Sam Gaviglio Is Showing Us Good Control is Overrated

Though he is owned sparingly in fantasy leagues, Sam Gaviglio is a slightly above-average American League pitcher in terms of ERA, WHIP and strikeout rate. His current season, however, is nothing short of extreme.

The typical pitcher in 2018 is less attached to the strike zone. Over the previous eight seasons, Zone% had largely held steady year-to-year, ranging from a low of 44.2 percent in 2013 to a high of 45.8 percent in 2010. So far in 2018, the major league average Zone% is down to 43.1 percent.

While the average pitcher has slightly loosened his grip on throwing in the strike zone, Sam Gaviglio has been radical in his eschewing of the zone. Over 74.1 innings in his rookie 2017 season, split between the Mariners and Royals, a control-minded Gaviglio threw exactly half of his 1,126 pitches in the strike zone. This year, with the Blue Jays, the 28-year-old righty has gone wild, locating only 38.3 percent of his pitches in the zone.

Gaviglio is not merely setting the standard for pitchers abandoning the strike zone. Including him, there are a total of five pitchers who have changed their Zone% — either positively or negatively — by two standard deviations or more (Patrick Corbin, Derek Holland, Junior Guerra and Brandon McCarthy are the others.) This is out of a pool of 118 pitchers who threw at least 70 innings last season and at least 40 innings this season. Gaviglio is the only one to change his Zone% by at least three standard deviations.

Plenty of pitchers, including Corbin, Kyle Gibson, Kyle Freeland and Tyson Ross, are finding success while being among the wildest starters in the majors. The key to effective wildness is to get hitters to chase bad pitches, and Gaviglio has improved greatly in this regard. His O-Swing% has leaped from 26.0 percent last season to 32.1 percent over his 40.2 innings so far this year. Gaviglio’s transition has resulted in a 3.98 ERA that is 38 points lower than last year’s mark, and he is enjoying dramatic improvements in his WHIP (from 1.37 to 1.23) and strikeout rate (from 15.7 to 23.3 percent).

If this is to be a story about how a wild Gaviglio is a more effective Gaviglio, then the protagonist would have to be his sinker. It’s the pitch he controls the best, but the Zone% for his sinker has dropped from 60.7 percent in 2017 to 54.1 percent in 2018. Unlike Dallas Keuchel, who has often locates his sinker below the strike zone, Gaviglio has been missing more just beyond the outside edge. His sinker chase rate has risen slightly, but he has been barely more successful with the pitch than he was last year. Opponents compiled a .372 wOBA off Gaviglio’s sinker in 2017, and they have feasted only slightly less in 2018 with a .365 wOBA.

This could suggest that Gaviglio is a better pitcher with the Blue Jays, not because of his increased wildness but in spite of it. Gaviglio himself seems to agree. Given that he is performing better now than he did last season, particularly during his time with the Mariners, I assumed there was a causal relationship between his more wild approach and his improved results. Gaviglio saw only a tenuous connection between the two phenomena. He actually bemoaned his loss of control, saying he thinks it “will get better.”

Yet Gaviglio acknowledges there is a positive side to throwing fewer strikes. He credited himself with increased awareness of the differences in the types of batters he faces, so that he doesn’t always “have to give in to the strike zone.”

When asked what has made the difference for him this season, Gaviglio cited two factors completely unrelated to his Zone%. He said that his early interactions with Blue Jays pitching coach Pete Walker got him off on the right foot with his new team. The Royals traded Gaviglio to Toronto for a player to be named later on March 21, and he made his first (and only) Grapefruit League appearance three days later against the Yankees. Despite the fact that he allowed two runs on three hits and a walk in just one inning, Gaviglio said that Walker showed confidence in him.

Gaviglio also said that he is throwing his changeup with more consistency. Only 56 of his 652 pitches have been changeups, but all they have yielded for hitters is three singles.

He did not mention his slider, but it has played an even bigger role in bolstering his strikeout rate and lowering his Iso from .242 to .158. Gaviglio is still not striking out many lefties (15.5 percent K-rate), but he is striking out right-handed batters at a healthy 28.7 percent rate. In a highly-related development, Gaviglio is getting more strikeouts with his slider, and it’s a pitch he uses disproportionately against righties.  So far this season, his slider strikeout rate against righties is 37.8 percent, up from 28.6 percent in 2017 (per Brooks Baseball). Working the outside edge has really panned out for Gaviglio, as the 2017 and 2018 contact rate heatmaps below show the dramatic improvement he has made in missing bats with his slider in that region.

Perhaps due to an extra inch of horizontal movement, Gaviglio’s slider chase and whiff rates are up. The pitch has been almost completely impervious to extra base hits, with the Iso falling from last season’s .278 to a microscopic .043.

As owners of Tyler Chatwood and Lance Lynn are aware of, a substantial loss of control can negatively impact a pitcher’s value, especially when it’s not accompanied by an ample chase rate. For Gaviglio, his declining control (particularly on his sinker) seems to be almost irrelevant to his 2018 results. Improvements in his secondary pitches, namely his slider and changeup, have made him a potentially useful fantasy pitcher. The mild interest owners were showing in him just a few weeks back has waned, as he has allowed 11 runs (10 earned) over 12 innings in his last three starts. A ratio of 14 strikeouts to four walks during that span speaks to the potential Gaviglio still has to help owners, as does the .154 Iso he has allowed over those outings.

Maybe Gaviglio will get his wish and improve his control over the coming weeks, reversing what has been an extreme change in his profile this season. As long as he continues to get hitters to chase after bad pitches, he should be able to enjoy a level of success that will keep him in the Blue Jays’ rotation, possibly even after Aaron Sanchez (finger) and Jaime Garcia (shoulder) return from their injuries. It should put him in more fantasy rotations as well.