Welcome to Mixing It Up, a weekly column where I look at starting pitchers who are making noteworthy changes to their pitch mix or pitch shape/velocity. In this column, I’ll break down three to five pitchers each week who have shown a change in their profile that has me intrigued. It won’t always be a pitcher who requires an immediate add but could be somebody who has worked his way onto our fantasy baseball radars or a pitcher I think is set to begin a productive stretch. I’ll always try to make sure we have enough of a sample size to work with and I’ll be mixing in both shallow and deep league targets, so there should be a little something for everyone.
In the last few weeks we identified some positive changes in Luis Medina , Freddy Peralta , Cole Ragans , Brandon Williamson , and Chase Silseth before major breakouts so hopefully we can hit on a few more arms making intriguing changes.
With that said, let’s dig in to this week’s pitchers of note.
Lucas Giolito - Cleveland Guardians
Things have not been great for Lucas Giolito since coming to the Guardians. He’s posted a 6.88 ERA across 17 innings in three starts. A good deal of the damage against him has been the continuation of issues with the long ball. Giolito has given up six home runs in just three starts with the Guardians after giving up 10 home runs in six starts with the Angels. He’s now up to 36 home runs allowed in 30 starts this year. That’s, um, not great.
However, Giolito has also struck out 24 batters in 17 innings in Cleveland while walking just three, and his last start against Texas was one of his best of the season. In seven scoreless innings, Giolito allowed just two hits while walking one and striking out 12.
So is this the beginning of an upswing for Giolito?
Part of me thinks yes. It appears as though Cleveland has been tinkering with Giolito’s slider since he came to town. While pitching for the Angels, Giolito averaged 85.5 mph on his slider. Over the last two starts in Cleveland, his slider has averaged 83 mph. In the chart below from Brooks Baseball you can see that the vertical movement on his slider is also ticking back towards what he was doing at the beginning of the season.
Additionally, we can see that his release point is also reverting back to an older version of Giolito. Lance Brozdowski picked up on this too, mentioning on Twitter that Giolito was getting out in front of the ball more on his slider release.
All of these changes seem designed to get the right-hander back to a version of his slider that excelled in March and April. During those early months, Giolito averaged 83.3 mph with his slider with the movement profile we discussed above. The pitch posted a 2.52 dERA (Defense independent ERA) with a 12% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and just a 3.7% barrel rate. As Giolito began to throw the pitch harder and improve the SwStr% on it, the pitch also got hit harder, posting a 14.3% barrel rate in May, 8.0% rate in June, and 9.1% rate in July. Consequently, the dERA on the pitch rose each month as well.
Giolito getting back to his old slider is crucial since his four-seam is still under-performing, so he really needs to a good second pitch to pair with his change-up to help carry him through games. That lack of fastball will still lead to a bit of inconsistency, but I think we should see a good version of the right-hander to finish the year.
Gavin Stone - Los Angeles Dodgers
One look at Gavin Stone’s game-by-game pitch mix chart and you can clearly see that the rookie is continuously tinkering with his arsenal to try to find what works best at the MLB level. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
Many of those changes have centered around what version of a fastball he should use to complement his plus change-up. Early on, Stone was heavily using a four-seam. Then he tried to introduce a cutter, which looks like it was a modified version of his earlier slider. Yet, in August, Stone introduced a sinker that he has been using the most in his last three starts. That could be the pitch that works best for him.
In August, the sinker has registered a -2.74 dERA. It only has a 6.3% SwStr%, but has a -7.7 degree launch angle allowed and hasn’t given up a barrel as hitters seem to pound it into the dirt. The fact that it has a low swinging strike rate also isn’t a concern since Stone consistently misses bats with his change-up, posting a 19.7% SwStr% on the season.
The inclusion of the sinker should help him against right-handed hitters, who were absolutely crushing his four-seam fastball. However, the issue remains that Stone lacks a true swing-and-miss pitch against right-handed hitters. His change-up has a 24% SwStr% against lefties, and he throws is 56% of the time in two-strike counts, but the pitch has just an 11.9% SwStr% against righties, so Stone uses the four-seam 40% of the time in two-strike counts there. His best swing-and-miss pitch against right-handed hitters this season has been a slider that he continues to tinker with and doesn’t appear to have confidence in.
The move to a sinker is good for Stone, and it gives him two solid pitches in his arsenal , but until he can find that out pitch against right-handed hitters, it’s best to stay away for fantasy.
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Bailey Falter - Pittsburgh Pirates
September is always a fun month because players you never think about start to get opportunities and emerge on the fantasy radar. That’s especially true with teams like the Pirates, who have nothing to play for and try to see if they can unearth talent for future seasons. It appears they may be onto something with Falter.
The Pirates snagged Falter from the Phillies at the trade deadline for Rodolfo Castro and immediately started to stretch him back out to fill a starter’s role. Since coming to Pittsburgh, Falter has posted a 3.62 ERA and 1.15 WHIP across 37.1 innings with 30 strikeouts and just nine walks. A big part of that has been both an increase reliance on the slider and an alteration in the slider’s movement profile.
As you can see above, Falter has drastically reduced the usage of his four-seam since coming to Pittsburgh, throwing it 39% of the time in August and just 26% of the time in September. Consequently, his slider usage has gone up from 20% in July to 26% in August and 32% in September.
Additionally, the Pirates have changed the movement profile in Falter’s slider. His velocity on the pitch is up to 84.7 mph in September, after being 83.7 mph in March/April, but he is also throwing the pitch with less horizontal movement. In the chart below from Brooks Baseball, you can see that the horizontal movement reduces since a negative mark means glove-side movement for a left-handed pitcher. The higher the negative number, the more glove side movement the pitch gets.
Yet, according to Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard, the slider has actually performed worse in Pittsburgh with a 7.39 dERA and 10.7% SwStr% in the second half of the season, compared to a 4.22 dERA and 14.3% SwStr% in the first half of the season. It turns out, what might be fueling Falter’s success in Pittsburgh is that they’ve made similar changes to his curveball, which you can see the in the chart above, and have also increased arm-side movement on his four-seam fastball.
As a result, Falter’s curve is excelling in September with a 17.6% SwStr% and -4.77 dERA, and the four-seam is also having it’s best month with a -4.36 dERA and a 13% SwStr%. The four-seam success could also be related to using it less, which allows the pitch to play up when hitters are expecting off-speed. The harder, tighter slider may also create more deception with Falter’s four-seam.
All-in-all, this is a better version of Falter. If the tighter movement on the slider isn’t the only reason that the four-seam is better, then it would be great to see Falter move closer to the older version of the slider, which could give him even more upside. But as it is, Falter is in the middle of his best month with his highest SwStr% of the season and deserves to be on your streaming radar.
Sawyer Gipson-Long - Detroit Tigers
Last week I decided to cover Connor Phillips after just one big league start, so I decided to keep that going and discuss the trendy Sawyer Gipson-Long , who has crushed his two MLB starts to the tune of three runs on six hits in 10 innings with 16 strikeouts to one walk.
His last start was particularly impressive, allowing just one run in five innings to the Angels while striking out 11 and walking three. As you can see from the image below, he also sported a ridiculous 59% whiff rate and 45% CSW.
So even though this level of dominance is not sustainable, what can we expect from Gipson-Long going forward?
The slider has always been Gipson-Long’s best pitch, and it has shown that at the MLB level. It has good depth against righties, but he can also back foot it against lefties, so he has no issue using it against hitters of both handedness. The same goes for his change-up, which has good late dive and is a plus pitch. The issue for Gipson-Long has always been finding a solid fastball since he doesn’t throw overly hard.
On this great podcast with the Tigers Minor League Report, Gipson-Long talks about learning a cutter and sinker this year to try and give different looks. He mentions using the cutter to help against lefties, but also says that the sinker helped offset how his four-seam played because the four-seam has enough carry to play up in the zone if he has the sinker diving down and in. As a result, that sinker is not only working on its own, but is allowing his four-seam to be a usable major league pitch even without elite velocity.
Considering the potential of both his slider and change, Gipson-Long really just needs to fastballs to do enough to allow him to set up those off-speed or keep hitters from sitting on them. It appears the addition of the sinker this year may have been the key to help him do that, and I am in on the young right-hander to close the year with the clear caveat that he’s not going to maintain this level of swing-and-miss dominance.
