Spring Training is underway, and we’re already inundated with stories about pitchers who have come to camp with new pitches, which means it’s time to kick off another season of the FSWA-award-winning series Pitchers with New Pitches (and Should We Care). In this series, I take the simple premise that not every new pitch should be greeted with praise. A new pitch, like a shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to be a complement to what a pitcher already has and fill a meaningful void in his current pitch mix.
Instead of just celebrating that some pitchers are throwing new pitches, we want to look at what the pitcher already does well and what his pitch mix is missing. We want to check and see if he has any splits issues. We want to see what his best pitch(es) is and see if this new pitch would complement that. Then we want to see what this new pitch type is generally used for (control, called strikes, etc.) and see if that is something this pitcher needs help with. When we can also see the pitch in action, then we want to look at the shape and command and see if it’s actually any good. Once we’ve done all that, we can actually decide if the pitch is a good addition or not.
Luckily for you, I’ve done all that work already. After some brief analysis about the pitcher and what role this new pitch might play, I’ll give you a simple verdict as to whether or not we should care about this new toy or not.
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This is my fourth season doing this series, and it’s one of my favorite things to write. I hope that you enjoy it. It’s also important to note that this is the first time many of these pitchers have thrown these new pitches in a meaningful game, so the overall quality and consistency may get better over time. I’ve tried to take that into account in my analysis. We should also note (for the purposes of this article) that I will be including pitchers that have reworked or revamped a pitch to make it “new” even if it was technically a pitch they already threw.
Just a special shoutout here to Alex Tran, who has been putting together a list of pitch mix changes that he shared in the Pitcher List discord channel. Having one document with all the projected changes is just a massive help.
Hunter Greene (Reds) - Splitter and Curveball
One of the biggest stories early in spring training was the report that Hunter Greene was trying to add two new pitches to his arsenal.
Derek Johnson said Hunter Greene is working on a curveball and a splitter as a way to change speeds and slow hitters down.
— Charlie Goldsmith (@CharlieG__) February 18, 2024
Johnson on Montas: His leadership and consistency is standing out. And “he’s cutting it up pretty good” on the mound.
Now, considering Greene is essentially a two-pitch pitcher with his four-seam and slider making up 94% of his pitches, adding new pitches to the mix is certainly a good thing. But are these the right pitches?
Let’s start with a few things we know about Hunter Greene. He misses bats at a pretty good clip with a 15.1% swinging strike rate (if you include foul tips, which Nick Pollack has won me over and convinced me that we should). He four-seam has a 13.2% swinging strike rate (SwStr), while his slider has a 18.6% mark. He has a 14.5% SwStr% to righties and a 15.6% swinging strike rate to lefties, so Greene certainly does not need more swing-and-miss to his game.
What does he need?
Well, he gives up a boatload of hard contact with a 40% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) and a 9% barrel rate allowed. He also struggles to command his pitches in the zone, with a 44th-percentile zone rate and a 41st-percentile strike rate. His called strike rate is well below the MLB average, so he basically only gets swings and misses or gets hit hard. He also has some reverse splits, with a .264/.332/.492 career slash line allowed to righties and a .210/.309/.402 slash allowed to lefties.
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So what Greene seems to need is a pitch he can command for strikes that will both steal some called strikes and perhaps keep hitters off of his four-seam, which allows far more hard contact than the slider.
I can tell you right off the bat, the splitter is not that pitch. The splitter is a swing-and-miss pitch that is often used in lieu of a change-up to attack opposite handed hitters. Greene doesn’t need to do either of those. For example, let’s look at two pitchers with elite splitters: Kevin Gausman and Kodai Senga. Gausman’s splitter has a 22.1% SwStr% but just a 12th-percentile zone rate and a 52nd-percentile strike rate. It gets 6.3% called strikes. Senga’s splitter has a 27.3% SwStr% with just a sixth-percentile zone rate and a 33rd-percentile strike rate. It gets 5.9% called strikes.
Adding a pitch like that, which gets swings and misses but is designed to not be thrown in the zone, is not adding much to Greene’s pitch mix. Yes, it might create more deception with the four-seam and help the four-seam allow less hard contact, but the reason the four-seam allows hard contact is because hitters sit on it and expect that Greene won’t throw other pitches in the zone with consistency. The pitch may run up into the triple-digits, but it has below average extension and induced vertical break (iVB) so it will continue to get hit hard against MLB hitters if they can look for it.
As a result, I’m far more interested in Greene being able to throw a curve. A successful curveball is one that can be located for called strikes. Charlie Morton has an 18.2% called strike rate on his and a 74th-percentile strike rate. The velocity gap in a good curveball to Greene’s slider and four-seam would also add more diversification to Greene’s arsenal and allow him to toy with a hitter’s timing, which is everything for a successful hitter. Additionally, depending on the shape of the curveball, it can be used on both sides of the plate, which means it can be a weapon against righties as well as lefties, which is what Greene needs.
VERDICT: SOMEWHAT IMPACTFUL. While the addition of the splitter does nothing for me, I’d love to see Greene with a curveball he can command for strikes, and think that could be a true difference-maker for him. In spring I’ll be looking to see him command the pitch more than anything. I don’t care if it’s “nasty” or if he makes hitters look stupid with it. He has enough of that in his game. I care that he can throw it for a strike when he wants to and that it’s good enough to not get pummeled, so that it can set up the four-seam and slider to miss bats.
Erick Fedde (White Sox) - Splitter/ Sweeper
New White Sox starter Erick Fedde is another pitcher that added two pitches; however, unlike Greene, Fedde has thrown both of these pitches for a full season. It was just while he was playing in Korea, so we have limited data on the pitches. The last time we saw Fedde in MLB action, he was pitching for the Nationals and featured a three-pitch mix that was a sinker, curveball, and cutter. None of those pitches really missed bats, but his curveball was the only one that really gave up lots of hard contact. He also paired poor swing-and-miss with below average zone rates and strike rates, which means he didn’t miss many bats and also didn’t have great command of his arsenal Not exactly a great combination.
So, without seeing it much in action, would this new pitch mix improve Fedde? The quick answer is: yes. Well, also no. Maybe.
We’ve already covered that the splitter is a plus swing-and-miss pitch, as is the sweeper, so the addition of both could make him more dynamic when it comes to strikeouts. He did strike out 209 hitters in 180 innings in Korea, and I know the KBO isn’t MLB-quality, but it’s worth noting at least. In fact, Eric Longenhagen wrote on FanGraphs that Fedde’s “newly reshaped slider was easily his most dominant pitch in 2023; it generated 41% of Fedde’s swings and misses.” That’s nice to see. Longenhagen also noted that “the chase rate on both his changeup and slider was up around 40%.”
Wait, change-up? I thought he threw a curve and a cutter. Ah, yes, here is where this gets interesting.
1. Fedde works out at the same facility as Logan Webb in the offseason.
— Brian Bannister (@RealBanny) December 6, 2023
2. He added the same sweeper + split- change to his arsenal as Webb. He did not use these pitches in Washington.
3. Ethan Katz & I were both with Webb when these adjustments were made. https://t.co/DuotEp9zkn
So Fedde’s splitter is actually more of a split-change, modeled after Logan Webb’s. Well, that pitch has an 83rd-percentile zone rate and a 73% strike rate for Webb, while boasting just a 40th-percentile whiff rate. All of which is to say, it’s not really what we expect from the more traditional splitter we’ve been discussing above. In fact, according to Longenhagen, “Perhaps the biggest leap in Fedde’s skill set is evident in his command...His changeup command, especially, has become much more consistent and precise.”
Considering command was one of the issues we talked about with Fedde above, this new split-change appears to be a huge boost in that area. When you add to that the fact that his primary fastball has allegedly become his two-seamer, those two pitches should work well off of one another, which creates more deception for his pitch mix. We also have some video evidence that Fedde will throw the split-change to right-handed hitters as well, so it can be a key pitch for him. When you pair that with a sweeper that has now given him a true swing-and-miss pitch, it seems like Fedde has ticked a lot of the boxes we’re looking for in potential changes for the veteran.
VERDICT: IMMENSELY IMPACTFUL. Fedde was already pretty good at preventing hard contact and now he’s stopped throwing the pitch that gave up the most hard contact (the curve). He’s added a swing-and-miss pitch that he can also throw for strikes, and he’s added a plus command pitch. He’s also now using the cutter to jam lefties inside since he has the sinker for righties. All of this is music to my ears, and it wouldn’t surprise if me Fedde takes the Merrill Kelly path of coming back from the KBO to be a meaningful contributor in fantasy baseball.
Bryce Miller (Mariners) - Splitter
Bryce Miller adding another pitch is something that I’ve talked about all offseason, so, on one hand, I’m extremely “here for this.” Last year, Miller lived and died with his four-seamer as a rookie. While the pitch has the makings of a plus offering in part because it gets tremendous iVB, he also only throws it up in the zone 54% of the time, so it actually gave up an 11.6% barrel rate last year, which is not ideal for a pitch he throws almost 60% of the time.
So, just like we’ve been doing for all the pitchers in this article, we need to ask: what weakness does Miller need to correct for?
Two answers come to mind and the first one, which stems off the four-seam fastball discussion, is that Miller lacks a consistent second pitch. He has essentially two sliders, with a harder-gyro slider and a sweeper that ended the season with about 6 mph difference in addition to the massive gap in horizontal movement. However, neither pitch really missed bats. The sweeper had a 6.7% SwStr% while the gyro slider had a 12.1% SwStr%. Despite having far more horizontal movement, the sweeper is actually the pitch Miller seems able to command more, and it grades out as the better pitch, but also allowed 21st-percentile ICR, which means it got hit exceptionally hard.
Miller also added a sinker as the year went on to keep right-handed hitters off of his four-seam, which was good because that allowed the four-seam to play up more as a putaway pitch. He also started to mix in a change-up a bit more, but used the pitch just 6% of the time all year.
By now, you should be seeing the second issue as well. In addition to Miller not having a true second pitch, he also doesn’t really have an arsenal that works well against lefties. That’s why he had such pronounced splits in his debut season (image courtesy of FanGraphs).
When I wrote about Miller for my Top 100 Starting Pitchers article I said, “There is a path forward for Miller, but it does involve a few changes and perhaps a new pitch for lefties, like a cutter?” It seems like he’s opted for a splitter instead, which can work against lefties but, as we’ve pointed out a few times, is not really a pitch that’s easily thrown for a strike, so it means lefties could still be able to sit on Miller’s four-seam if all he has to offer them aside from that are a slider and splitter that don’t often find the zone.
Now, Chris Clegg shared a tweet that Miller’s splitter has some pretty insane data from the offseason. It’s certainly good that the pitch has the shape to be an elite pitch. That could help him with some mild swing-and-miss issues against lefties, but I’m still not sure it’s the thing that makes me fully buy in on Miller. I still need to see a second pitch that he can command for a strike. That could turn out to be the sweeper, but sweepers are not good against lefties, so we’re right back to the same issue that Miller may not have enough pitches he can throw for strikes against lefties that can prevent him from running high splits.
Lance Brozdowski posted a video on YouTube suggesting that Miller is also trying to turn his sweeper into more of a slurve, modeled on a right-handed version of Cole Ragans. Making that sweeper more of a curve could help it be more useful to opposite handed hitters since sweepers are a pitch that tends to perform poorly when thrown to opposite hand hitters. However, Cole Ragans is also trying to tinker with his curve because he doesn’t really like it, so it should give us a bit of pause that Miller is trying to emulate the pitch. Until we see it in action and see how he utilizes it, we have no idea of it’ll really be a pitch that can have success against lefties as, again, that was his primary weakness in 2023 that we should want him to fix for.
VERDICT: MARGINALLY MEANINGFUL. We certainly don’t want to ignore Miller adding a potential plus swing-and-miss pitch, but the splitter really doesn’t address either of the two main issues that Miller had heading into the offseason. Additionally, even Miller himself said he would slowly incorporate the new pitch as the year goes on, so how often will he even use the splitter early in the season? If he mixes it in at about the same rate as his change-up than how different a pitcher will he really be in 2024? I love that he’s tinkering, but I might be more excited if I heard he was turning his gyro slider into more of a cutter. The biggest news for Miller may be that he’s trying to adjust the release point on his pitches so he doesn’t tip them based on changing release points. At the end of the day, this is a young pitcher working hard to get better, which we love, but I’m not 100% sold on these specific changes right now.
Tylor Megill (Mets) - Splitter
We already mentioned Kodai Senga’s splitter above, so we should probably talk about the fact that Senga allegedly taught the pitch to Tylor Megill. According to the Mets, Megill learned the pitch last year but didn’t really throw it and went into this offseason focused on refining the pitch, which he calls “The American Spork.” The data the Mets received on the pitch over the offseason suggests that it could be an elite pitch. Megill allegedly throws it a little bit harder than Senga and with perhaps a touch less movement, but the team seems excited. Should fantasy managers be excited as well?
Well, as we’ve done with every pitcher above, let’s see what Megill seems to need.
Last season, Megill saw a huge dip in his strikeout rate, which fell down to 18.5%, while his SwStr% was at 10.5%. Those were both career-worsts for him. Megill also allowed a ton of hard contact, with a 41.3% ICR and got basically no chases out of the zone, with just a 25.1% O-Swing. He also, weirdly, had a below average strike rate and didn’t get many called strikes in addition to not getting swinging strikes. For his career, he has also had pronounced splits, allowing a .297/.368/.505 career slash line to lefties.
So while there is certainly a lot that Megill needs, a swing-and-miss pitch is absolutely up there. In particular, he needs a swing-and-miss pitch to righties, since his slider has a tighter movement profile and has posted much higher SwStr% rates against lefties. In this respect, the splitter would be a good pitch for him and could give him a true plus out pitch which he so desperately needs. Additionally, given the movement profile on his slider, which is not too dissimilar from a cutter, it’s not far-fetched to assume that he could start pounding the zone with the slider more often as a strike pitch if he knows he has the splitter to get swings and misses. That could solve two problems for him since, as we’ve covered above, the introduction of the splitter will certainly not help his ability to get called strikes or throw pitches in the zone more often.
Megill’s four-seam is also a below-average pitch. He gets good extension on it, but he has poor vertical movement, so it doesn’t miss bats and also gives up 32nd-percentile ICR. If Megill is throwing a harder version of a splitter then it could tunnel better with his four-seam than the loopier Ghost Fork that Senga throws. That could allow the four-seam to play up a bit more if he keeps the splitter low and four-seam up.
VERDICT: POTENTIALLY MEANINGFULLY. Admittedly, the bar is low here. By most metrics, Megill has one above-average pitch in his slider, so adding a second above average pitch would automatically be a good thing. However, adding a swing-and-miss pitch would certainly be tremendous for his fantasy value, and given all the question marks in the Mets’ rotation, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see a more dynamic version of Megill crack the rotation.