Even though many pitchers will test new pitches in the spring, they can often be abandoned when the regular season starts. It can often be more informative to see which pitchers have drastically changed their pitch mix or pitch shape after a few starts in the regular season. It’s not as common, and the changes aren’t as drastic, but it allows us to see how a pitcher is reacting to what he’s seeing from hitters and gives us a glimpse into what the pitcher thinks he needs to do to be successful.
With that in mind, we will continue with the premise of the series I had called Pitchers with New Pitches (and Should We Care) by breaking down notable changes in a pitcher’s pitch mix (hence “Mixing” it up). We’ll look at pitchers throwing a new pitch, have eliminated a pitch, changed their pitch mix meaningfully, or are showcasing a different shape/velocity on a pitch. It will mostly be positive changes, but sometimes we’ll point to a change we’re not excited about but could have a meaningful impact on a pitcher’s fantasy outlook.
I’ll continue my analysis with the simple premise that not every new pitch should be greeted with praise. A new pitch, like a shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to complement what a pitcher already has and fill a meaningful void in his current pitch mix. We want to check and see if he has any splits issues. We want to see what his best pitch(es) is and see if this new pitch would complement that. Then we want to see what this new pitch type is generally used for (control, called strikes, etc.) and see if that is something this pitcher needs help with. We can also now see the pitch in action to look at the shape and command and see if it’s actually any good. Once we’ve done all that, we can decide if the pitch is a good addition or not.
If you missed any of the previous editions of this series, you can click this link here to be taken to the tracker, which I’ll update as the season goes on. It also includes links to the original articles so you can read them in full if you’d like.
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Brandon Pfaadt - Arizona Diamondbacks (Curve)
I will admit that, in terms of fantasy baseball, I haven’t been a huge champion of Pfaadt in the past. Despite the hype he received last spring training, what we’ve seen from him in the majors is a pitcher with one plus pitch (his sweeper) and a tendency to give up hard contact and home runs. His best pitch being a sweeper has also led to pronounced splits since the sweeper is more effective against right-handed hitters. While there has been a discussion on Twitter about Pfaadt adding in a sinker and changing his pitch mix to combat his splits issues, it’s actually gotten worse this season.
Those are some pretty pronounced splits. Lefties are hitting almost .300 off of him and the .457 slugging percentage is significantly higher than the .352 he allows to righties. It’s a real problem and one that severely limits his upside in fantasy.
However, we saw something in his last start that might change that a little bit.
Pfaadt leaned way more on his curveball in his last start, throwing it 13.4% of the time against an Oakland lineup that has a ton of lefties. The pitch got three whiffs on five swings and also had two called strikes, which gave it a 60% whiff rate and 45% CSW. There was one ball put in play, which was a 104.9 mph single by Tyler Soderstrom, so it’s not a perfect day but it’s a pretty good one and one that should give us some optimism.
On Sunday, Pfaadt threw the curveball in the zone 55% of the time and got strikes on it almost 64% of the time. On the season, against lefties specifically, Pfaadt has an 87th percentile zone rate on his curve and 70th percentile strike rate, so he can command the pitch, which is nice to see. Now, almost 30% of those strikes are coming into the zone about belt-high, so that’s not ideal. However, Pfaadt also keeps the curve away from lefties, so even though the pitch has an 80% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) which makes you think he gives up tons of hard contact (and he kind of does), he’s also only given up singles on the curve to lefties this year. Considering his major home run issues, we’ll take that.
Getting the curve lower in the zone could also help add some swing and miss since the pitch has an 11% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) to lefties this season. But Pfaadt seems more intent on using it to get ahead, throwing 86% of his curves to lefties early in the count and then going to the sweeper and sinker in two-strike counts. Yet, Pfaadt throws 38% of his sinkers to lefties in two-strike counts and he also has an 18.8% PutAway Rate with it, which is pretty impressive and uncommon.
At the end of the day, what’s most important for Pfaadt is not that he dominates or overpowers lefties but just that they don’t dominate him. His sweeper has given up three home runs to lefties with a 43.5% ICR and 13% barrel rate. He can’t keep throwing it as often to lefties, but his fastball doesn’t miss bats against lefties and his changeup gets hit hard. If the curve can simply allow him to get ahead and into more advantageous counts, it could be an impactful pitch for him.
We’ve seen many pitchers, like Tanner Houck this season, improve their splits considerably even if they lose-swing-and-miss. Houck has a SwStr% to lefties that’s 2.5% lower than to righties, but he has found a pitch mix and attack plan that limits hard contact. If Pfaadt is able to land on similar changes then he can survive lefties and get his strikeouts against righties, and that can be great for both real baseball and fantasy baseball.
VERDICT: POTENTIALLY IMPACTFUL. It’s only been one start, so we don’t want to overreact, but Pfaadt with a breaking ball he can consistently command against lefties that will prevent them from jumping on his fastball and sweeper would be an important development. I still don’t believe there is some ace lurking in here, but I think it would make Pfaadt somebody you could start confidently in most matchups rather than a pitcher who is now more of a high-end streamer who you can’t start against certain left-handed-heavy teams.
Luis L. Ortiz - Pittsburgh Pirates (Cutter)
Yes, Ortiz has technically started just one game for the Pirates this season, but since June 8th, he has been operating as a bulk reliever behind an opener and has thrown four or more innings in four straight appearances. Over that span, he has a 3.72 ERA, 1.34 WHIP, and 20.3% strikeout rate. His last appearance, in Cincinnati, was his only traditional start of the season and he allowed one run on four hits in six innings while striking out seven and walking none. Yeah, that’s pretty good.
So should we be interested in Ortiz for fantasy?
For starters, we should note that Ortiz is a 25-year-old who was ranked as the 77th prospect in baseball by Fangraphs before the 2023 season. His ranking put him just below Tink Hence and Colt Keith and ahead of Gavin Williams and Bryce Miller. You can argue against that all you want, but it tells us there was some prospect pedigree here. The FanGraphs scouting report mentioned that he has an upper-90s fastball that he can “blow by hitters” at the numbers and also has “a nasty upper-80s sweeper that generated a 50% whiff rate and 38% chase rate in 2022. He commands it consistently enough to his glove side to project as a starter.” The report acknowledges some issues with his “sub-optimal fastball shape” but also mentions his improved command and suggests that “how impactful a starter may depend on how his changeup, currently a tertiary offering, develops at the big league level.”
Well, the changeup was solid in some respects last year with a 15% SwStr% and 33.3% ICR, but he struggled to command it, registering just a 25% zone rate and 49% strike rate. That led to some splits issues, with a .333/.418/.547 triple slash allowed to lefties and just a 13% strikeout rate. His slider still missed bats against lefties, but it got hit hard and his four-seam had just a 6.2% SwStr% to lefties and a brutal 57.4% ICR. He could not succeed by throwing that pitch 36% of the time to lefties.
So what did Ortiz do in 2024? He scrapped his changeup and added in a cutter.
The pitch has been a great early-count option for him, as he’s thrown it 74% of the time early in the count when he’s facing a lefty. Since he also commands it well with a 55.3% zone rate and 66% strike rate, Ortiz is able to get ahead early against lefties. The cutter also doesn’t allow much hard contact to lefties, with just a 40% ICR, mostly because Ortiz does a good job of keeping it glove-side, so it’s on the inner third of the plate.
That’s an important development because Ortiz is still throwing his four-seam to lefties over 30% of the time, but the presence and location of the cutter have made his four-seam better. This season, he has been throwing the four-seamer inside to lefties way more, coming inside 43.5% of the time (95th percentile) after doing so 34.4% of the time last year. With him also throwing the cutter to similar spots, he’s now giving lefties two fastballs to think about, which has dropped the ICR against the four-seamer to 40%. That’s not an ideal number, but it’s a huge improvement from last year and has helped Ortiz produce much better stats against lefties with a .254/.353/.408 slash line and a 20% strikeout rate. Those may not be eye-popping numbers, but they’re a big step in the right direction.
Now, the cutter isn’t missing bats to lefties with just a 6.6% SwStr%, so he’s not adding any strikeout value, but he’s doing a good job of limiting the damage he allows. It also allows Ortiz to get ahead on lefties more often, which means he’s able to use the slider more in two-strike counts, throwing it 37.2% of the time in two-strike counts to lefties in 2024 after doing so just 30% in 2023. That has also allowed his PutAway Rate on the slider to lefties to jump from 26.8% in 2023 to 34.4% in 2024. Those are nice changes.
Ortiz now has a four-seamer, sinker, slider combination that’s pretty good against righties and a four-seamer, slider, cutter combination that could be just good enough against lefties. Perhaps there’s also a world where he brings in the changeup sparingly against lefties too since it did a good job of missing bats, enabling him to produce average strikeout numbers against lefties as well.
VERDICT: MEANINGFULLY IMPACTFUL. Meaningful here is because Ortiz has gone from off the fantasy radar to a potential streamer. That is a big change, even though it’s not something that makes us run out and add Ortiz. He has a solid four-seamer that would miss more bats if he threw it up in the zone. The slider is a good pitch and the sinker pounds the zone for weak contact. Now that the cutter has given him less of an issue with splits, the profile is not that different from many starters we normally stream. For comparison’s sake, he has better numbers against lefties than Brandon Pfaadt but less strikeout upside and is on a worse team.
DJ Herz - Washington Nationals (Changeup)
This is a late addition to this article, but I wanted to flag something I saw in Herz’s start last night against the Mets, which is that he was throwing his changeup almost three mph harder than he had been before. That’s the kind of change that is likely not just adrenaline or random variance.
The added velocity costs Herz some drop since the pitch reaches home plate faster so gravity has less time to work its magic, but it seems that the left-hander picked up two inches of horizontal movement as well. He didn’t get tons of whiffs on the pitch on Tuesday, but he didn’t give up hard contact and was able to keep the pitch in the strike zone with a 66.7% strike rate. Considering command has been a big bugaboo with Herz in the past, the fact that he was able to keep this changeup down and in the strike zone is great to see. Perhaps it being harder with less drop makes it easier for him to command? Only time will tell.
However, we know Herz misses bats mostly with his fastball to right-handed hitters, but he will also throw his slider about 7% of the time to righties and it has an above-average SwStr%, so he doesn’t really need the change-up to be an elite whiff pitch. It being a well-commanded pitch is far more important to his long-term success.
VERDICT: POTENTIALLY IMPACTFUL. We’re dealing with just one start here, but if Herz can keep his change-up and cutter consistently in the strike zone, it will allow him to dominate with that fastball up in the zone and give us more starts like last night. I would add him just in case.
David Festa - Minnesota Twins
We’ll end by just taking a look at David Festa’s pitch mix to see what to make of the rookie. I wanted to do this for Festa because I watched the start and liked what I saw way more than the statline would indicate I should have. The 24-year-old is interesting because he was recruited as an infielder by colleges and then had a major growth spurt where he shot up to his current 6'6" frame. He was a 13th-round pick in 2021 and emerged in 2022 between Single-A and High-A. He pitched most of 2023 in Double-A, posting a 4.39 ERA in 19 starts and racking up a solid 30.4% strikeout rate, despite having a 9.6% walk rate.
That command was a bit of a concern after last season, as was his thin frame, which called into question his endurance. He allegedly spent a lot of time working on that over the summer and looked good in Triple-A this season, posting a 3.77 ERA through 14 starts with 87 strikeouts and 24 walks in 59⅔ innings.
As you might expect from a 6'6" pitcher, Festa has long arms and gets good extension on his fastball at seven feet, which is elite. He averages around 96 mph now (despite sitting in the low 90s in college), and can run it up to 100 mph. He gets decent Induced Vertical Break (iVB) at 16.6 and does a pretty good job of keeping the fastball up in the zone which helps him for swings and misses. The four-seam has improved this season which has been crucial for him as a foundation for success and early strikes.
However, his best pitch is his slider, as evidenced by this tweet from Sam Dykstra.
David Festa got 78 whiffs on his slider with St. Paul. That's the second-highest whiff total for a slider at Triple-A. It got whiffs on 44.8% of swings and had a CSW rate of 39.2%.
— Sam Dykstra (@SamDykstraMiLB) June 27, 2024
His changeup had a 41.2% whiff rate and 31.4% CSW rate, thanks to 14 inches of armside run. https://t.co/P7c62FI5d4
Any time you have a pitch that has the second-highest whiff total in all of Triple-A, that’s a pretty good thing. The pitch is 87 mph with a high spin rate which makes it more of a “tight slider” that doesn’t have much break or sweep. He also commands the pitch well, posting a 61.5% zone rate and 81% strike rate in his MLB debut. When you have a swing-and-miss pitch that you can also command for strikes, that’s a really good combination.
That fastball/slider pairing should be pretty good for Festa against right-handed hitters, but he also rounds out his arsenal with a really good changeup that posted elite whiff rates and CSW rates due to impressive armside run that causes it to dart and dive away from lefties. He didn’t command it nearly as well in the debut, with just a 37% zone rate and 52.6% strike rate, but it certainly plays as a third offering and a solid secondary pitch for lefties.
He had two breaking balls back in college but the Twins scrapped one of them because they blurred into each other a little too much. Some Twins blogs suggest that the team is still working to develop a curve that Festa can throw from his over-the-top armslot, which would give him a fourth pitch to round out his mix and perhaps be another strike pitch for lefties. Although, since his slider is not a sweeper, it will likely have less of a platoon splits issue.
The big thing for Festa will be command. At Seton Hall, his control was average and his walk rate regressed a bit in 2022 as he adjusted to throwing harder. The Twins broadcast mentioned that the team moved Festa to the third base side of the rubber to help with his command and while it did help, he has a 9.7% walk rate in Triple-A, which is only a slight improvement from his 2023 walk rate numbers. In his debut, he had a 51.3% zone rate, which was pretty solid overall and, if that can keep up, he should be in a good spot to remain in this rotation.
VERDICT: I’m certainly interested in Festa. There are some kinks to iron out and the fringy command could lead to some rough starts, but the strikeout upside is real and the three-pitch mix is a good one. The only obstacles to him sticking in the rotation are Chris Paddack or Simeon Woods-Richardson, so I believe that if Festa pitches well enough, he can force the Twins to keep him in the rotation.