Collette Calls: New Pitch Fact Check

The reduced velocity on the pitch is also allowing him to get more fading action as he sees the most horizontal movement on the pitch for his career:

McCullers has also backed up his words with actions as his changeup usage is currently at 17 percent on the season which represents a six percentage point jump on last year's usage of the pitch. The stuff looks great when he pitches this year, but two stinkbomb outings at Cleveland (7 ER in 4.1 IP), and Minnesota (8 ER in 3.2 IP) have inflated his ERA. The frustrating part about the Cleveland outing is the fact he faced them six days earlier and shut them down over seven innings.

Julio Teheran said he was re-working the grip on his slider: The goal of this work was to get tighter spin and better tilt on the pitch. Teheran's numbers to date are much like they were last year nearly across the board while he still maintains his home/road splits troubles. Opponents hit .214 against him, which is a 40-point improvement from his 2017 total and more in line with his 2016 number. Teheran has had some even-numbered year success regarding opponents' batting average throughout his career. It is not in any way predictive, but fun to look at:

2011 - .266
2012 - .217
2013 - .242
2014 - .227
2015 - .248
2016 - .222
2017 - .254
2018 - .214

Teheran is throwing his slider slower than he has in recent years, and like McCullers, is getting more horizontal movement on the pitch:

His stated goal for the pitch was to get tighter spin and better tilt on the pitch. The pitch is getting the horizontal movement, but it has no vertical drop to it this year, so it is acting more like a cutter than a true slider:

The good news for Teheran is the work on the slider has improved the results on the pitch as opponents are faring much worse against his slider in 2018 than they did in 2017. In fact, the struggles with the slider in 2017 look like an anomaly against the full backdrop of his career:

2013 .188
2014 .197
2015 .202
2016 .187
2017 .258
2018 .140

Marco Gonzales said he was bringing back his cutter: Gonzales shelved his cutter during his comeback from TJ surgery with the Cardinals but has brought it back with a flourish this year utilizing the pitch 16 percent of the time. The league is hitting .180 against his cutter, and he is getting swings and misses 11 percent of the time when using the pitch.

Gonzales needs the cutter to help neutralize righties because lefties have never really been a problem for him, but the same cannot be said for righties. This season, he has held them to a .278 average with a 17 percent K-BB%, which is double his career rate against righties. Gonzales has more wins through 12 starts this season than he had in his previous 14 starts of his career, and the supporting metrics back up what has been an incredible bounceback season for the southpaw.

Marco Estrada said he was re-working his changeup: The pitch failed him in 2017 as the league hit the pitch rather well compared to the previous seasons.

He was convinced it was a mechanical issue, and even mentioned he had been tipping the pitch to opposing hitters. He is throwing the pitch more than he ever has, but he once again getting unfortunate results. The whiff rate on his changeup is even worse than last year and at its worst level in six seasons:

Likely related to the lack of swings and misses is the fact the league is hitting his changeup better than they ever have since he began throwing the pitch in earnest:

At this point, Estrada is like that car you had in college that the mechanic eventually told you there was nothing else he could do for it at this point. Estrada is not missing bats, is allowing too many home runs, and most of his batted balls are of the non-groundball type which makes much of his contact tough to stomach. The secondary metrics back up his awful ERA, and he may be more effective out of the pen given his extreme struggles the third time through the order.

Jhoulys Chain said he was adding a changeup: Chacin is now 4-1 with a 3.39 ERA after yesterday's scoreless outing and win over the hapless White Sox. Chacin's strikeout rate is down, as is his home run rate despite the move from Petco to Miller Park, but the rest of his number are rather stable. This is in spite of the fact he has not done anything more with his changeup than he has in previous seasons. He is even doing slightly worse against lefties this season, but has been shutting down righties again as he did back in 2015 for Arizona. His success against righties is not from a new pitch, but rather from a new use of an old pitch as he is throwing his slider 52 percent of the time against righties:

Justin Verlander said he was going to bring back the changeup from the postseason and refine his curveball: JV is having an amazing season, but it definitely is not due to the use of his changeup. In fact, he has thrown 24 changeups all season. He may have refined his curveball, but he is using the pitch at nearly the same rate he used it last season. The whiff rate on his curve is at its best rate since 2008, but we're talking about a jump from nine percent to 12 percent.

Trevor Bauer said he wanted to give his slider more lateral movement: Boy howdy has Bauer lived up to his end of the bargain. The pitch has almost four full inches of horizontal movement this year, matching where it was back in 2014:

The change in the horizontal movement has not led to an increase in whiff rates. In fact, his whiff rate has fallen two percentage points from 21 to 19, but both rates are still above-average whiff rates on the slider. The increased movement has made the pitch tougher to hit as the league is hitting .097 off his slider this season compared to .195 in 2017. The slider has also helped his fastball as the whiff rate on that pitch is three percentage points above its 2017 measure.

Garrett Richards said he was going to emphasize his curveball in 2018: Richards threw 42 percent breaking balls in 2017; nine percent of those were curveballs. This year, he has thrown 50 percent breaking balls and 10 percent of those have been curveballs. Richards is enjoying a career-high 27 percent strikeout rate, but he has been uncharacteristically wild and has been prone to the long ball in 2018 as well. Like Bauer, he has won only a third of his 12 starts, but the ERA has been quite good despite the walks and homers.

Tyler Skaggs said he was adding a changeup this season: Truth be told, he already threw a changeup, and has thrown it a bit more this season, but not to the level where it is a true process change. The true difference has been more than tripling the use of his sinker, which has resulted in the second-best groundball rate of his career and helped reduce that 1.4 HR/9 rate from last season.

Cole Hamels said he was going to begin to throw a "Kershaw-like" slider: It is not unusual to see veterans try anything to extend their career. We have seen James Shields become a bit of a side-armer as he tries to hang onto his career, and Hamels wanted to make some type of adjustment after a terrible 2017 season. The new slider is indeed new as Hamels has never thrown a slider in his career until this season. He has used it five percent of the time this season while reducing his usage of his sinker. The nine percent whiff rate is not great, but the slider is helping his cutter play up a bit as its 15 percent whiff rate is quite good.

Overall, we appear to have a mixed bag of results of talk and action. Some guys are doing better this year despite not doing what they said they were going to do while others are indeed better due to a process change. I get asked every season why I put the time and effort into scraping new pitch stories from January to March, and my answer is the same each season: a new pitch can make a measurable impact on a pitcher's performance if they put it to use. Bauer, Hamels, Gonzales and McCullers are four good examples of that this year.