he really pushed that slider usage in July, he had a 3.26 ERA the rest of the way, and that upside may still be in Bradish as he returns to the slider-heavy ways. He still needs to figure out where the ride has gone on his four-seamer (labeled cutter here), but hopefully he can get behind this pitch and make it a useful pitch again in the future.

Not many projection systems or peripherals like Bradish, so it’s a really low-cost play.

[Gurgi]

Both of these pitchers have shown enough to make me imagine they both could have great seasons.  I think both could be number 2 pitchers.  Perhaps in a year or so have a season or two of number 1 level pitching.  

Bradish really does tease us with some games where he looks great.  

[Frobby]

Hey @Sports Guy, do me a favor.  Next time you do a long cut and paste, before you hit “reply,” choose “send as plain text” rather than “keep original formatting.”   My old eyes aren’t good enough to read what you copied.  

[OriolesMagic83]

Looks like Gray Rod has to de emphasize the fastball to be successful.  Reminds me of Johan Santana in that his change up was his out pitch. 

[Just Regular]

Encouraging reports.     The body of work this year with more breakouts up and down the Org gives more confidence Bradish will be good.     

He is one of the original Plant your Flag guys for this regime as the main piece obtained with a valuable trade piece Duquette left behind.      

[Sports Guy]

4 hours ago, Frobby said:

Hey @Sports Guy, do me a favor.  Next time you do a long cut and paste, before you hit “reply,” choose “send as plain text” rather than “keep original formatting.”   My old eyes aren’t good enough to read what you copied.  

Beggars can’t be choosers.  

 

PS…have no idea what you are talking about.  Lol

[AnythingO's]

PS…have no idea what you are talking about.  Lol

 

The text comes in as black on black background. The only way to see it is to highlight it by dragging your cursor over it so it changes to white text on blue highlights.

[Jammer7]

I cannot read this on my phone, but isn’t Sarris the “Stuff+” guy? I’m not sure I put much stock into his evaluations.

[Sports Guy]

9 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

I cannot read this on my phone, but isn’t Sarris the “Stuff+” guy? I’m not sure I put much stock into his evaluations.

He knows a lot about pitching and mechanics. Not sure why people want to dismiss him. He has a good reputation in the industry.

[Just Regular]

4 minutes ago, Jammer7 said:

I cannot read this on my phone, but isn’t Sarris the “Stuff+” guy? I’m not sure I put much stock into his evaluations.

He is, though I believe he is somewhat of a spokesperson for its developers.    I believe he also was in the collaboration what pitch attributes it factors into the output.

I like Eno Sarris as a chronicler - he's basically a roto guy turned journalist, and one thing I like about roto guys is they don't care for your Club's narrative that every player is great.

[Frobby]

6 hours ago, OriolesMagic83 said:

Looks like Gray Rod has to de emphasize the fastball to be successful.  Reminds me of Johan Santana in that his change up was his out pitch. 

I think what these numbers can’t capture is that the fastball sets up everything else.  In other words, the batter has to be geared up for a 97-99 mph fastball, and that makes it hard to react to a different pitch.  If you don’t throw the fastball enough, you lose that effect.  So you to throw it often enough that the batters are looking for it.

[Jammer7]

1 hour ago, Sports Guy said:

He knows a lot about pitching and mechanics. Not sure why people want to dismiss him. He has a good reputation in the industry.

He tells part of the story, I do not mean to outright dismiss him. Some of the conclusions he has come to in the past were a bit of a leap for me. I’ll read it later.

[Sports Guy]

 

[Jim'sKid26]

On 5/13/2023 at 2:51 PM, Jammer7 said:

He tells part of the story, I do not mean to outright dismiss him. Some of the conclusions he has come to in the past were a bit of a leap for me. I’ll read it later.

While Sarris might be well known his thoughts on pitching and especially the Stuff+ stuff are controversial. I believe there is still a lot of noise in that signal. Much of what he writes is clickbait, IMHO.  Perhaps I am a bit bias on the stuff+ narrative but it just doesn't hold water for me. I'm just not sure it adds much to what we already have on pitching analysis.