The biggest changes Tigers starters have made to their arsenals this season
A look at how Reese Olson, Jack Flaherty, Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize have revamped their pitching. The Detroit Tigers are leading the major leagues in CSW%, the percentage of pitches that result in either a called strike or a whiff. The Tigers rank 16th in K/9, but strong pitching performances are key reasons for their strong performance this season. Reese Olson has been using more changeups and sinkers to right-handed hitters, a significant change. Jack Flaherty has also made significant improvements on his fastball and slider, with his slider usage increasing by nearly 7 percentage points from last season. Despite a minor change in his grip during the offseason, Flaherty is using the more often he does against left-handed batters and opponents at a 58.8 percent clip.
Pubblicato : 10 mesi fa di Cody Stavenhagen in Sports Tech
DETROIT — Modern pitching is a constant quest to find the perfect equilibrium, to stay one step ahead in baseball’s cat-and-mouse game in an age in which data rules everything.
Discovering which pitches are most effective, and how often they can be used before the returns begin to diminish, is a tricky ordeal at the heart of everything in today’s game. The Detroit Tigers, under the tutelage of coaches Chris Fetter and Robin Lund, among others, are quite good at this, one of the reasons they entered Wednesday leading the major leagues in CSW%, the percentage of pitches that result in either a called strike or a whiff.
The Tigers curiously rank lower in strikeouts per nine innings (K/9) — 16th at 8.62 — but strong pitching performances more days than not are high on the list of reasons the Tigers have been able to tread water and are on track to have their best season since 2016.
Here is a closer look at some of the most noticeable tweaks Tigers pitchers have made this season.
Reese Olson: More changeups, more sinkers to right-handed hitters
Olson’s understated success boils down to a simple fact: He has one of the most well-rounded arsenals in baseball. Before a dip in his sinker usage in his latest outing against the Boston Red Sox, Olson was one of only three MLB pitchers to use four pitches at least 20 percent of the time.
One of his biggest changes this year, though, falls in line with a simple principle: Use your best pitch as often as possible. Last season, Olson used his changeup 15.1 percent of the time. This year, the changeup usage has jumped to 23 percent, and the results have only gotten better. Opponents hit .167 with a 43 percent whiff rate against Olson’s changeup, both numbers that establish it as one of the best changes in the league. He is using the changeup more often against right- and left-handed hitters. The effects of his right-on-right changeups have been particularly lethal. He has surrendered only one hit on the pitch and is getting whiffs at a 58.8 percent clip.
The other interesting change with Olson is the emergence of his sinker. Olson attributed that pitch as one of the main reasons for his improvement over the past two seasons. He added a sinker with the intent of being able to show another shape against right-handed batters, a pitch that could allow him to attack righties inside and tunnel well with the changeup and slider. He is using the sinker 44.7 percent of the time against righties — up from 36.2 percent last year — though the results indicate it might be wise to scale back on the usage. Opponents are hitting .310 against it, with 12 singles and six doubles. At the same time, Olson’s sinker is a large reason his ground-ball rate has increased from 42.1 percent last season to a near-elite 54.8 percent this year.
Jack Flaherty: Huge improvements on the fastball and slider
Flaherty and the Tigers put in a ton of behind-the-scenes work in an attempt to rejuvenate Flaherty’s career. There were mechanical tweaks, efforts to strengthen targeted areas of Flaherty’s body and more. Now, in the numbers, the biggest reason for his success has been the resurgence of his fastball and slider. Flaherty’s fastball and slider were dominant pitches in 2019, when he finished fourth in National League Cy Young Award voting with the St. Louis Cardinals. In the years since, neither pitch has performed close to the same level — at least until now.
Flaherty does not have elite vertical ride on his fastball, but it has improved this year, with an induced vertical break of 14.4 inches compared to 12.4 last season. His lower-than-average release point also helps the pitch play well. The fastball has a whiff rate of 27.7 percent compared to 20.8 percent a year ago.
The other reason for his fastball success might be related to his slider, a weapon that is keeping hitters off-balance as much as ever. Flaherty’s slider usage is up nearly 7 percentage points from last season. He now throws it 31.2 percent of the time. Opponents hit .339 against the slider in 2023 but are hitting only .220 against it this season. Its whiff rate has skyrocketed from 26.5 percent to 41.7 percent. After a minor grip change in the offseason, he is using the pitch far more often than ever against left-handed hitters and finding the pitch plays to both sides of the plate. It’s interesting because the movement profile on Flaherty’s slider is not radically different. The pitch is being thrown only slightly harder — 84.9 mph compared to 84.2 mph last year — and as a result is a slightly tighter pitch with less vertical break, closer to the slider he threw earlier in his career. More than the movement, the command is helping Flaherty’s slider thrive. He is making fewer mistakes and consistently dotting the slider at or just below the strike zone’s bottom rail.
Flaherty exited Tuesday’s start early with back tightness, but if he remains healthy, all signs point to his resurgence continuing.
Skubal is a Cy Young Award front-runner, and he has all the makings of a power pitcher: a big frame, high velocity and nasty secondary stuff. Interesting, then, that his biggest adjustment this year (aside from upticks in velocity across the board) has been something of an old-school embrace. Skubal is throwing his sinker 21.6 percent of the time, up sharply from 12.2 percent of the time last season. He has traded in a good portion of his slider usage for the sinker, perhaps a result of the fact his slider had a minus-4 run value last year.
Skubal uses the sinker most often to get in on left-handed hitters (52.7 percent versus LHH) but is also using the sinker slightly more as a front-door offering against right-handed batters. As was the case in the past, Skubal’s sinker moves at close to, if not below, league average. But he has already achieved a plus-5 run value with the pitch, likely because left-handed batters are beating it into the ground. At 19.6 percent, the sinker against lefties has the lowest whiff rate of any of Skubal’s regular offerings, but lefty opponents have an average launch angle of minus-9 degrees and lefty batters are hitting only .214 with no slug against the pitch. He has a Location+ rating of 105 with the sinker, which is one reason he gets such good results despite the sinker’s average profile.
In his 2020 debut season, Skubal did not throw a sinker at all and profiled as an extreme fly-ball pitcher. He generated only 28.6 percent of balls on the ground. In the years since, though, Skubal has made a remarkable transformation into more of a ground-ball pitcher (45.6 percent) who can also miss bats at a near-elite rate. Add in the fact that Skubal ranks second in baseball with a 72.7 percent first-pitch strike rate and it is not hard to see why he has become close to unhittable.
Casey Mize: Searching for the right stuff
In his first season back from Tommy John surgery, Mize is still working to put it all together. His improved fastball was among the talk of spring training. He spoke of how the fastball was getting close to 18 inches of induced vertical break compared to about 15 inches in the past. He leaned on the four-seam heavily and talked of wanting to use it even more.
This season, his four-seam usage of 40.7 percent is indeed up compared to his last full MLB season in 2021, when Mize used the fastball only 29.7 percent of the time.
The fastball velocity remains up, too, averaging 95.5 mph compared to 93.4 mph in the past. But the overall results have not changed much from 2022 or 2021. His average induced vertical break has also fallen from spring and is now 15.2 inches, almost identical to where it was in 2021.
If that sounds problematic, consider the fact the four-seam is far from Mize’s biggest problem. His slider is getting hit at a .313 clip and generating only a 16.1 percent whiff rate. The graphic below shows just how little chase Mize has been able to induce on strike-to-ball sliders.
Mize’s inability to miss bats and get out of counts is the main culprit behind a strikeout rate that ranks in the league’s bottom 13th percentile.
Mize could be helped greatly if he got better results with the splitter he was hailed for out of the MLB Draft, but the splitter has been an inconsistent weapon for him. The splitter Mize is throwing this year does not have nearly the same vertical drop as it did in 2021 (33.7 inches on average now compared to 36.8 inches then), though it is averaging about an inch more horizontal movement.
The whiff rate on Mize’s splitter has improved to 31.3 percent, the best it has been in his MLB career, but opponents are hitting .250 against the pitch and Mize has a minus-1 run value with the split. Splitters are supposed to be platoon neutral, but Mize is using the splitter only 11.3 percent of the time against right-handed batters, and they are hitting .500 in the relatively small sample against the pitch.
The bottom line: He’s still searching for the right mix of stuff.