Which Starters Have the Most Above-Average Pitches

Yeah but does he have a change-up? That’s a great question for Odrisamer Despaigne, for example. Dude threw an 87 mph slider and a slow 67 mph curve after his excellent 92 mph sinker, which sounds good until you realize his command should be exposed in the future (too many arm slots, too many minor league walks) and when you see that the curve and slider got two whiffs combined (42 thrown!) and the change was inconsistent and ranged from 75-88 mph (!) even if it got two whiffs (12 thrown). Strange to see a rookie throw more breakers than fastballs (24), too.

So which pitchers have the full monty? Which pitchers have the most above-average pitches? Now, thanks to Jeff Zimmerman, we can quantify that. Using the pitch type benchmarks I have for swinging strikes here, and ground balls here, we can decide if a pitch is above-average in those two ways. Using Excel, we can then sort for the most number of pitches that meet our benchmarks.

Boom. Felix Hernandez has the most number of great pitches. Feels sorta good to write that.

That first column counts how many benchmarks were met. Felix Hernandez has a nice slider and/or cutter by whiffs, but they don’t meet the ground-ball benchmarks (if they are even two pitches), so that leaves him with four good pitches (a pitch gets a ‘two’ if it’s above average in whiffs and grounders). Only Matt Harvey matches that feat in all of baseball over the last two years, so, yeah, those guys are good.

Let’s look at some of the surprises on this list. Jaime Garcia has always been a favorite of mine from a stuff angle. His change-up, slider and curve are all good pitches by swinging strike rate, which is maybe surprising to those that think of him as a ground-ball pitcher. When he was going a little better in his healthier years, his two-seamer got enough whiffs to make him the vaunted four-pitch pitcher. But of course his health is too wonky to ever pin too much hope on him.

David Hale keeps showing up in here as having a good change, sinker, and breaker. That, and his dual pitcher eligibility, is enough for him to hang on to a couple of my deeper rosters despite his inconsistent command and current rough patch. File the name away for spot starting and deep league use at best, though. Wait for yet another Bravo pitcher to go down before doing anything.

Wade Miley will get some love from Jeff Zimmerman in another piece, so let’s skip ahead to the last surprising three-pitch pitcher: Matt Shoemaker. Right now, his strikeout-minus-walk rate far outstrips anything he’s done in the minor leagues, but he’s got two things going for him: a major league job, and three major league quality pitches. His sinker is not great, but his four-seam, slider, and change are all good pitches (and the whiff rates are plus-plus on the slider and change in his short sample). At 92 mph with a change and slider that go around 83-84, the stuff doesn’t look very special, but his off-speed pitches both break in different directions and his command (which has been improving) looks good. I won’t pick him up in a shallow league just yet, but I will go pick him up wherever he’s available in my deep leagues after writing this sentence.

Lower, off the leaderboard shown here, there are is one more three-pitch guys, Masahiro Tanaka, but you know he’s good.

Instead, let’s take note of the strange line of Yovani Gallardo. Only his curve ball rates above-average by both grounders and whiffs. The sinker gets 55% grounders, so that’s good, but no whiffs (3.7%). Same for the four-seamer (45% and 3.4% respectively). The change gets ground balls (58%) but no whiffs (7.4%, 15% is average). Same on the slider (48% but only 11% whiffs). The cutter is probably his slider, but has the same numbers as his slider too. That’s how a pitcher reworks his arsenal to work after losing stuff — Gallardo has the best ground-ball rate of his career. With one pitch that’s all-around good. The arsenal seems to suggest that he can keep up the ground-ball work, for what it’s worth.