Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?: Cole Ragans, Bailey Ober, and more

Spring Training is underway, and we’re already inundated with stories about pitchers who have come to camp with new pitches, which means it’s time for another season of the FSWA-award-winning series Pitchers with New Pitches (and Should We Care). In this series, I take the simple premise that not every new pitch should be greeted with praise. A new pitch, like a shiny new toy, might be exciting on its own, but it also needs to complement what a pitcher already has and fill a meaningful void in his current pitch mix.

Instead of just celebrating that some pitchers are throwing new pitches, we want to look at what the pitcher already does well and what his pitch mix is missing. We want to check and see if he has any splits issues. We want to see what his best pitch(es) is and see if this new pitch would complement that. Then we want to see what this new pitch type is generally used for (control, called strikes, etc.) and see if that is something this pitcher needs help with. When we can also see the pitch in action, then we want to look at the shape and command and see if it’s actually any good. Once we’ve done all that, we can decide if the pitch is a good addition or not.

Luckily for you, I’ve done all that work already. After some brief analysis of the pitcher and what role this new pitch might play, I’ll give you a simple verdict as to whether or not we should care about this new toy or not. You can check out Part One here if you missed that and also Part Two here.

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This is my fourth season doing this series, and it’s one of my favorite things to write. I hope that you enjoy it. It’s also important to note that this is the first time many of these pitchers have thrown these new pitches in a meaningful game, so the overall quality and consistency may get better over time. I’ve tried to take that into account in my analysis. We should also note (for this article) that I will be including pitchers who have reworked or revamped a pitch to make it “new” even if it was technically a pitch they already threw.

Just a special shoutout here to Alex Tran, who has been putting together a list of pitch mix changes that he shared in the Pitcher List discord channel. Having one document with all the projected changes is a massive help.

Cole Ragans already came into training camp as one of the most talked about starting pitchers in baseball given the way he finished the season after being traded to the Royals. In 12 starts for Kansas City, he posted a 2.64 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 89 strikeouts in 71.2 innings. He showcased a huge velocity bump that allowed his entire arsenal to play up but also added in a slider that he used 14% of the time in the first half after not using it at all before the trade.

In his first start in Spring Training, he touched 101 mph on his four-seam and showcased even more Induced Vertical Break (iVB) on the pitch then we saw last year. Of course, it’s too early to know if that will stick, and we’re not here to talk about velocity gains, but it’s clear Cole Ragans is continuing to develop and grow as a pitcher.

But what are we here to talk about? Well, according to Royals’ beat writer Anne Rogers, “Ragans dove deeper into the development of his slider, which was a key pitch for him last year, and has played around with a two-seam fastball that could help him with lefties.”

So, as we’ve done with every pitcher, let’s see if these changes will actually make a meaningful difference for Ragans.

We’ll start with the slider, which had a 26.1% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) last year while grading out as a clear plus pitch by both Stuff+ and Pitcher List’s PLV metrics. Ragans was also able to pound the zone with the pitch, registering a 71.5% strike rate; however, he did give up average hard contact with a 37% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR). He kept the pitch low and threw it glove-side (inside to righties) 63% of the time, so perhaps we’d like to see him burying it in a bit more, but there’s nothing wrong with the pitch. I’m not sure if the tweaks he’s making this off-season will do anything to improve the quality of the offering, but if he has more confidence in it and throws it more than 14% of the time, we could be looking at another step in his development just from usage alone.

So, what about the two-seam fastball?

Well, in 2023, Ragans only had one fastball, so he threw the four-seam 46% of the time to lefties. It didn’t miss many bats with an 11.1% SwStr% and gave up a 38.5% ICR, as opposed to a 42% rate against righties. It still registered a 50% groundball rate and he threw it in the zone 56% of the time, which is 67th percentile in baseball. I guess one flaw may be that he threw the four-seam inside to lefties just 23% of the time while he threw it inside to righties 31% of the time. He could be looking at the two-seam as a way to jam lefties inside, but the four-seam wasn’t a weak pitch for him against lefties last season.

Perhaps the biggest issue is that Ragans doesn’t like to use his curve or change-up to lefties, so last year he was mainly four-seam and slider and then also mixed in his cutter 15% of the time to lefties, but that pitch got hit really hard with a 20% barrel rate. The two-seamer could just substitute for that cutter usage which would mean instead of adding a great pitch for lefties, he’s simply adding a fine pitch and removing his worst pitch. That’s still a net positive.

VERDICT: MINIMALLY IMPACTFUL: I’m a full believer in Ragans but mainly because I’m a believer that what he did last year was real. I don’t think the tweaked slider or new two-seamer will make any major difference. However, if he uses the two-seamer to lefties instead of the cutter then he should be better against lefties simply by removing his worst pitch. That raises his floor a bit, which isn’t nothing.

Cristopher Sánchez has been flying a bit under the radar coming into this season despite a strong 2023. After joining the rotation on June 17th, Sánchez posted a 3.32 ERA, 1.02 WHIP, and 24.2% strikeout rate across 95 innings (17 starts). A lot of that success came from clear changes as well.

Matt Gelb of The Athletic wrote about how the Phillies tore Sánchez “down to the studs to instill better mechanics.” They lowered his lower arm slot, which helped make his changeup a legitimate out pitch, and then Sánchez took that further by adding 10 pounds this offseason. He hoped that, after figuring out his command, he could now get back the velocity that he used to have when he was beginning his professional career.

So far this spring, that’s worked. He threw harder in his spring debut than he did all of last season, showcasing a two mph gain on his sinker in addition to featuring his new cutter.

I said above that I wasn’t going to get into velocity gains in this article, but I do want to note that I don’t know if I love that Sanchez is throwing harder. Part of what makes his sinker so effective is that he gets tons of horizontal movement with good drop, which enables him to keep it low against lefties but throw it both inside and out on the corner. It’s part of the reason he gave up just a 19% ICR against lefties on the sinker. Will the added velocity change the shape or movement on the pitch? That could make it less effective.

But now, this is where we get to the new pitch. The sinker is far worse against righties. It allows a 50% ICR, 10.4% barrel rate, and just a 3% SwStr%. Yet, Sánchez still throws it 40% of the time to righties because he doesn’t have enough other pitches at his disposal. His change-up eats right-handed hitters up, and part of its success is because of how it mirrors his sinker. That’s why Sánchez gets a 91st percentile called strike rate on the sinker. He doesn’t need to abandon it because that could harm the effectiveness of the change-up, but he probably doesn’t need to throw the sinker 40% of the time.

The issue is that the slider is not a good enough option to add in place of the sinker. It allows a .288 average, a .519 slugging percentage, and 41% ICR to righties while producing a below-average SwStr%. As a result, Sánchez allows a 9.4% barrel rate and a .260 batting average overall to righties and just a 2.1% rate and a .133 batting average against lefties.

That’s where the cutter comes in.

The Phillies believe the cutter will tunnel well with the sinker and give Sánchez what some people refer to as the “Banana Peel Effect” where both pitchers approach the hitter from a similar angle, but the sinker falls away from righties while the cutter will dart in. “The cutter’s been pretty good,” said Phillies pitching coach Caleb Cotham. “And it’s tough for guys with his slot to throw true cutters. It’s something to maybe create some indecision in the zone. Maybe he can throw one changeup less to a righty. So they see it maybe three times and it’s gone. He can save a changeup.”

I love that last note from Cotham because it’s one we forget. The cutter could be useful not only because he can use it to limit hard contact against righties, but also because it means he can be more selective when using his best pitch and deploy it in a way that prevents hitters from being able to time it or predict it. I haven’t seen the cutter in action as much as I would like, but I’m intrigued by it.

VERDICT: MEANINGFULLY IMPACTFUL. The added cutter isn’t going to do anything to Sánchez’s strikeout rate, so it’s not going to make a huge difference on his fantasy profile. However, I do believe it will make it more likely that 2023 isn’t a huge fluke. We may not see such a low ERA or WHIP again, but if Sánchez can reduce hard contact against righties then he should be a less volatile pitcher, which we like to see.

Bailey Ober – Minnesota Twins (Cutter)

Bailey Ober is another pitcher who’s been the talk of spring training because of early velocity increases. He’s been pushing 95 mph early in spring training, which had Bryce Harper saying, “Good luck to anybody in the Central” after facing Ober this spring. While 95 mph might not seem overly fast, since Ober is 6’9″, he gets tremendous extension on his release, so 95 mph from him may seem more like 99 mph to a pitcher of normal height.

Of course, it should be noted that Ober also peaked at 94.2 mph in the spring of last year and then settled under 92 mph during the regular season. As with the pitchers above, we don’t want to read too much into his velocity spike, but Lance Brozdowski also pointed out that Ober seems to have increased his release
height by four inches, which has added ride and velocity to the four-seam. We’re not analyzing that here because it’s not his new pitch, but I did want to point that out because it’s worth keeping an eye on in the coming starts.

Anyway, what we do want to talk about is Ober’s new pitch, which is a slider. Not wait, it’s a cutter. Well, nobody is sure and Bailey Ober doesn’t care what you call it.

What we do know is the pitch has been about 86 mph this spring with two inches of glove side break (away from right-handed hitters). Last year, Ober’s slider was 81 mph with 11.6 inches of horizontal break, so whether you want to call this a gyro slider or a cutter, it’s certainly a new weapon for Ober.

But is it one he needs?

Last year, Ober had an above-average 15.2% SwStr% and gave up little hard contact with just a 34.4% ICR. As a command-first pitcher, Ober pounds the strike zone at a 67% clip, and, as noted above, gets above-average whiff rates both in the strike zone and outside of it, but he gets below-average called strikes, which often indicates that hitters are off on tracking the movement of his pitches but aren’t really fooled by the pitch sequencing itself since nothing really freezes them.

Ober also didn’t seem to many any major issues with splits last year since left-handed hitters slashed slightly worse than right-handed hitters with a .228/.280/.349 line, while righties slugged .457 off of Ober. His four-seam gave up just a 32% ICR to lefties and had a 14.6% SwStr% and a .198 batting average against in part because he does throw it up and inside to lefties a good amount. The pitch was slightly worse against right-handed hitters with a 38.3% ICR and .265 average despite having a higher swinging strike rate. Some of that could be because Ober gets the four-seam inside far more against lefties than righties.

However, when you look at his slider, you start to see real issues with splits. While the pitch was good against righties with a 36% ICR, 16.7% SwStr%, and .243 average against, it got hit harder and missed far fewer bats against lefties with just a 9.5% SwStr% and a 64.3% ICR. Wow, that’s, um, a lot of hard contact. That’s also part of the reason Ober only threw the slider 10% of the time to lefties.

So this should be where the gyro slider or cutter comes in. Since it’s harder and with less looping movement, he can use it off of his four-seam fastball more, potentially getting hitters to swing over it if they see four-seam out of the hand or even jam them inside. With those two pitches inside, it will allow his change-up to be even more effective in diving away from lefties.

It’s also possible that Ober tries to use the cutter against righties at times too. By creating differentiation between his four-seam and slider, he can now have three pitches against righties that now look similar out of the hand but with different movement profiles. Perhaps that helps to alleviate some of the issues he had with his four-seam against right-handed hitters.

VERDICT: MINIMALLY IMPACTFUL. I think this new pitch will be good for Ober but not a massive difference-maker. It could help him improve against lefties by no longer needing to throw his slower slider, but he wasn’t bad against lefties to begin with. It could also help him to offset some of the four-seam fastball issues against righties, but those also weren’t major issues. At the end of the day, this is a nice pitch to add to his arsenal and will give him another weapon to keep hitters off-balance or throw off their timing, but it almost gives Ober a safer floor rather than a higher ceiling.

Chris Paddack – Minnesota Twins (Cutter/ Hard Slider)

Over the last few years, the Twins have become known as an organization that allows it’s pitchers to use outside resources to alter their pitch mix. We’ve seen both joe Ryan and Pablo Lopez go to Driveline to add new pitches and now both Chris Paddack and Bailey Ober have come into came with gyro sliders (although it’s unclear where they developed them).

Much like with Ober, Paddack is hoping to use his new cutter to complement his existing fastball and give him the third pitch he’s been searching for for years so that his change-up no longer has to do so much heavy lifting. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Paddack throw a full season, but in his 108.1 innings in 2021, he threw his four-seamer 61% of the time and his change-up 26% of the time. The curveball was his third pitch that year, but it gave up a 46% ICR with just an 11.7% SwStr% and got very few chases out of the zone. It also graded out poorly by both Stuff+ and PLV metrics and was more of a show-me pitch than anything of substance.

What we also saw in 2021 was that Paddack had major issues with splits; however, his issues were against righties. That’s not entirely surprising since his best pitch is a change-up, which he used 22% of the time against righties in 2021. It also gave up a 40% ICR and a .355 batting average against which is less than ideal. In that 2021 season, Paddack held lefties to a .214/.258/.344 slash line but righties hit .325/.354/.547. Oh, wow. That’s not good.

Since that season, Paddack has only thrown 27 combined innings, so we don’t have a lot to go off of, but we do know that right-handed change-ups almost always perform better against left-handed hitters considering how they dive away from the batter. As a result, it makes sense that a pitcher whose best pitch is a change-up would struggle against righties if he doesn’t have another pitch he can go to besides a four-seam fastball that has good extension and iVB, which allows it to perform better than the velocity might indicate.

From all of that, we can be sure that Paddack needs this new pitch to be a weapon against righties. If he plans to use it as a true cutter then it might not be the pitch we’re looking for. However, it’s also clear that Paddack doesn’t even know how he’s truly going to use it yet: “I’m trying to learn how to use it in certain counts, to aggressive hitters, behind in the count. There’s still some room to throw it harder, but I think that will come over time. The more I throw it, the more comfortable I’ll get. That’s how I developed my changeup, so I’m trusting the process.”

Given the pitch type and how long it often takes pitchers to feel confident in using their new pitches often during regular season games, I’m not sold on the idea that this pitch will make a difference for him in 2024.

VERDICT: TO BE DETERMINED – LEANING TOWARDS NOT IMPACTFUL. I think I might be out on Paddack here. I know people love to think about his upside, but he has a career 4.21 ERA and posted a 5.07 ERA with a 21% strikeout rate in his last full season. He showed major issues against right-handed hitters during that last full season and doesn’t appear to have changed his pitch mix or approach in a way that would suggest growth in that area. I will certainly be watching his slider over the next few starts and don’t mind if you draft him as a bench stash in case things click, but I would certainly not be drafting him over Edward Cabrera, Jameson Taillon, DL Hall, and other starters going after him.