Drew Smyly Finds a Home
The majority of elite free agents are off the market at this point, with little under a month remaining before pitchers and catchers report. The small transactions, like Drew Smyly signing with the San Francisco Giants, are given little attention nationally. Also, you may have seen a brouhaha last week about rumors related to the Houston Astros using buzzers underneath jerseys to relay signs. I, however, remain laser focused on the task at hand, which is to over-analyze a small, possibly insignificant January signings.
Smyly was once a desired arm, pitching well in short spurts for the Tigers. He was a part of the David Price trade, where he ended up in Tampa Bay along with future top prospect, Willy Adames. He pitched really well for the Rays, again in small samples, before being traded to the Seattle Mariners in 2017. Since then, Smyly has undergone Tommy John and spent two seasons rehabbing before finally returning in 2019, splitting time between the Texas Rangers and the Philadelphia Phillies.
His 2019 was not good, at least if you combine his time with Texas and Philadelphia. If we focus on his second half with Philadelphia, we see something more hopeful. He cut his walk rate nearly in half, while upping his strikeout rate slightly. He also gave up far fewer homeruns, though he gave them up at a rate of 1.87 per nine innings, still too high.
With these changes, we can notice a change in Smyly’s repertoire. He was using four pitches with Texas: a four-seam fastball, a change-up, a curveball and a cutter. During his time with Philadelphia, Smyly ditched the change-up entirely, cut his four-seam fastball usage by about 10%, and upped both his curveball and cutter usage. The results, as I mentioned above, have me more hopeful that Smyly could be entirely serviceable for the Giants.
For his first two starts in July, Smyly was great (albeit against the Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates), throwing 13 innings with only one earned run, three walks, 13 strikeouts and no homeruns allowed. He went through a rough August, but he bounced back in September with a 3.65 ERA/3.98 FIP and 30 strikeouts to nine walks in 24 2/3 innings.
The Phillies and Smyly may have found a recipe that could work for him going forward. He has a curveball and four-seam fastball that should tunnel well together along with a cutter to work off the fastball. The curveball seems to be his money maker, at least with his time in Philadelphia. The cutter and four-seam fastball did okay, but his curveball consistently got outs, specifically strikeouts. If we look at PitchF/X, we can see why he upped it’s usage:
We can see that Smyly, both with Texas and Philly, had impeccable command and control of his curveball. He obviously had a plan for it, which was to live at the knees or lower, and he executed it.
Nearly half (33 out of 68) of the batters Smyly struck out in Philadelphia were via his curveball. When they did make contact, it was weak, with an exit velocity consistently below 83 mph. He used it more against righties than lefties as the season continued as well, only deploying it 20% of the time against lefties versus 36.1% of the time against righties.
We can also see that Smyly just seemed to have better command of his pitches in the second half. Take for example, his fastball:
In the first half, Smyly was constantly leaving his fastball down the heart of the plate against right handed batters. In the second half, we see a more precise command of the pitch, though there were some mistakes still in the heart of the plate. Smyly was able to live on the outside corner away against right handed batters. It might just be that after two years away from baseball that Smyly needed some time to become comfortable with his command again.
I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the pitcher we saw in July, but what Smyly showed in September was definitely something he can build on. I think if he continues to tune his usage of pitches and finds a good mix, that he could be a real success with the Giants, especially with their pitcher friendly ballpark. Really, the important thing for Smyly is to remain healthy, since he only threw more than 150 innings twice in his six healthy seasons.
This is a win-win for the Giants and Smyly. The Giants are working on building up a new core, now that the majority of the 2014 championship team is gone. If Smyly performs near the level of his 2019 September, they could flip him at the deadline to teams desperate for a starter. Smyly gets the chance to show that his late year run was not a fluke and possibly hit free agency again next year to get a longer deal, as he’s still only 30 right now. It’s a low risk deal, with high upside for both team and player.
