Spring is here! It\u2019s been fun to watch live baseball again. In this piece, we\u2019ll rip through some names that have stood out. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m also excited to get you my 1-30 system pitching development ranks next week (~ Wednesday). It\u2019s heavily based on a survey I sent to 50+ MLB coaches\/executives. Stay tuned!<\/p>\n
There are several instances this spring where I\u2019ve seen data that doesn\u2019t line up with my gut. The four-seam shapes of Bubba Chandler and Mitch Keller looked awful in their first starts and then fine in their second starts. Richard Fitts had a bunch more movement on his four-seamer and sweeper on Feb 25. Rays prospect Ty Johnson was throwing a four-seamer with 3\u201d more vertical break than last year, without a change in release or spin. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m not an expert with stuff models or adjusting for environment, but I\u2019d guess wind is playing a big factor in some of these games (and maybe just bad data). Baseball analyst Vivienne Pelletier mentioned that crosswinds can affect<\/a> a pitch by up to 4\u201d. When there aren\u2019t second and third decks for seating at a stadium, the wind fingerprint changes. And all these spring parks are considerably different than MLB parks in structure. Noted baseball thrower Robert Stock also found that air density affects<\/a> on Stuff+. <\/p>\n In short, if I see a large jump in movement without a change in slot, release, or spin, I\u2019m assuming nothing has changed with the pitcher. Just assume they look like their 2025 regular-season shapes until 2026 data in MLB parks proves us wrong. <\/p>\n Feb 23: 2 IP, H, 2 BB, 2 KFeb 28: 3 IP, H, BB, 4 K<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with one of the worst pitchers in baseball last season. I expect the Nationals to considerably cut their four-seam and sinker usage. As a team, they threw 55% fastball last season (combined 4S and SK). That was the most in MLB. So far in spring, they\u2019ve thrown just 41.7% fastballs, second lowest behind the Marlins. There will be clearer examples of Nationals pitchers successfully cutting usage when we get regular-season data, but Irvin intrigues me because his projections are so bad (~5.00 ERA in ~20 starts). <\/p>\n Irvin has thrown just 40% four-seam and sinker in spring after throwing 54% last season. Against lefties, his curveball has led his mix with 30% usage, while his cutter has followed at 25%. Against righties, he\u2019s tripled his short slider usage to 23% from the 2025 regular season. The idea here is to cut back four-seam usage, a pitch that allowed a 16% barrel rate to righties and 12% to lefties. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spring is here! It\u2019s been fun to watch live baseball again. In this piece, we\u2019ll rip through some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":501354,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-501353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=501353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/501353\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501354"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=501353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=501353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=501353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}