Know Your Averages 2024, Sinker Edition

When you have a pitch that can be thrown in the zone, induce weak contact, and get called strikes, you throw it and you throw it often. However, last season (2023) the sinker’s usage hit its lowest point within the Statcast era among starting pitchers, down to 13.9%. A slight resurgence this season has brought its usage up to 15.0%. Compared to a 22.8% usage in 2015, the start of the statcast era, the sinker no longer sits at the popular kid’s lunch table.

However, if we change the split to view the sinkers utilization by relievers, we see the resurgence started earlier and with a little more gusto:

Relievers have been doing crazy things with their sinkers when you look at the data. The obvious ones like throwing it faster with more movement are apparent, but throwing it in unusual locations seems to be a thing. While all those small changes are occurring, we can still rely on what is happening on average to help us make quick comparisons. For example, a swinging strike rate of 10% on a four-seam fastball is average. A 10% swinging strike rate on a sinker is really good. This post serves to help navigate benchmark statistics on the sinker.

Four-seamers | Sinkers | Cutters

My process relies on Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard which utilizes Statcast data that you can also find at Baseball Savant and our (New!) Pitch Type Splits on player pages. Here is a quick look at how the sinker stacks up against four-seamers and cutters in several measurements:

Let’s look at the pitchers below, at, and above average with their sinkers in each measurement. A lot of what follows in the “Questions or comments?” section is less analysis and more points for further research or discussion. Sinkers are weird.

NOTE: The chart and table above do not include a minimum pitch qualifier. The players in the analysis below will fall under a 40-pitch minimum qualifier with some arbitrary author finagling.

—Zone%—

• Kevin Gausman – 34.9%
• Ben Lively 라이블리 – 56.3%
• Bryan Woo – 70.0%

Questions or comments?: Bryan Woo is part of a Seattle Mariners starting rotation that leads the league in overall Zone%. It’s clear the team either has a philosophy or each of their pitchers has their style that places the ball in the zone for the hitter to prove what they’re made of. Gausman only throws his sinker 5.6% of the time and mostly uses it to jam right-handed batters. Of the three fastballs listed above, notice how the sinker has the highest zone rate overall given its common usage in attempting to induce a groundball.

—Swing%—

• Alex Cobb – 31.0%
• Matt Waldron – 45.7%
• Casey Mize – 61.2%

Questions or comments?: I initially thought hitters were spitting on Cobb’s sinker because he was holding onto some of that old Giants philosophy of throwing it at the very bottom of the zone. Further investigation shows he’s only thrown 71 sinkers in his small season sample, but many have been right there for the taking:

While hitters say “Nah…” to Cobb they say “Heeyeaaw!” to Mize:

So why guys swing at Mize but won’t move the knob on Cobb? Well isolate Alex Chamberlain’s Pitcher Leaderboard to the two pitcher’s sinkers and click the “SPECS” tab (and buy that man a coffee for crying out loud!) and you’ll see two fairly different pitches. Furthermore, the scouting report tells hitters that Cobbs sinker gets hit for a .283 average, whereas Mize’s sinker gets hit for a .309 average. Still, both pitchers are throwing their sinkers up in the zone this much? Sinkers are weird.

—SwStr%—

• Jake Woodford – 0.9%
• George Kirby – 6.0%
• Aroldis Chapman – 17.8%

Questions or comments?: What does it mean to have only a 1% swinging strike rate on a pitch? It means it’s either a ball, a called strike, or put in play. Woodford gets three percent more called strikes than the average, but everything else is going out to the defense or beyond so it’s success depends on the contact that it induces. His 2024 sinker has a BABIP of .389 so something may need to change in Woodford’s repertoire. Chapman on the other hand, has a sinker from hell with a Stuff+ grade of 235! His BABIP on the pitch? .259.

—CallStr%—

• Corbin Burnes – 6.5%
• Ben Lively – 21.3%
• Jesse Chavez – 35.7%

Questions or comments?: Let’s look at each of these pitchers’ Statcast (sourced from BaseballSavant) sinker locations for 2024, side-by-side:

Burnes saves it for special occasions and usually attempts to nibble at the zone while Lively pumps it in the zone and Chavez nibbles with more success.

—CSW%—

• Corbin Burnes – 14.0%
• Kyle Gibson – 27.2%
• Sonny Gray – 38.3%

Questions or comments?: Burnes remains in the low group with his special occasion sinker even when you add in whiffs while Gray’s high combination of swinging (10.1%) and called (28.2%) strikes makes him a CSW% leader with the sinker.

—Chase%—

• Joe Musgrove – 9.1%
• Ben Lively – 19.0%
• Justin Anderson – 35.3%

Questions or comments?: What makes a batter chase a sinker?…and who is Justin Anderson? You can find the answer to both of those questions by watching this video. Watch how much late movement Anderson can induce on his sinker and hitters never thought the ball was in need of chasing from the get-go. Yet, chase they did. Anderson has struggled with control in his career in the big leagues but has three above-average pitches according to Stuff+.

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We’ll let the fun continue next week when I replicate this article for cutters. Until then, know your averages and click around Chamberlain’s leaderboard and the pitch type splits on your favorite pitcher.