Sporer Report #8: Michael Fulmer’s Mid-Game Meltdowns

Watch the early innings of a Michael Fulmer start and you’ll see a damn fine 25-year old power arm evolving into one of the game’s quality workhorses. Keep watching, though, and you’ll find him unrecognizable by the sixth inning. Fulmer has consistently melted down in the latter innings of his starts, yielding a ghastly 4.73 ERA and 1.37 WHIP in 66.7 innings. Fulmer actually posted a 2.76 ERA and 1.26 WHIP in April with a lot of the damage coming in his lone blowup outing at Cleveland (3 IP, 9 R… 6 of them earned), but has allowed fewer than three runs just twice in his last seven. The sixth inning has become a clear point of demarcation between Good Fulmer and Bad Fulmer.

His pitch mix is the same. His velocity holds just fine, losing no more than a half mph off any pitch. The results, however, are absolutely horrible. Through five innings, he has a 3.56 ERA and 1.17 WHIP, both top 40 out of 91 qualified starters. He allows a .225 AVG (36th) and .683 OPS (47th) with a 23% K rate (44th) in 227 plate appearances. In the sixth and seventh innings… I mean, I can’t even show these numbers without some sort of graphic content warning… the numbers are so bad.

Ready?

He has an 11.70 ERA and 2.50 WHIP in 52 PA, both bottom five in that same 91-pitcher group. Batters have a .395 AVG (88th) and 1.105 OPS (85th) with just a 6% K rate (89th). The most popular theory is that Carson Fulmer puts on a fake beard and Michael’s uniform to pitch those innings. That seems very likely, but it hasn’t been proven. Fulmer (we’re back on Michael) sees his fastball and slider get Thanos’d into oblivion once the sixth inning hits. They allow a .651 OPS with a 17% K-BB rate in the first five innings, but then a 1.153 OPS and -10% K-BB after that.

Everyone’s invited to the hit parade, too, as both lefties and righties smoke the pitches after the fifth inning. His changeup has struggled regardless (.929 1-5 inn.; 1.051 after) which is a different issue altogether, but definitely a contributing factor to his struggles. I can see how an ineffective changeup makes the fastball/slider less effective deeper into the game, but not to this degree, so I’m not sure his once-awesome changeup (11.1 Pitch Value in ’16) is the lone culprit here. Or rather, I don’t think just saying “his changeup sucks!” and moving on helps anyone, so let’s dig into what its ineffectiveness is doing to Fulmer.

Let me take this moment to say that there isn’t always a smoking gun on a player’s struggles. As great as that would be, it’s just unrealistic. Can the changeup really be causing this large of a cascade effect onto the fastball and slider?  I kept looking. Whenever trying to see what’s up with a pitcher, I look at the standard stuff: pitch mix, velo, locations and nothing really stood out in those avenues until I gave locations a deeper look.

I initially saw that was working up in the zone late in games (I’ll just saying early/late instead of 1st-5th, 6th & 7th the rest of the way), but with so much of the damage coming in the middle of the zone, I didn’t see it as an issue. However, upon further inspection I noticed a 38% BB rate late in games on pitches in the upper third of the zone, more than double his 16% mark early on. Batters swing at a 31% clip on those pitches, 15 points down from early in games and the strike percentage dips from 60% to 45%. The ineffectiveness up in the zone brings Fulmer back in the middle third and often into the strikezone itself.

On pitches in the middle third, the zone rate jumps eight points to 71% and batters swing way more (59% to 73%),doing a lot more damage late in games with the results climbing from .735 OPS and 12% K-BB to 1.067 and 0%, respectively. Fulmer’s plate appearance against Justin Smoak in the top of the sixth on Sunday is a microcosm of this issue. Unable to get strikes in the high zone or turn to his changeup to put the switch-hitting Smoak off balance, he relied on his fastball one too many times and fed Smoak a center cut meatball that he deposited 10 rows deep into right field.

via Gfycat

Fulmer doesn’t suck. That’s obvious to anyone watching. But he does have a major issue right now with getting deep into games and I think the changeup ineffectiveness and up-in-the-zone issues are related. He might’ve hung a changeup to Smoak that went in the exact same spot, but at least he would’ve given him a different look. I was listening to the radio of the game at that point and with each passing pitch, I grew more certain that danger was brewing and the inevitable homer was a pitch away. It ended up being three pitches away (I was certain a 2-0 heater was getting crushed).

He cruised early against Toronto as he and Aaron Sanchez consistently tried to one-up each other in “mid-90s fastball movement” excellence, but Fulmer couldn’t command it all day and didn’t have reliable secondary offerings to maneuver through the lineup a third time. He had 83 pitches through six so you have to bring him back (even though I had the sinking feeling that he was done with the Smoak homer) and he promptly allowed a hit and walk, both of whom scored when Warwick Saupold came in and all of a sudden a good outing was tarnished.

Fulmer’s fixable, but not without stark improvement to his changeup command. The pitch has obviously been an issue, but I didn’t realize how much it’s impacting him later in games as the fastball and slider wane. The velocity and movement numbers are in line, but he’s missing the zone more than ever, garnering fewer whiffs and called strikes on the change. He knows it’s an issue, too, using it less than 8% of the time in three of his last four starts after using it 18% of the time through his first eight. I’m still reluctant to cut Fulmer in leagues because we’ve seen how good he can be with an effective changeup, but I have to drop him into the Kevin Gausman range of pitchers in my next update (out this week!).