Two summers ago, I examined five pitchers with underused offerings, and we took a similar approach for this column. Today, we're looking at starting pitchers with a high swinging-strike rate on pitches that potentially should be used more often.
Because we're specifically interested in pitches which weren't used very much for this article, some offerings fit into that category due to sample-size noise, but in other cases, the data screams at us that usage changes are incoming, with better results possibly to follow. Should we pay more attention to these specific lightly-used pitches? We'll examine these offerings with an towards how to approach the pitchers who throw them in 2024 drafts.
Zach Eflin's Sweeper
Zach Eflin joined the Rays and immediately posted a career-best season. Eflin earned $25 of value and finished with a 23 percent K-BB%, ranking eighth among starting pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched. The Rays have often been a team to find the best in each player, and that was the case again with Eflin.
Injuries have also hampered Eflin throughout his career, as he spent 50 or more days on the injured list in four of his final six seasons with the Phillies. Maybe 2023 is the outlier from a health standpoint, but with good health, Eflin should be ready to deliver another strong season.
Eflin is known for having an excellent curveball. That's evident by the curveball's 18.3 percent swinging-strike rate in 2023 and its .231 wOBA allowed. Like many pitchers, Eflin
Two summers ago, I examined five pitchers with underused offerings, and we took a similar approach for this column. Today, we're looking at starting pitchers with a high swinging-strike rate on pitches that potentially should be used more often.
Because we're specifically interested in pitches which weren't used very much for this article, some offerings fit into that category due to sample-size noise, but in other cases, the data screams at us that usage changes are incoming, with better results possibly to follow. Should we pay more attention to these specific lightly-used pitches? We'll examine these offerings with an towards how to approach the pitchers who throw them in 2024 drafts.
Zach Eflin's Sweeper
Zach Eflin joined the Rays and immediately posted a career-best season. Eflin earned $25 of value and finished with a 23 percent K-BB%, ranking eighth among starting pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched. The Rays have often been a team to find the best in each player, and that was the case again with Eflin.
Injuries have also hampered Eflin throughout his career, as he spent 50 or more days on the injured list in four of his final six seasons with the Phillies. Maybe 2023 is the outlier from a health standpoint, but with good health, Eflin should be ready to deliver another strong season.
Eflin is known for having an excellent curveball. That's evident by the curveball's 18.3 percent swinging-strike rate in 2023 and its .231 wOBA allowed. Like many pitchers, Eflin added a sweeper last season, which he threw four percent of the time, mainly against right-handed hitters (86.3 percent), as seen below:
Eflin introduced the sweeper in June and gradually increased its usage from 5.2 percent in July to 8.2 percent in August and finally 9.3 percent in September. The sweeper elicited many swings and misses in its small sample of 102 pitches, generating a 27.5 percent swinging-strike rate. That's over 12 points higher than the league average swinging-strike rate for sweepers (15.3 percent).
Eflin's sweeper looks like a legitimate offering via the movement profile, with a 43.1 inches of drop and 16.8 inches of sweep. With a larger sample of sweepers thrown, it would profile similarly to Sonny Gray and Collin McHugh's sweeper among right-handed pitchers.
Early 2024 Outlook
The market is paying up for Eflin, who has an ADP in Draft Champions leagues of 85 over the past month, making him the 27th starting pitcher off the board. That puts him in a tier with other exciting pitchers with upside, including Eury Perez, Jesus Luzardo, Joe Ryan and Kyle Bradish. Eflin provides the floor via his control, as he had the fifth-lowest ball rate in the league at 31.1 percent, tied with Ryan. If Eflin continues to bump up his sweeper usage in 2024, it gives him a legitimate offering to increase his strikeout upside, especially against right-handed hitters. Buy into the possibility of more sweepers for Eflin.
Sawyer Gipson-Long's Changeup
We have the definition of a small sample and potential noise with Sawyer Gipson-Long's changeup. Gipson-Long debuted in September 2023 for four starts, recording a 32 percent K-BB%. Control could be an issue given his 37 percent ball rate, slightly above the league average of 36 percent, though throughout Double and Triple-A (2022-2023), Gipson-Long's ball rate sat at 33 percent.
The visual below shows the starting pitcher leaders in swinging-strike rate with a minimum of 20 innings. Gipson-Long ranks fifth, though we see some of the control challenges via his zone percentage, which ranked 230th out of 246 qualified pitchers.
With that context, Gipson-Long appears to be a stuff-over-command type pitcher. The strikeout upside is evident with his 16.1 percent swinging-strike rate, led by a changeup which generated a 26.8 percent mark. It's a small sample, but that's over 11 percentage points higher than the league average swinging-strike rate for a changeup.
Early 2024 Outlook
Gipson-Long's changeup should continue to be a focus of his arsenal since he used the slider (31.8 percent) and changeup (24.4 percent) more often than his four-seamer (23.8 percent) in his brief debut. RotoWire's James Anderson has Gipson-Long as his 277th-ranked prospect and 90th pitcher in his Top-400 Prospect Rankings. When considering the off-season additions of Jack Flaherty and Kenta Maeda, Gipson-Long might lack opportunities to start. The Tigers also have Casey Mize and Alex Faedo returning from injuries. Keep tabs on Gipson-Long and his changeup, but don't overreact to the small sample.
Sonny Gray's Sweeper
If you drafted multiple Twins' starting pitchers last year, you were probably happy with the results. That's certainly the case with Sonny Gray, who earned $21 of value after throwing his most innings since 2019. Over the past few seasons, Gray adjusted his pitch mix, as seen below.
After using the sinker (29.1 percent), four-seam (23.8 percent), and curve (23.2 percent) in 2021 for most of this arsenal, he swapped his four-seam and sinker usage in 2022. Gray threw a sweeping slider about 10 to 15 percent of the time before 2023, but he bumped his sweeper usage to 20.4 percent last year, making it his second-most used offering behind his four-seamer.
Notably, Gray bumped up the velocity on his sweeper from 82 mph (2021-2022) to 84.3 mph in 2023. Unsurprisingly, the sweeper lost a couple of inches of drop and horizontal movement with the added velocity, but the tradeoff seems to be worth it. The pitch has been deadly against both righties (.117 wOBA) and lefties (.110 wOBA), which is unusual for a pitch which typically performs better against same-handed hitters. For the league as a whole, right-handed sweepers allow a .257 wOBA against righties hitters compared to a .296 wOBA against lefties.
Twins Love the Sweeper
The visual below shows the 10 teams whose usage of the sweeper jumped the most last season:
The Twins had the highest sweeper usage as a team (9.7 percent), ahead of the Yankees at 8.4 percent. They also had the second-highest increase in sweeper usage, with the pitch jumping by 4.7 percentage points compared to 2022. That's slightly behind the Rangers, who increased their sweeper usage by 4.9 percentage points.
With Gray now on the Cardinals, we'll note they had the seventh-highest increase in sweeper usage from 2022 to 2023 at 2.7 percentage points. However, Miles Mikolas and Jack Flaherty never threw a sweeper, so we'll see if Gray continues to use it with the Cardinals.
Early 2024 Outlook
Gray's early ADP at pick 116 (36th among starting pitchers) puts him near Dylan Cease, Tanner Bibee, Cole Ragans and Justin Verlander. Gray seems due for ratio regression, and it's hard to expect another 180 innings or more given his health history. However, Gray's above-average skills and reformed sweeper appear to be something to buy into for 2024, as the pitch gives him a quality offering against both sides of the plate.
Michael King's Changeup
After being an above-average reliever in 2022 and 2023, Michael King was asked to start games in the final two months of 2023. From 2022 to July 2023, King boasted a 21.5 percent K-BB% and a 13.1 percent swinging-strike rate. In August and September of 2023, King made nine starts with a 26.2 percent K-BB% and an 11.3 percent swinging-strike rate.
The visual above shows the rolling graph for King's swinging-strike rates and ERA over the past two seasons. We included the changeup usage to provide context in the discussion. It's not a perfect correlation, but there were periods where King's changeup increases aligned with an increase in swinging-strike rate or a drop in ERA.
Should King Throw More Changeups?
For relievers, a diverse pitch mix seems to matter less, since they're only throwing for an inning or so each outing and aren't facing the same hitters multiple times. However, if King plans to continue being effective as a starting pitcher, the changeup should be part of that plan. In his two months as a starter, King's arsenal consisted of a fastball (61.6 percent), slider (24.4 percent) and changeup (13.9 percent).
That's slightly different from his role as a reliever in 2023. King used one of his fastballs 51.1 percent of the time, with the curve (33.8 percent) and changeup (15 percent) rounding out the pitch mix. Though King didn't drastically adjust his changeup usage, it has been one of his nastiest pitches from a swinging-strike perspective. That's evident in a 22.1 percent swinging-strike rate (2023) for the changeup, over two points higher than King's career average.
King's changeup silences lefties, evidenced by a .135 wOBA in 2023 and .093 wOBA in 2022, as seen in the graph above. It's a pitch that King should use more often to pair with his sweeping slider, which generated a 15.8 percent swinging-strike rate.
Early 2024 Outlook
King joined the Padres along with Drew Thorpe, Randy Vasquez, Jhony Brito, and Kyle Higashioka in the deal which sent Juan Soto and Trent Grisham to New York. With Joe Musgrove and Yu Darvish leading the Padres' rotation, King's role might be relatively safe. Musgrove had a shoulder injury, while Darvish battled an elbow injury, ending their 2023 seasons. The Padres also lack rotation depth, with Pedro Avila, Vasquez and Luis Patino being their most relevant other options.
King's early ADP of 143 puts him near pitchers like Hunter Greene, Chris Bassitt, Jordan Montgomery, Merrill Kelly and Bailey Ober. With the possible exception of Greene, the rest of that group is more proven, and a couple possess more upside. Ober landed in an off-season article of mine from last winter discussing Five Skilled Starters Without Clear Roles, so it's easy to put Ober ahead of King. If King uses his changeup more and it maintains its swinging-strike rate and effectiveness, it'll give him two non-fastballs that generate swings and misses at an average to above-average rate. Take the plunge on King if he falls past his ADP as an SP3 or SP4, though it's a risky move.
