“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a saying that I have generally agreed with whether it be in baseball, or any other realm of life. But what happens when something does break? And what if we saw the break coming, and did nothing about it in fear that we did not want to mess anything up?
When it comes to forming development plans, it is all about opportunity cost. It would be great if every player could spend time improving everything, but there is simply not enough time and resources to do so. So when it comes to determining a player’s most optimal training regimen, what all should that decision be based on? And if a team recently drafted a college pitcher who dominated at that level, should the player development staff let him continue what he has been doing and “not mess anything up?” Or should they step in, push the player out of his comfort zone and work on developing something new for they believe if he does not change anything, he will waste away his valuable time and never make it to the big leagues?
Explore vs. Exploit
Considering all of those questions, I believe a player’s developmental trajectory falls into two main categories: explore and exploit. The “let’s take a risk and work on developing something new” method would be considered “explore,” and the “don’t mess anything up” method would be considered “exploit.” How exactly should players be bucketed into those two categories? There are many ways to utilize the idea of explore vs. exploit, such as a team in a rebuilding phase as opposed to one in a “win-now” mode. In this post, I will be discussing the implications in terms of pitch arsenal explorations vs. exploitations.
Quick Notes
The data and visuals below are Statcast movement data from the 2019 MLB season. Camden Kay (@k_camden) is responsible for the added juice to my original charts and heat maps that you see throughout, in addition to flipping the movement data to make the visuals more comparable to the Trackman and Rapsodo dashboards (CF view), as opposed to the typical pfx profiles that are from the catcher’s perspective.
We chose to evaluate pitchers based on Whiff % (higher=better) and wOBA against (lower=better). These two metrics are compared to the average of that individual pitch rather than all pitches together because some pitches inherently have higher whiff rates or lower wOBA's than others. Whiffs and wOBA could easily be substituted, but we wanted to show how pitchers with two different focal points—swing-miss stuff vs. weak contact inducers—could both utilize these ideas in a similar fashion.
When to Explore
Exploration should be based on many factors such as performance, age, previous programming, current potential, player interest, organization track record of development, among others.
Having an understanding of inflection points compared to where a pitcher’s arsenal currently resides is a highly beneficial tool in determining the best route of development. As much as we want to be optimistic, we need to be realistic in terms of what a player is capable of. If they continually exceed expectations, keep raising the bar.
Below is a hypothetical player’s 4-seam fastball (the black dot) in comparison to MLB whiff rates for the same pitch. The second chart identifies the inflection points, compared to league average (we want wOBA to decrease and whiff % to increase).
The pitcher above is one that I believe should explore the idea of increasing his fastball vertical movement. Because he is right on the brink of reaching that inflection point where an additional inch of movement could provide some substantial returns, both on whiff rate and wOBA, it is worth the time and resources to develop that pitch. This is always much easier said than done, and it is unlikely the player will be able to actually increase the vertical movement on their fastball without either 1) currently having low active spin, or 2) having to change their arm slot.
That being said, it is typically much easier to manipulate seam orientation and spin on breaking balls, so let’s see where the inflection points lie for right-handed curveballs.
This hypothetical pitcher’s curveball averages -10 inches of horizontal movement and -12 inches of vertical movement. To me, it is worth exploring if he can get to -15 inches or less (more negative) of vertical movement, where the inflection points lie.
What about the sinker/slider guy who relies on inducing weak contact?
With these two graphs, I’m primarily focused on wOBA since that is more indicative of inducing weak contact. For sinkers, it looks like there is substantial returns when horizontal movement becomes 16 inches or greater. For sliders, it looks like the same is true around the 9-10 inch mark.
When to Exploit
Knowing when to exploit is a little bit trickier for me because I generally have high risk tolerance, so if something doesn’t pan out, I’m ok with it because I know the thought process was there and in the end it was just a bad result. Most of the time, I would prefer the “explore” option, but that’s always much easier to say from the outside looking in, especially when it is not my playing career at stake.
What I’m really trying to get at here, is asking whether or not increasing movement on a certain pitch is worth the training economy when those improvements do not provide much additional success. We typically think “the more movement, the better,” but that is not always the case and I believe pitchers should look to improve in areas outside of pitch design when they are not close to points of inflection.
In terms of exploiting a pitcher’s strengths, I believe there are two sub-categories. 1) Pitchers who are currently within those inflection points, and 2) pitchers who are far off from those inflection points. If a pitcher is already having success within those optimal ranges, then it ain’t broke, so don’t fix it. If a pitcher is far off from that range, why spend time and resources trying to develop that? The player can allocate their time exploiting the strengths that got them into the system in the first place. Maybe it’s throwing harder or improving durability, maybe it’s commanding both sides of the plate, maybe it’s mixing pitches better or just overall exploiting their pitchability.
The hypothetical curveball below (-10 HM,-7 VM) is one that I believe should not focus much attention on improving through pitch design, because it is so far off from an inflection point of significance. Then again, if it is that far off, maybe it is worth deleting the pitch, or throwing it harder and molding it into a slider.
If it is decided that this pitcher is better off focusing elsewhere, here is an example of how training fastball velocity could be a more beneficial way to allocate his time.
As you can see from the velocity chart, inflection points can be used for more than just movement.
Considerations
By far the biggest thing to consider here is that it is much easier for me to sit here and say “go add x amount of vertical movement.” There’s so much to consider and I am not naïve to think that doing so is that easy. But understanding where pitchers have the most to gain in terms of improving that pitch is extremely important. I need to gain a better understanding of where velocity vs. movement trade-offs are worthwhile. For example, maybe a pitcher can add 7 inches of vertical break to his curveball, but that comes with a cost of 5 mph. Is that worth it? Cam wrote about this to some extent in his post.
I did not take a pitchers’ entire arsenal into account, either. My examples from above highlighted just one pitch. It’s quite possible that a pitch is performing better than expected because the pitcher pairs it well with another.
One of the toughest considerations that I touched on briefly in the beginning is the new prospect from college who has had previous success. What if those guys fall in the non-inflection zone, but they are getting good results? Is that a bad process and good result, which could signal poor future performance? Does a team step in and change something because they claim to see failure coming? And what if the player’s eventual downfall is due to the psyche of the organization trying to change something, rather than the poor pitch quality itself? I really believe that is a situation where the human element comes in…talk with the player to see if he is on board, explain how it has helped players in the past and back up why exactly you are making the suggestions partially through the use of the inflection point graphs.
Thanks to Cam Kay (@k_camden) and Tyler Zombro (@T_Zombro24) for their input.
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