Jose Berrios Is Bucking the Wildness Trend

Strikeouts are up again this season, but there’s another trend affecting pitchers that has received less attention. As we approach the six-week mark of the 2018 campaign, pitchers are notably wilder than they have been in a long time.

For each season between 2011 and 2016, the average Zone% for the major leagues hovered between 44.2 and 44,8 percent. Last season, pitchers were less wild than they had been since 2010, locating in the strike zone at a 45.0 percent rate. So far this year, pitchers are wanting to have much less to do with the strike zone, as their collective Zone% has dropped to 43.4 percent.

Subpar control is not an early-season thing. Last March and April, pitchers combined for a 44.8 percent Zone% and in the previous March/April, pitchers were practically trolling hitters into swinging, posting a 47.3 percent Zone%. Another thing that mark from 2016 shows is that there is still plenty of time for Zone% to regress to its norm this season.

The pitchers who are exhibiting unusually strong control are still worth noting, though. as some could continue to be among the best control pitchers for the remainder of this season. There are currently 14 qualified starters who have been throwing at least 47 percent of their pitches in the strike zone. Three of them — Gerrit Cole, Justin Verlander and Charlie Morton — are Astros. Cole, who spent 2017 with the Pirates, and Verlander, who spent the vast majority of last season as a Tiger, are two of only eight pitchers who threw at least 100 innings last year and have increased their Zone% by at least two percent. There seems to be something organizational going on here.

Several others, namely James Paxton, Luis Severino, Nick Pivetta, Jakob Junis, Bartolo Colon, Max Scherzer and Daniel Mengden, were bona fide control artists last year as well. So was Miles Mikolas in his most recent major league season of 2014. Neither Brandon McCarthy nor Homer Bailey had great control in 2017, but both were superb control pitchers earlier in their careers.

That leaves one non-Astro among the top 14 in Zone% who is going against the grain of increasing wildness but without a prior history of being a control pitcher. That pitcher is Jose Berrios. It’s not easy to assess whether pitching with greater control has been a good development for the 23-year-old, because he’s had an uneven season so far. His first start of 2018 was shutout against the Orioles, and two of his next three starts were scoreless, dominant affairs. Then in each of his last three turns in the Twins’ rotation, Berrios has allowed at least four runs.

Being a control pitcher isn’t good in and of itself. Scherzer, Verlander and Cole make it work by avoiding contact at a high rate when pitching in the zone. Jake Arrieta, who is tied for 15th in Zone%, has been doing a superb job of freezing batters in the zone, posting a 58.6 percent Z-Swing%. Pitch-to-contact types, like McCarthy, Bailey and Junis, appear to be locating in the zone too frequently. (Yes, Junis has a 3.18 ERA, but because of his favorable LOB% and BABIP, I’m more inclined to buy into his 4.30 xFIP.) Tanner Roark and Kyle Gibson have had similar issues with allowing contact on pitches in the strike zone, but unlike McCarthy et. al., they do a much greater proportion of their work outside the zone, and they have benefited from that approach.

Berrios has leaned more towards being like McCarthy (91.2 percent Z-Contact% in 2018) than like Scherzer (71.4 percent), allowing contact on pitches in the strike zone at a rate between 86 and 87 percent in each of his three seasons. Since allowing contact in the zone is clearly Berrios’ propensity, it wouldn’t seem to be in his interests to increase his Zone%. His walk rate has improved, shrinking from last season’s 7.8 percent to 4.9 percent, but he is at risk of allowing more high-quality contact.

There are further warning signs in Berrios’ recent downturn that suggest he may not be the “good” kind of control pitcher. We can give him a mulligan for the first of his three bad starts, as it came against a potent Yankees lineup, and his control was not at its best (41.9 percent Zone%). His two most recent starts are far more concerning, as the Reds and White Sox swung at his pitches in the zone at a combined 80.0 percent rate. If avoiding contact in the zone is not your strong suit, a swing-averse approach like Arrieta’s can be effective, but Berrios has moved even further away that model in his last two starts.

Any pitcher can have bad back-to-back starts, so I am not ready to sound the alarm bells on Berrios’ season. However, because he already profiles as someone who is prone to allowing contact on pitches in the strike zone, the increase in swing rate on those very pitches is a trend to be watched closely. Berrios’ next scheduled start is this Thursday against the Angels in Anaheim. They’re a tough matchup, but they rank just 22nd in Z-Swing%, so they will provide a good test of whether Berrios’ pitches are just too tempting to lay off of.

Going back to last season, Berrios has been good at inducing chases and soft flyball contact. There’s a lot to like about him if he reverts to a less extreme swing rate on the pitches that are best for hitters to hit.