Earlier today a new set of stats were dropped over at Baseball Savant. It’s a pitching data drop that looks at how often pitchers do certain things, such as get contact on the non-barrel of the bat, how much hitters tend to swing and miss pitches by, how often they are in front of or late on a pitch, etc. As it is with all new stats, it’s going to take some time to know how useful each stat is and how predictive it is moving forward.
When asking yourself what the best pitch in baseball is you probably think about a pitch that gets the most swings and misses. I would tend to agree with you if that’s where your head is it. Even being able to get a lot of weak contact on a pitch is going to lead to some hits, where as never making contact on it will result in no hits (this is ignoring things like ability to throw strikes with it to avoid walks/hit batters). There’s not going to be one “all-in” metric to determine pitch value because there are simply too many other factors going on.
With all of that said, the new metrics paint a pretty outstanding picture of Andrew Abbott’s change up. To the point that maybe it should be in the discussion for one of the best pitches in baseball.
Abbott’s change up leads Major League Baseball in a stat called “flailed”. That’s defined as a pitch hit off of the end of the barrel. That happens an incredible 71% of the time batters swing at the pitch and make contact with it. As you would likely expect, they also center it (on the barrel) less than any other pitch in baseball – just 29% of the time. His whiff rate on the pitch is also quite high, but at 43.2% it’s “only” 55th out of 914 pitches.
Hitters swing and miss at the pitch at an incredibly high rate and when they do happen to make contact on it they make weak contact on it more than any other pitch in Major League Baseball. Yeah, that sounds like it’s a real good combination of things.
There are a few other Reds who have pitches that stand out.
Chase Burns’ slider has the 3rd highest whiff rate, trialing just the sliders from Mason Miller and Jeff Hoffman. Graham Ashcraft’s slider had the 25th highest whiff rate out of the 914 pitches thrown in MLB this season. While Abbott led the league in the “flailed” stat, Brandon Williamson was sitting there at 6th at 66%.
On the flip side of things is what is called “perfect contact percentage”. That’s defined as “percentage of all swings in which the batter makes contact and the swing is “lined up”, “centered”, and “on time”. Essentially it’s baseballs that get crushed. Brady Singer’s 2-seamer came in at #14 on the list at 40%. Rhett Lowder’s 2-seamer came in at #29 on the list at 38%. Nick Lodolo’s 2-seamer was at #54, while Emilio Pagan and Andrew Abbott’s 4-seamers were at #58 and #59 on the list.