Dylan Bundy Spits Hot Fire
Can you guess how old Dylan Bundy is? I swore he was 29 years old. He’s actually 27 years old! If it felt like years since his debut, it’s because it actually has been eight years since he threw 1 2/3 innings at age 19 for the Baltimore Orioles. Since then, he’s had Tommy John surgery and calcification in the back of his shoulder, among other injuries.
Bundy came with high expectations, and when he was healthy in the minors he pitched well. It has not been quite as smooth as a major leaguer, but that’s not to say he hasn’t pitched well. His talent level has fluctuated between slightly above and slightly below league average, a far cry from an ace workhorse drafted 4th overall in 2011. His scouting report used to tout a mid-to-high 90s fastball, but nowadays it sits in the low 90s.
That is not to say he cannot pitch. Bundy has always generated about league average strikeout rates and generally avoided walking too many batters. One issue has been the number of homeruns that Bundy has allowed. Specifically, he has given up 1.64 homeruns per nine innings for his career. The Orioles fully embraced their rebuild and traded him to the Los Angeles Angels over the summer where Bundy has taken a leap in performance.
This is where I provide the caveats to analysis of this season. Nothing really matters. The sample sizes will be less than half of a normal season no matter what. A player can absolutely go on a hot streak for 60 games without meaningfully improving on any underlying skills. With that said, Dylan Bundy’s first three starts have been extremely impressive.
His K% has jumped to 31.3%, far and above his career average of 23.2%. His BB% rate is also 2.5%, about a third of his career average of 7.7%. Also, the homerun problems? Seemingly nowhere to be found! His HR/9 rate has plummeted to 0.83, nearly half of his previously mentioned career average. But how did he do it?
For one, Bundy has upped the usage of his secondary pitches: his slider, curveball and change-up. Bundy has been progressively limiting his four-seam usage, but now it seems like he’s found the perfect mix. He throws his four-seam fastball about 33% of the time, nearly the same amount of his slider at 29% and upping his curveball usage to 12% and his change-up to 18%. Is this a simple case of throwing your best pitches more often? Maybe, because there does not seem to be any discernible change in the movement of his pitches, nor did he adjust his release point.
Though, there is a matter of deployment of said pitches, which I dove into with my Tyler Chatwood piece earlier this year. Bundy has not just adjusted his pitch usage overall, but how he uses them in certain counts and against either right-handed or left-handed batters. He seems to have methodically decided to deploy the secondary pitches in specific situations. Two tables for you, courtesy of Brooks Baseball:
Scream all you want about comparing ~600 innings of pitch usage to just ~21 innings of pitch usage, but I am driving this analysis bus straight into the small sample we have. It’s really not all that hard to see if you look at the highlighted cells. Bundy has replaced first pitch fastballs with first pitch breaking pitches and offspeed, though he still throws fastballs to lefties in 0–0 counts about 44% of the time. Bundy seems comfortable starting both righties and lefties with a curveball. If not, he will throw the slider to righties and change-ups to lefties.
Actually, Bundy is throwing majority sliders to right-handed batters at this point, with the exception being when he’s behind in the count. But it is not just that he is throwing these secondary pitches more, he’s also commanding them. Let us use his curveball as an example: 18 of 25 first pitch curveballs have been a called strike. He is getting ahead early with his slider too, generating 8 called strikes and whiffs out of 14 first pitch sliders. That is 26 first pitch strikes versus 40 batters where Bundy is gaining an early advantage.
Overall, his zone rate (percentage of pitches in the strike zone) for his curveball is over 68.6%, far above his previously career high of 48.2%. His zone rate for all pitches sits at 57.8%, five percent higher than his career average. Bundy is aggressively attacking the zone with all his pitches and getting ahead on batters. When he gets into two strike counts, Bundy is deploying his slider frequently (though he threw more fastballs than sliders to generate strike three in his most recent start).
Bundy’s ERA and FIP are not too far apart at 2.08 and 2.48, respectively. Bundy is also tied for the league lead in innings pitched with Shane Beiber at 21 1/3 innings. But here is where I dampen some of the excitement by mentioning that Bundy is sporting a BABIP of .184, something he and basically every pitcher has never done before over an entire season. Projection systems like ZiPS and Steamer predict a BABIP anywhere from .286 to .313 going forward.
Statcast does have some evidence that Bundy is at or near what his expected performance should be based on the contact he’s been generating. His exit velocity sits at 85.4 MPH, with a xBA (expected batting average) of .181 and a xERA (expected ERA) of 2.11, which sit in line with his current BABIP and his ERA.
He also is posting xwOBA (expected weighted on-base average) of .234, which isn’t far off from his current wOBA of .195 but a little off from his xwOBACON (expected weighted on-base average on contact) of .313. This isn’t to say we should expect him to continue sustaining these numbers, just that these three starts sure seeming to have some evidence that Bundy has tangibly improved.
There’s also a matter of the defense playing behind him. Bundy is benefiting from leaving behind the Baltimore defense that ranked second to last in UZR/150 and dead last in DRS in 2019 for the seventh ranked L.A. defense. Funny enough, L.A.’s defense ranks 18th currently while Baltimore ranks 4th in UZR/150.
While the defense might benefit Bundy’s BABIP, the above-mentioned peripherals and command of his pitches seem to indicate that Bundy has found a formula that works for him. Yeah, this all could come crashing down in a week’s time, but it is fun to see someone as talented as Bundy was once considered, to finally find success. With the MLB’s pitching becoming more homogeneous by the day with high spin rate/high velocity fastballs, it is a nice change of pace to see a pitcher using an arsenal that is not the sexiest in terms of miles per hour and succeeding with it.
