2020 Fastball Usage Decliners
The biggest trend in pitching right now is moving away from the fastball. With another 2-point drop, fastballs account for just half the pitches thrown, down from 64% back in 2002 when we started keeping the data. It slowly trickled down to 58% by 2011 and held there for five years before the current downturn that has seen at least a 1-point drop every year since 2016.
We are going to look at the pitchers with the biggest drops in usage and see what’s going on and how well it served them. Looking at 131 pitchers from 2020, just one pitcher added 10 points to his usage (Nick Margevicius 64%) while a whopping 24 shaved 10 points off from their previous season (some missed 2019 so I compared to their 2018). Six came from the Pirates (Joe Musgrove, Chad Kuhl, Derek Holland, Trevor Williams, Steven Brault, and Chris Stratton) as the departure of pitching coach Ray Searage seemed to foster a change away from heaters.