Second Week: My Annual Jon Gray Update, plus Gerrit Cole and Akil Baddoo
It’s the second week, so now’s the time to overreact to some recent results.
Jon Gray will always be my breakout pick. I noticed last year that he started throwing his change-up to nearly at the level he used it his rookie season. The scouting report during the 2013 draft on his change-up was that it was “making progress” and that it was “the weakest of his offerings.” That’s fine, not every college pitcher has a ready made third pitch. But the results from Gray were less than desirable. Hitters posted wOBA in this order from 2015 until 2020: .434, .319 (okay!), .332, .416, .594 (oh no), .653 (very bad!!). From 2016 through 2019, Gray used this pitch no more than 7.4% with a low of 1.6% usage in 2018.
But in 2019, the usage rebounded. The results, as you can see above, were never great but Gray soldiered on, throwing it 13.5% last year. The interesting thing? Gray has never posted a whiff% lower than 21% using his change-up. That’s not bad, obviously there was something there that showed he could miss bats with it, but the issue was that when it did get hit, it was hit hard. I choose to see last year as Gray deciding to use a 60 game season to work on something new for future years.
Initially, I thought that Gray changed the shape of the pitch, but there’s no significant evidence showing that. The horizontal and vertical movement is well within the averages he posted in the past. Right now the biggest difference I see (and this is because he’s thrown the pitch 14 times), is that Gray is throwing his change-up to right handed hitters less than he ever has before. Generally he stuck to a 60–40 or 70–30 split favoring it against lefties, but now it’s a 93–7 split.
One more thing, which shouldn’t be discounted. Gray’s fastball wasn’t a liability in his first start. The pitch’s spin rate is right where it’s always been, which isn’t particularly superlative (23rd percentile in 2020). Nevertheless, his fastball has the highest whiff% of his career, and his contact based stats are in-line with the actual results: .286 SLG versus a xSLG of .255, a wOBA of .312 versus a .250 xwOBA. This was against a good Dodgers lineup as well.
If his fastball is improving, then that should only benefit his offspeed offerings as well. But it’s just one game, so it’ll be fun to see if he can continue it, especially since I expect the Rockies to shop him at the trade deadline.
You cannot stop Akil Baddoo, you can only hope to contain him. It’s fun just to look at his stat line: a .727 ISO, 330 wRC+ and a .679 wOBA. I’m all in on this. Don’t listen to Eric Logenhagen’s scouting report that “He has a good chance to stick with the Tigers as a fourth outfielder this year, but that might also be his ceiling.” Logenhagen did note that Baddoo does have “above average power and speed… an excellent understanding of the strike zone” but “with a far from simple or smooth swing.” That doesn’t faze me though. He’s going to keep this 108 HR pace for the entire year. He’s a slam dunk for AL MVP. He’s going to be a hall of famer. Don’t check back with me in 5 months, because his stat line will back me up.
I have bad news for anyone with a vested interest in getting a hit off Gerrit Cole: he has a fourth pitch now. Cole has nearly tripled the usage of his change-up to 14.4% this year, using it almost the same amount as his curveball. He’s only broken 10% usage in one season prior to now.
The kicker, much like with Jon Gray, is that Cole has produced whiffs with his change-up in past years with a previous high of 41.2% whiffs in 2017. He also seems more comfortable using it against both right handed hitters and left handed hitters (11 pitches vs. RHB to 17 pitches vs. LHB), whereas in past years he deployed it mostly against lefties.
If this is the case then I’m not exactly sure what anyone will be able to do against him this year. He can throw a fastball 101mph, a slider 90mph and his change-up is faster than Kyle Hendrick’s four seam fastball. He still hasn’t won a Cy Young award, but I’m pretty sure this is the year if he can avoid the dinger issues he had last year. I knew there was a reason the Yankees decided to pay him $36 million dollars a year.
