Even though Spring Training is long behind us, we have no reason to stop looking into pitchers throwing new pitches. In fact, this is when the fun begins. Many pitchers will test new pitches in the spring but abandon them 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.
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.
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.
We’re going to mix it up this week (haha) by looking at the overall pitch mixes of four rookie starters who debuted this week in the hopes of seeing what we can expect long-term.
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Hurston Waldrep - Atlanta Braves
We’ll start with Waldrep since, of these pitchers, he’s the one I’m most interested in. I know the statline for his MLB debut isn’t good, but the start wasn’t as bad as that. He has some flaws, which we’ll get to, but he flashed clear upside and was hurt by a lot of bloop hits and one missed fastball location that ended in a home run. So what does Waldrep bring to the table as a starting pitcher?
In his MLB debut, he showed off a three-pitch arsenal of four-seam fastball, slider, splitter. In college, he did throw a curve that many scouting services thought was a solid pitch, but it has now become his clear fourth offering and wasn’t even used in the debut. Still, there’s a chance for it to become a bigger part of his arsenal moving forward. Yet, for now, it’s not really a factor.
The main offering is his splitter, and so that’s where we need to start. According to some minor league Stuff+ metrics, Waldrep’s splitter is the second-best non-fastball in the entire minor leagues this season behind Paul Skenes’ slider. The Braves telecast during the game mentioned that Waldrep learned the pitch during the COVID 2020 season but didn’t hone it to its current level until the summer heading into his 2023 college season with the Florida Gators.
Part of what makes Waldrep’s splitter so great is its lack of spin with rpms far below 1,000 rpm on a regular basis. He had an absurd 41% whiff rate on the pitch in the minors and continued to flash that dominance in his MLB debut with a 43% whiff rate against the Nationals. The pitch is 86 mph on average with less arm-side run than a normal splitter, which is part of the reason he feels comfortable throwing it to both-handed hitters. He can also throw it for strikes, locating it in the zone 50% of the time in his debut for a 62.5% zone rate. That’s good for a splitter. FanGraphs Stuff+ gave it a 90, which seems a bit low but Pitcher List’s PLV rating was also just 4.15, so we need to look into why these metrics dislike the pitch.
Fitting that Waldrep's first K comes via the splitter pic.twitter.com/uEx2WTAg6v
— Mark Bowman (@mlbbowman) June 9, 2024
Another important part of Waldrep’s arsenal is his improving slider. The pitch was a bit of an afterthought heading into this season, but he has improved the consistency of it this year which has been huge for his development. It averaged 87 mph with just two inches of drop and one inch of horizontal movement, so it’s a bullet slider. It had a 31 percent whiff rate in the minors and while Stuff+ liked the pitch in the debut with a 111 Stuff+ grade, PLV was less convinced with a 4.31 mark where 5.22 is average for a slider. This most likely is because PLV takes into account location and Waldrep had just a 38.5% zone rate with the pitch on Sunday.
This brings us to the biggest concern with Waldrep: his command.
Waldrep’s issues with command stem from a high-effort delivery that often leads to him falling off the mound to the first base side. Even going back to college, he had issues locating his four-seam fastball, leading to 3.3 BB/9 as a sophomore and a 5 BB/9 mark after he transferred to Florida for his junior season. Last year, in his pro debut, he posted a 4.9 BB/9 but that seemed to improve so far in 2024 with a 2.9 BB/9 mark and just a 1.98 BB/9 rate since the start of May. Posting a mark like that would be huge for Waldrep at the next level.
When he is throwing the four-seam for strikes, he’s able to miss bats with it since it has good velocity at 96 mph at a solid extension of 6.4 feet. However, it has just 15" Induced Vertical Break (iVB) and is more of a cut-ride fastball with less arm-side run than normal. We saw his issue commanding it in the debut, and, as you can see from the strike zone plot here from Pitcher List, the fastball location is all over the place.
His biggest mistake of the game was also a four-seam fastball he was supposed to land outside that he missed on. Instead, he threw an inside fastball to Keibert Ruiz who crushed it for a three-run home run. That kind of volatility is why people believe Waldrep has some reliever risk; however, I’m higher on him than that might suggest.
I see a pitcher with one truly elite secondary and another potentially plus secondary offering. There’s also a foundation that can get swings-and-miss on both sides of the plate but it’s lacking a true strike pitch he can command. We’ve seen pitchers get by without a good four-seam by just working on the location of it, but I’m not sure Waldrep will ever have great command of that four-seamer. Perhaps he needs to add a sinker instead or use the bullet slider earlier in counts to get ahead of hitters.
There are pathways to success here.
VERDICT: I’m not sure we’re going to see it “click” for Waldrep this season, but I’m intrigued by this foundation. Having two plus secondaries is always a good thing and his fastball command improved drastically in the minors this year. If that can continue, he could be a true high-upside fantasy pitcher given his strikeout potential. If Waldrep needs to go to another fastball variation to find his strike pitch, then it might take a bit of time for us to see that upside. Regardless, I think there will always be a slight risk of poor outings given his history with command issues, but that doesn’t mean he can’t put together difference-making runs of starts like what Tanner Houck is doing right now in Boston.
Cade Povich - Baltimore Orioles
Another big MLB debut from last week was Cade Povich, the 6'3" left-hander from the Baltimore Orioles. Unlike Waldrep, Povich doesn’t have a truly elite offering that stands out, but he has a deep five-pitch arsenal that works well off of one another. He understands sequencing and tunneling in a way that has led to plenty of minor-league success. In 56.2 innings at Triple-A in 2024, Povich had a 3.18 ERA, 1.11 WHIP, and 23.4% K-BB% which was driven by a 32.5% strikeout.
According to Brooks Baseball, Povich was relying on his four-seamer about 45% of the time in Triple-A and then mixing in his change-up and cutter about 17-18% of the time. He also threw his curve about 11% of the time and slider 9% of the time for a pretty spread-out mix of pitches.
The deep arsenal allows him to mix and match based on hitter-handedness. To righties, he relies on the four-seam 43% of the time, rarely throws the sweeper, and then throws his other three pitches 18-22% of the time. To lefties, he gets a touch more four-seam-heavy while also throwing the sweeper 30% of the time and the cutter 13%, essentially eliminating both the changeup and curve. With plus command of most of the arsenal, that gives him a solid foundation.
If we go by Stuff+ and PLV grades, the cutter is Povich’s best offering. It posted a 6.24 PLV, where 5.19 is the MLB average, and a 125 Stuff+, where 100 is MLB average. We know it’s a pitch he essentially only throws to righties, and he did a good job keeping it up in the zone in his debut with an 88th-percentile high location rate (hiLoc%). However, he doesn’t consistently get the pitch in on the hands, with just a 42% inside location rate (iLoc%), which is part of the season Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was able to hit it out for a home run to right field. The pitch did register a 16.7% SwStr% rate and got three whiffs on nine swings, so it has the makings of a decent swing-and-miss pitch.
Both Stuff+ and PLV like Povich’s sweeper too, just to a lesser extent. It gets a 127 Stuff+, where 100 is average, but a 5.52 PLV, where 5.62 is average for a sweeper. The issue is that, since Povich only uses the sweeper to lefties, he threw just three of them in the debut, so this sample size is very small. Orioles blogs have pointed out that Povich has struggled with command of the sweeper, so even though it has good movement, it’s a little-used pitch with inconsistent command.
Beyond that, nothing else in his arsenal graded out as above-average in his debut by either Stuff+ or PLV. If you look at his game log from that debut (courtesy of Pitcher List), you can see just eight whiffs on 44 swings, which was an 18% whiff rate, and a 22% CSW. Those aren’t great numbers.
Also, despite his high strikeout rate in the minors, he had just an 11.7% swinging strike rate (SwStr%), which seems to suggest he was racking up a lot of strikeouts on called strikes. Given that few of his pitches grade out as plus, it has me concerned about his sustained MLB success.
As you can see from the strike zone plot above, he tries to keep his four-seam fastball up in the zone and can do so with some success, but he also threw over 10% of them middle-middle, which is not ideal. His zone rate and strike rates on the four-seamer were pretty average in his debut, and he had just a 4.1% SwStr%, so even though it wasn’t hit hard, with an 11.1% Ideal Contact Rate, I don’t love a fastball with inconsistent command and a seeming inability to miss bats.
The changeup is another pitch he struggled to locate in the debut, and it lacks swing-and-miss upside, so it needs to be in the zone to induce weak contact. We tend not to put much stock in command results for MLB debuts because guys are amped up and filled with tension that can impact results. Still, a 42% zone rate and 58% strike rate from a pitcher who doesn’t have many plus offerings is something to keep an eye on moving forward.
The team context and home park for Povich are obviously ideal, but Dean Kremer is working his way back from a triceps injury, and the Orioles still seem likely to trade for one more starter to help with their push for a World Series. That makes me think Povich won’t get a legitimate chance to have a rotation spot this year.
VERDICT: I’m not as in on Povich as I expected to be. I love the deep arsenal of pitches, and I love the clear plan to attack righties and lefties; however, I don’t love the poor command of much of his arsenal when it comes to locating where he wants in the strike zone. Waldrep also had questionable command, but his raw stuff is superior, so he can get away with poor command more; Povich has to be more precise. I really don’t see any one pitch he can rely on here, which makes me nervous. Can he get soft contact and mix and match his pitches enough to produce some good starts? Sure, but without that strikeout upside, if his command wavers, good offenses are going to pounce on his offerings because his raw stuff is a bit average.
Drew Thorpe - Chicago White Sox
Thorpe emerged onto the scene last year in the Yankees’ system and then gained further notoriety when the Yankees traded him and others to the Padres for Juan Soto. The Padres would later turn around and make Thorpe the headliner in a trade for Dylan Cease, which means the young right-hander was traded for two All-Stars before even making an MLB appearance. If that pressure got to Thorpe, he hasn’t shown it since he put together a 1.35 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, and .172 opponent average in his first 11 starts in the White Sox organization.
So how is he doing it?
The right-hander has a five-pitch mix that’s led by a true 70-grade changeup. The pitch has solid movement and tunnels well with his fastball because Thorpe’s release also means that the pitch seems to appear from behind his head and then dive away from hitters in a split second, which makes it tough to pick up on. In his MLB debut, he showed that he has no problem using it to both righties and lefties and, what’s more, he doesn’t only throw it arm-side. He also froze left-handed Dominic Canzone with a changeup that started in around Canzone’s thigh and dove back over the plate.
Generally speaking, I don’t love betting on right-handed pitchers for fantasy that have a change-up as their best pitch because it doesn’t often lead to high strikeout totals, but I do love that Thorpe can seemingly throw his wherever and whenever he wants. The issue is that, while the rest of the arsenal is solid, nothing jumps off the page.
His fastball reached a max of 93 mph in his debut and averaged 91.3, which is not ideal velocity, especially from a guy who’s 6'4" and 215 pounds. It’s not a pitch that got many whiffs for him in the minors and doesn’t figure to at the big league level either, but he does have solid command of it and works hard to keep it on the edges of the strike zone. According to Pitcher List metrics, it has a 16.6 iVB but given his height, his height-adjusted vertical approach angle shows that it’s not a really flat fastball, so even though he kept it up in the zone a good amount, it graded out poorly with a 4.48 PLV where 4.95 is average.
He also throws a slider that he failed to really command with just a 30% zone rate. However, most scouting reports suggest that its plus depth makes it a solid offering and he generally commands it well. He didn’t showcase a good feel for it in his debut, but it was one start so perhaps that command will come through in later starts. I was more impressed by his cutter, which earned two whiffs on eight swings but also posted a 38 percent CSW. Thorpe threw it exclusively to lefties and pounded the zone with it well. He also kept it upstairs, which helped to induce weak contact. Yet, it seems like another pitch, along with his changeup, that will likely be better to left-handed hitters than righties.
VERDICT: I don’t love that he’s another rookie with a below-average fastball, but the changeup is a truly elite pitch and if the slider and cutter are as good as reports suggest or they looked on Tuesday then he has three pretty solid pitches and good enough command of the four-seamer to prevent giving up too much damage on it. I still don’t think this is an arsenal that will lead to many strikeouts, but Thorpe has great presence on the mound and a deep enough arsenal to provide solid ratios for all fantasy leagues. You just wish his team context was better for wins.
Mitch Spence - Oakland Athletics
OK, Spence doesn’t quite fit here since he didn’t debut in the last week, but he is a rookie and has done well in his first MLB starts, so I wanted to include him so we could look at his pitch mix and see if there is anything to support his solid stats.
Spence was a Rule 5 Draft pick by the A’s from the Yankees, so he had to make the Opening Day roster out of Spring Training or be sent back to New York. As a result, Oakland started with him in the bullpen, but since joining the rotation, the 26-year-old has a 3.12 ERA with 18 strikeouts to eight walks in 26 innings. He made 29 starts in Triple-A last year, posting a 4.47 ERA across 163 innings with just a 14.2% K-BB%.
If you look at the Brooks Baseball chart below, you can see a five-pitch mix from Spence in 2023 that he started to tweak a bit as the season went on.
What should stand out initially is that Spence does not have a four-seam fastball. He uses a cutter as his primary fastball, but also features a sinker and started to lean on his slider even more as the year went on. If you look at the graphic below from Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard, we can see not only how Spence is pitching hitters in the majors but also how his approach changes based on the handedness of the hitter.
Despite ostensibly throwing five pitches, Spence operates essentially as a two-pitch pitcher to righties and a three-pitch pitcher to lefties. He’ll show the other pitches enough to keep them in the back of a hitter’s mind, but he’s not using his entire arsenal regularly. In fact, he has relied less on the curveball as a starter, throwing it just 9% of the time versus 14% of the time as a reliever. Part of that has just been to use the sinker and change-up more often, but he is still throwing his cutter and slider a combined 81% of the time as a starter.
According to pitch grades, Spence’s slider is his best pitch. It has a 122 Stuff+ grade, where 100 is average, and a 5.66 PLV. He has a solid 16.3% SwStr% on the slider but also has a 73% strike rate and 48% zone rate, which are both 84th percentile or better. It means Spence is able to locate the slider well, which has led to a 32.2% CSW on the pitch. He also uses it all over the strike zone, throwing it outside to lefties 36.4% of the time, which is the 80th percentile. He has an 81% first-pitch strike rate on the slider, so he’s not afraid to start hitters off with it and, in that sense, it’s really his primary offering and not just a swing-and-miss pitch.
The cutter remains his primary fastball and grades out fine with a 5.36 PLV mark and a 92 Stuff+. The issue is that it doesn’t seem like a really good pitch. It has just a 7.8% swinging strike rate, which is to be expected of a traditional cutter, but he also has just a 50% zone rate with it and a 63% strike rate, so it’s actually less of a strike pitch than his slider. He also allows a decent amount of hard contact on the pitch, with a 47% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR). Perhaps that’s because he keeps the pitch low a decent amount, with a 48.4% low location (loLoc% against lefties and a 41.3% loLoc% against righties.
It seems likely that this is to have it pair better with the slider, which he also keeps low in the zone. The slider is seven mph slower and features far more horizontal movement. Right-handed hitters also have a 52% ICR against the cutter, so maybe he needs to be using the sinker more against righties, even if it doesn’t create the deception with his slider that the cutter does.
Since Spence’s slider has been more effective against right-handed hitters, the curve is an important pitch for him against lefties. Stuff+ thinks it’s fine with a 99 Stuff+ and PLV also likes the curve, which has a 5.56 PLV grade. It’s a good swing-and-miss offering to lefties with a 19.7% SwStr% and doesn’t allow a lot of hard contact since he does a good job of keeping it low in the zone. He also uses it both inside to lefties and outside, which makes it more difficult for hitters to look in a specific spot for it.
I honestly think he could use the curve more against righties. It has just a 33% ICR in limited usage with a 14.3% SwStr%. He is less able to keep the pitch low to righties and has a much higher mistake rate, perhaps because he is not confident in his command of it against hitters where he’s releasing it basically at their hip. Still, I think that pitch has some potential for more use.
VERDICT: Overall, the key to Spence’s success is that nothing he throws is straight. If he’s able to hit spots and mix and match the movement, then he should be able to induce more weak contact, but the strikeouts aren’t likely to be there and the arsenal isn’t as deep as it seems on the surface, so I don’t think he has a lot of margin for error. He seems like the exact type of pitcher who will consistently outproduce his Stuff+ grades or his x-stats, but he’ll also always be walking a bit of a tightrope.
