Lance Lynn Is Testing the Limits of Effective Wildness

A bad start to the season somehow got worse for Lance Lynn on Monday night. He entered his fifth start of 2018 with a 7.71 ERA, having allowed five or more runs in three of his previous starts. By the time the Blue Jays forced his exit after five innings, Lynn’s ERA rose to a ghastly 8.37.

The pitch location chart below tells the story of Lynn’s outing pretty well. He missed frequently, particularly to his throwing-arm side, though also below the strike zone. The Blue Jays’ hitters simply weren’t having it, swinging and missing only twice on pitches that should have been balls. Overall, Lynn induced only five swinging strikes, and over his five innings, he allowed six runs on seven hits and five walks. Despite freezing batters on pitches in the strike zone only 12 times in 98 pitches, Lynn did manage to strike out four batters.

Lynn has had control issues in each of his 2018 starts, but there have been glimmers of hope. Entering Monday’s start, Lynn had a 13.1 percent swinging strike rate along with a total of 22 strikeouts over 18.2 innings. Back on April 9, Lynn held the Astros scoreless over the course of his five-inning start. In that outing, as shown in the chart below, Lynn was still missing the zone frequently, but he varied his location more and got a few swings and misses on his non-throwing-arm side of the plate.

More than a month into the season, Lynn has had the worst control among starting pitchers, and it’s not even close. Of all starters with at least 20 innings pitched, Lynn has located in the strike zone at a 32.9 percent rate. The next-lowest Zone% of 35.4 percent belongs to teammate Kyle Gibson, and he is followed by Francisco Liriano at 35.6 percent. In recent years, Liriano and Gibson have set the standard for poor control and Lynn is currently outdoing them.

If that’s all there was to the story, there would be no reason to give Lynn’s poor start to the season a second thought, but there are those strikeouts. He has lowered his Contact% from last season’s 79.6 percent mark (which also happens to be his career rate) to 73.2 percent, while increasing his strikeout rate from 19.7 to 22.2 percent and his K/9 ratio from 7.4 to 9.9. The old narrative of Lynn being merely a decent strikeout pitcher has a chance to change, though he will need to cut back on his walk rate and be more efficient to make that happen.

The key to Lynn’s eroding control is his sinker, for which his Zone% has fallen from 43.7 percent in 2017 to 32.9 percent this season. He has lost an inch of horizontal movement on the pitch, which may be contributing to his pattern of throwing-arm side misses (his start against the Astros notwithstanding).

Not only is Lynn having problems locating his sinker, but he is worsening the impact by frequently using it as his first pitch against a batter. Prior to this season, Lynn used his sinker as his first pitch at an 18 percent rate against right-handed batters and at a 38 percent rate against left-handed batters. In 2018, those rates have risen to 31 and 51 percent, respectively. That trend, given Lynn’s lack of sinker control, isn’t giving him a good chance to start off ahead in the count, especially against lefties. Perhaps it’s not so coincidental that left-handed hitters are putting up a collective .353/.511/.676 slash line against him. By comparison, Lynn’s .250/.375/.424 line against righties doesn’t look so bad.

While pitch sequencing appears to be at least part of Lynn’s problem, the solution is less clear. Unlike last season, Lynn is throwing his four-seamer more often than his sinker, and it’s getting absolutely clobbered. He has already allowed five home runs and three doubles on his four-seam fastball for an Iso of .450. By comparison, Lynn’s previous high four-seam Iso was last year’s .184. The average exit velocity of Lynn’s batted four-seamers has increased from 87.7 mph a year ago to 93.5 mph so far this season. So starting hitters off with a four-seam fastball seems like an even worse idea than throwing a sinker.

There is a common link between Lynn’s wild sinkers and hittable four-seamers: reduced horizontal movement. Over his career, Lynn has hovered around -6.0 inches of four-seamer horizontal movement (including -5.9 inches last season), but this year, it’s moving just -3.2 inches on average.

The best outcome for Lynn may be if he can reestablish his prior levels of horizontal movement. That could result in the lower walk rates and Isos that he enjoyed has enjoyed over his career. Yet a factor in Lynn’s strikeout surge this season has been an increase in the swing rate on his four-seamer. With less movement, opponents have been more tempted to swing, and it’s resulted in more whiffs as well as more extra-base hits.

As it’s currently constituted, the softer-contact-for-strikeouts trade Lynn is making is a losing proposition. It will be worth tracking the movement and sequencing on Lynn’s pitches going forward to see if he finds a way to keep the strikeouts without sacrificing everything else on his stat line.

Statistical credits: FanGraphs, Baseball Savant, Brooks Baseball.