Parker Messick Conquers the American League

In a world defined and cheapened by soulless and repetitive optimization, the Cleveland Guardians are intractably themselves. Make no mistake, the Guardians’ quirks and foibles are the result of those same nihilistic capitalist forces; they’re trying to compete against teams with less-tightfisted owners in more fashionable locales. Those restrictions have shaped the Guardians into something gnarled and odd and occasionally unsightly, like a knotted tree sprouting from a rockface, or a squid that’s evolved to live in darkness 10,000 feet below the ocean surface.

It’s not always traditionally pretty, but it’s unique.

Here we are, in the middle of May, with Cleveland once again in sole possession of first place in the AL Central. (Don’t look at anyone’s record within the division, I’m making a point.) Not everything has gone smoothly for the Guardians so far this year, but they’re getting contributions where it counts. Especially from Parker Messick.

In Detroit, they make cars. In Seattle, they make airplanes. In Cleveland, they turn non-first-round-college-pitchability guys into reliable big league starters. Shane Bieber was the most successful example, but consider also: Tanner Bibee, Aaron Civale, Zach Plesac, multiple Logans Allens… and now Messick, a second-rounder out of Florida State in 2022.

Messick is far from an unheralded prospect; he made it to the majors last year and posted a 2.72 ERA in seven starts, while staying one out under the rookie eligibility threshold. His fastball averages in the 93-mph range, which in today’s all-gas baseball environment is average, even for a left-hander. But Messick has a wide arsenal of quality breaking pitches and he throws a ton of strikes (only six walks in 39 2/3 innings last year), so that 2.72 ERA was backed up by a 3.06 xERA and 2.98 FIP.

That doesn’t mean everything in less than a quarter of a season, but it’s encouraging.

And Messick has not slowed down in his rookie season proper. Eric Longenhagen and Brendan Gawlowski rated Messick as Cleveland’s no. 5 prospect (and no. 82 overall) this offseason. Messick’s 50-FV grade placed him on par with Travis Bazzana and Khal Stephen, among others.

Their prognosis for Messick was that he was a high-floor, low-variance-type prospect, on account of his plus command and ability to change speeds. Sometimes those skills get treated like an afterthought because they’re not as flashy as watching Jacob Misiorowski throw 115 mph, but if you can throw strikes and change speeds, you can pitch effectively in the majors with a low-90s fastball.

The question is: How much more is Messick capable of?

Well, first of all, he’s a delightful pitcher to watch. In the span of one clause, Eric and Brendan described him as “sneaky athletic” and “husky but super loose.” (If I were single, I’d be putting “husky but super loose” in my Tinder bio.)

Messick is listed at 6-foot even and 225 pounds, and in contrast to his longer, spindlier colleagues, he’s got short limbs and a torso shaped like a Jersey barrier. Athletes with this body type don’t usually concern themselves with fastball velocity and offspeed stuff; you usually hear words like “pad level” and “off-ball linebacker” in their scouting report.

He wears his pants tight and his jersey loose; he cuts off the sleeves of his undershirt just below the elbow, and hikes his socks and stirrups up to his knees. All this only heightens the illusion of cubicality, and makes him look like a swingman for the 1950s. His delivery starts with an exaggerated arm stab and proceeds forward into a compact and powerful drop-and-drive motion.

But once the ball is out of his hand, Messick’s straight front leg arrests his forward momentum and his other three limbs do more or less what they will. I clicked “Random Video” on Messick’s Baseball Savant page and the very first pitch I saw had him end up like this.

Finishing like an angry goose, with the cut-off sleeves, Messick reminds me of Bob Gibson, if that’s not sacrilegious to say.

It’s great. Give me 100 more Messicks rather than even one more lab-grown 6-foot-4 right-hander from the Metroplex. This is a college-pitchability guy who still retains a college-pitchability guy’s quirkiness.

Like most modern big league starters, Messick has a varied arsenal for hitters on either side of the plate. For lefties, it’s four-seamer, sinker, slider, with occasional curveballs and changeups. For righties, it’s four-seamer, cutter, changeup, with the odd sinker thrown in to keep everyone off balance.

All things considered, that’s pretty orthodox. Last week, I wrote about Davis Martin’s continuum of pitches; when you graph the two-plane movement profiles of his offerings, Martin’s arsenal looks like an arch, with his curveball off by itself.

So too Messick, though he has clearer separation from one pitch to the next.

If I had to choose, I’d say Messick’s best pitch is his four-seamer. That might sound counterintuitive, for a six-pitch starter who only throws in the low 90s, but this isn’t like most four-seamers.

Messick, being short and stocky for a pitcher, and having as he does a three-quarters arm angle from a low delivery, produces the baseball from an angle hitters don’t see very often. Among the 318 pitchers who have thrown 250 or more pitches this season, Messick is 240th in average vertical release point. But his average arm angle, 43.1 degrees, is 100th.

There are 78 pitches with a lower vertical release point than Messick, and 99 with a higher arm angle, but only four with both. His four-seamer also has an inch more rise and three inches less arm-side break than the typical fastball of that velocity. So hitters who look fastball and guess right are going to see this freaky-rising, cutter-like thing coming at them.

And they don’t hit it well. Messick’s four-seamer gets only 0.3 percentage points less whiff rate than Tarik Skubal’s. His four-seamer strikeout rate, 31.4%, is among the 30 best in baseball. He’s also in the top 30 in xBA on his four-seamer, and in the top 15 in xwOBA and HardHit%.

Opponents are hitting just .170 off Messick’s four-seamer, but here’s the thing: They’re not hitting better than .250 off any of his six pitches. The only pitch of his with a HardHit% over 29.0% is his sinker, which has been put in play just 22 times.

There are three things at work here that have made Messick so hard to hit. First: His command. Not only in the sense that he’s not walking anyone, but in the sense that he can locate his various pitches where he wants in and around the zone. Pitching is like real estate, said Bill James: The three most important things are location, location, and location.

Second: Messick can change speed and movement toward both sides of the plate. In addition to his four-seamer, he’s got two secondaries with arm-side movement in distinct velocity bands, and three glove-side-breaking secondaries — including a cutter, which is new for this year — in three distinct velocity bands. That’s a lot of real estate for a hitter to cover, on three axes.

Especially because — and here’s no. 3 — nothing that Messick throws moves normally. I’ve talked about his fastball’s odd rise-and-cut action from an odd combination of release point and arm angle. It’s not that the fastball has crazy action in any direction; it’s just a little weird.

All of Messick’s pitches are like that. He throws six pitches, each of which breaks in two directions. All six of his pitches have at least two inches of variation from the norm on at least one axis; three of them have at least two inches of variation on both.

So even if the hitter gets his pitch and times it right, he could swing where a changeup ought to be and miss the barrel, if not the entire bat. Messick’s breaking balls both drop less than a usual pitch of that speed, but they both have greater arm-side movement.

Look at Messick’s headshot on MLB.com. He’s smirking. And rightly so; this is the face of a guy who knows he’s about to get one over on whoever steps into the box. It doesn’t look normal, and maybe it won’t work forever. But it’s working now, and that’s good enough for Cleveland’s purposes.