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With the explosion of metrics in both the game and practice environments, the modern baseball player is becoming more and more versed in the language of numbers. When we talk about those statistics in the clubhouse, it doesn’t always add up to a full article. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for those conversations with baseball players about how they track the execution of their craft. This is that place.
Freddie Freeman on bat speed metrics
The new bat speed metrics are out, and they’ve spawned some early research and interest (even from players) across the league. Well, in some places.
“I don’t care about those metrics,” Freddie Freeman said with a smile before his Los Angeles Dodgers played the San Francisco Giants earlier this month. “I can’t chase bat speed. I’ll just pull off and then it’s a topspin hook.”
That isn’t to say that the metrics didn’t have anything nice to say about Freeman.
His swing is in the shortest 10 percent of swings in the big leagues. And among those short swings, he’s actually got pretty good velo.
Ah yes, Freddie Freeman, that guy’s just about as good as Wenceel Pérez or Jordan Westburg, that’s what the people are saying. There’s obviously more to hitting the ball well than just swinging fast, but at least this list is mostly filled with good hitters who combine good bat speed with some of the shortest swings in the league. Freeman, of course, puts that together with one of the best hit tools in the league, a great eye, and a unique bat path.
“I know I have a short swing and have made it work for me,” he said. “I live middle-middle away. If I go middle away on the fastball and catch the slider out front it’s pull-side power alley. It’s nice when people hit the ball 120 or whatever but I can’t chase those numbers.”
He reiterated his practice method — he hits “soft line drives at the shortstop,” in his own words — as being part of the magic. At game speed, his body moves a little differently, and that approach produces a remarkably balanced spray chart that must be hard to defend.
“I’m trying to get on base and hit .300. If I’m struggling a little, you know there are really great major leaguers on the mound trying to get me out,” Freeman said, and it’s hard to argue with the lifetime .301 hitter. “It’s been working for 15 years.”
An ode to the front-door sinker
Bartolo Colon is back. Well, not physically, but in spirit. The pitch that was synonymous with his girth is inching forward in popularity, to the point where, as a ratio at least, righties are aiming more sinkers than ever at the hip of lefty batters. That was something Colon did with aplomb until the very end of his tenure in the bigs.
When the pitch moves from ball to strike on the inside part of the plate, it’s coming through the front door, in baseball speak. Hitters might hate it more than any other pitch.
“I love that pitch. Colon was so great at it,” said front-door sinker enthusiast Alex Cobb. “The hitter can’t do anything. They’re in self-preservation mode; they’re in protect mode.”
“You have to throw inside,” said the Phillies’ Cristopher Sánchez, who only throws a sinker, “because it opens up the outside for the changeup.”
In his book “Big Data Baseball,” Travis Sawchick included the revelation that Pirates research and development had found pitching inside did indeed improve results on outside pitches thereafter. But the front-door sinker in particular carries a little bit more risk than throwing inside with a straight four-seamer or a cutter that’s moving toward the batter.
“I like it, but you have to have some other weapon in case it’s one of those days where the sinker is leaking over the plate,” said the pitcher who has thrown more front-door sinkers this year than anyone else, Logan Webb.
“He’s only first because I’m on the IL,” Cobb quipped.
It’s a tough pitch to practice because it involves aiming at the batter and letting the natural movement take the pitch to the inside part of the plate. If the batter is being aggressive — and swing rates go up in the middle to late part of the game before going down again in the ninth — then it’s not a great time to throw something that might end up middle down in the zone. It takes practice to get it right, and it can be hard to practice without a batter in the box. Sánchez just aims past the catcher’s left knee, but the two Giants pitchers need more of a physical target.
“I practice with a dummy, and I have to aim to hit him,” Webb said. “I hit him sometimes.”
“I’ve hit the dummy,” Cobb said, “but he should’ve gotten out of the way.”
Velocity still matters to the knuckleballer
Matt Waldron now owns the two fastest knuckleballs in the pitch-tracking era, narrowly edging out prime R.A. Dickey by half a tick. His last two starts have seen the San Diego Padres knuckleballer throw his version of the rare pitch harder than he’s ever thrown it in the big leagues — he’s averaged just over 80 mph in those two outings — and he has 15 strikeouts and two walks in 12 innings to show for it.
The knuckler may not look as fancy when he throws it 84 mph, that’s true.
That looks like a backfoot slider. But, like any slider going faster than 84 mph, the pitch benefits from giving the batter less time to look at it.
Consider that, among the 36,000+ knuckleballs tracked:
• Knuckleballs over 80 mph produce a .190 batting average, a .292 slugging percentage and a 24 percent whiff rate
• Knuckleballs under 80 mph produce a .255 batting average, a .417 slugging percentage and a 22 percent whiff rate
It’s a weird pitch, but it benefits from gas like any other. That was something that Dickey himself talked about during his best seasons. If Waldron can keep this up, he may turn out to be better than an innings eater.
Giants catcher Blake Sabol was paying close attention when St. Louis Cardinals catcher Willson Contreras had his arm broken by a J.D. Martinez swing. The Cards catcher was inching closer to the plate to receive breaking balls earlier and make them look better for called strikes, but Martinez sets up back in the box and has the type of swing that might give a catcher pause when he moves in closer. This is happening more often across baseball, but Sabol thought there was a way to avoid injury and still steal strikes well.
“There are names circled in the lineup,” Sabol said of his prep work and avoiding getting too close to certain batters. “I’m aware of the guys with low backswings, especially on low breaking balls or backup sliders where I’m reaching up and they’re emergency swinging.”
The catcher was clear not to blame the Cardinals’ backstop, but still thought that something in the preparation process there was not ideal.
“We are all trying to move up to the ball so that’s why everyone is inching closer,” he said. “But if you’re getting hit in the forearm, you’re way too close.”
It’s been a long, winding road since Jon Singleton was drafted out of high school by the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009. Even in 2014, when he was called up to the big leagues, given a five-year, $10 million contract and the job, he felt green. He struggled for a couple years before he was let go, and fell out of affiliated ball for five years before jumping back on the radar with a minor-league deal with the Milwaukee Brewers in 2022. Now he’s back in the bigs with the Houston Astros and he’s an above-average hitter to boot.
“It was rough; I don’t even know how to describe it,” Singleton said of all those years playing in the minors and in Mexico. “A lot of expectations at a young age. I expected a lot of myself at a young age.”
Age is a funny thing. Getting old can take away the peaks, because your athleticism is not the same as before. But it can give you perspective, actionable perspective, that can give you coping mechanisms to avoid the low lows.
“The adjustment period is definitely a lot smaller as you get older,” Singleton said, agreeing with the research in psychology and baseball that suggests the same. “I go to saunas now pretty often, that’s my new thing. When I get to a new place I find a new sauna and a nice coffee shop.”
Sweat it out and then get some liquid energy, you heard it here.
Kyle Harrison throws a high-spin fastball from a low slot, something that other lefties like Sean Manaea and Andrew Heaney have done in the past. Like those other two, he’s struggled to add a really good secondary pitch. This year, he’s tweaking the curveball so that it’s more of a two-plane pitch.
“I’m thinking about following all the way through and down, and thinking about two plane movement again instead of killing the horizontal on it,” he said recently, and the movement graphs agree (with a slight hiccup in Colorado, where the altitude changes movement).
He’s added movement in both directions and though some metrics don’t like it (Stuff+ rated his curve as a 59 where 100 is average last time out), he has given up one measly hit on the pitch since it changed shape early this month. Batters were hitting .400 on the old version of the pitch in April. Looks like good news?
(Top photo of Freddie Freeman: Harry How / Getty Images)
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