Three Brilliant Starts from Hochevar

While Scott Boras is negotiating on behalf of his newest client, Stephen Strasburg, the name Luke Hochevar probably won’t come up to often. So far, with a career 5.09 ERA and 1.38 WHIP, Hochevar is far from a model former first draft pick. His struggles are instead a warning sign for the Nationals and other teams being bullied into a big bonus.

So far, the Royal has seemingly lacked an out pitch despite all of his quality offerings. He has five pitches that he throws with regularity, and four that he throws more than 10% of the time. A 92 MPH fastball, an 83 MPH slider, a 77 MPH curveball, an 84 MPH changeup, and a 91 MPH two-seam fastball. And unless pitch f/x is mislabeling some pitches, he’s even added a sixth pitch, an 88 MPH cutter. With this kitchen sink approach, he’s been able to elicit a good amount of ground balls (51.8% career), but has not found the combination to punch them out (5.30 career K/9).

That was, until two starts ago. In the last two starts, Hochevar has silenced two potent offenses. And he’s done so with the strikeout. In his last 13.1 innings, amassed against Texas on July 25th and Tampa Bay on July 19, Hochevar has put up 22 strikeouts against zero walks. Extend the window to include his July 9th start against Boston, and he has 27 strikeouts and 1 walk in 19.1 innings.

Yes, the sample size is small. But is it possible that Hochevar has made some changes that will finally allow him to harness his entire arsenal and add the strikeout to his ground-ball inducing approach? There are notable differences in his approach over his last three starts.

One thing that is immediately obvious is that he’s going to the curveball more this year, and more in his recent starts. Overall, his curveball percentage is up to 13.6% from 9.1% last year, but if you look at the last three games, the effect is more pronounced. Against Boston and Texas, Hochevar went to his big curve ball over 20% of the time, almost double his usage of the pitch from last year.

Seen as his perhaps best pitch going in to the draft, the curveball has been inconsistent for him. He’s lost almost a full three inches of horizontal movement on it this year, but the movement has come and gone from start to start. The linear weights show the curveball being a negative for him this year, and on the other hand you can’t argue with his recent results. Against Boston, the curveball showed its best horizontal movement of the year, pushing the seven- and eight-inch horizontal movement that he showed in his first two seasons. If the curveball was merely dormant at the beginning of the year, kudos to the pitcher for persevering and throwing the pitch enough to recover the movement and craft himself a plus pitch.

Overall, his only positive pitch has been his slider, worth about 3.1 runs so far this year, and 13 in his short career so far. In his remarkable 13-strikeout, zero-walk performance against Texas this weekend, Hochevar used the slider almost 32% of the time. This brought his yearly percentage to 24.9%, easily a career high for Hochevar.

Looking at his usage chart for his career, one thing is clear. Hochevar is using his off-speed offerings much more often this year. With a fastball that hovers around neutral, this looks like a natural and beneficial progression for the young pitcher. Perhaps this is meaningful change that will allow the Royals to once again regain a rosy disposition to their high draft pick. Fantasy owners, at the very least, should take notice.