It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I’ll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch.
The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher’s outlook. Only now, I won’t just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to determine if the recent results are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth investing in or if they’re just mirages.
Each week, I’ll try to cover change for at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you’ll find it useful, so let’s get started.
Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he’s now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also features a great strike zone plot, which allows you to see how the entire arsenal plays together. I’ll also use Alex Chamberlain’s awesome work with his Pitch Leaderboard.
Robbie Ray - San Francisco Giants (New Curve Shape, New Slider Shape, New Changeup)
Robbie Ray has been one of the best pitchers in baseball through the first two months of the season, pitching to a 2.44 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, and 28.4% strikeout rate. While much of that is simply a return to full health, there are a few tweaks to Ray’s pitch mix that I think have helped him put together his best stretch of production since 2021.
For starters, Ray has added a changeup this season, throwing the pitch exclusively to right-handed hitters, against whom he uses it nearly 18% of the time. The pitch is almost 85 mph with 11.5 inches of horizontal run and close to 11 inches of drop. He throws it all over the strike zone, and while it’s primarily used low in the zone (69%), he does throw it up in the zone more than average and that’s likely to tunnel with his four-seam fastball, which also has over eight inches of horizontal movement given his arm angle at release.
Ray has used the changeup to steal strikes early in the count, using it 68% of the time in early counts; however, he will also mix it in in two-strike counts and has an above-average PutAway Rate on it, which measures how often a two-strike pitch results in a strikeout. Overall, the pitch has an above-average 61% strike rate and an impressive 24% swinging strike rate (SwStr%). It doesn’t get hit hard, with just a 30% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR), and gives him an important fourth offering to righties since righties have hit his slider and curve relatively hard, even if they do also miss bats.
The other big change has been shape changes on both his slider and his curveball. This season, the slider has 1.5 inches more horizontal movement and also 1.6 inches more drop. The added movement has also given him more confidence to throw it in the zone. He has a higher zone rate and strike rate on the pitch and has focused less on burying it inside to righties or keeping it on the outside corner to lefties. That has brought down the overall SwStr% and ICR, but much of that has to do with him using the pitch early in the count to righties as a way to get ahead or generate weak contact. The pitch has also posted a 15.3% SwStr% and 19% ICR to lefties, which is great.
He has also seen the zone rate increase on his curve, and you have to wonder if the move to spacious Oracle Park over these last 20 total starts has caused him to be more comfortable pitching to contact. This season, his curve has slightly more sweep but nearly five inches more vertical break. The sharper vertical break pairs better with Ray’s four-seam fastball, which has strong vertical movement as well. That might be part of the reason the curve has an above-average called strike rate to righties, which is who Ray uses it primarily against.
At the end of the day, these changes don’t make Ray a drastically different pitcher, but they widen his arsenal from just the fastball-slider guy he used to be, which has led to far less hard contact and a strong 30% CSW. None of what he’s doing should be viewed as fluky.
Jameson Taillon - Chicago Cubs (New Changeup)
Since May 1st, Jameson Taillon has posted a 3.16 ERA, 0.87 WHIP, and 19.5% strikeout rate over 42.2 innings in seven starts. OK, that strikeout rate isn’t great, but is the rest of it sustainable? It feels like a big part of it is due to Taillon’s increased reliance on his changeup.
Taillon is also throwing a slightly different version of the changeup this season, adding nearly two inches of arm-side run and over two inches of drop. He’s also cut over 1.5 mph on the pitch and killed some of the spin as he has switched to a kick-change grip. As you can see from Alex Chamberlain’s chart above, Taillon has also raised his arm angle on the pitch as the year has gone on, perhaps getting more comfortable with a release point that allows him to command the new grip.
Overall, the changeup has seen a huge jump in SwStr%, posting a 23.1% mark this year, up from 7.5% last year. He’s also throwing it in the zone more and has a 71% strike rate on it, after having just a 59% strike rate in 2024. Oh yeah, and the pitch is allowing just a 23% ICR. All of that is tremendous.
As you’d expect, he’s using the pitch exclusively to left-handed hitters and is more comfortable using it in two-strike counts. Last year, he used his changeup just 10% of the time in two-strike counts, and it had a 9% PutAway Rate. This season, he’s using it 28.5% of the time in two-strike counts and has registered a 19% PutAway Rate. That’s important for him because his sweeper is used only to righties, his cutter is not a swinging strike pitch, and his curveball has a below-average PutAway rate to lefties, so he needs that changeup to give him a solid two-strike option other than his four-seam fastball.
This is not going to make Jameson Taillon an ace or a fantasy asset when it comes to strikeouts, but I think it gives him a safer floor and makes him a streamer in shallow formats and a must-roster player in deeper formats rather than just being a streamer in deeper leagues.
Tanner Bibee - Cleveland Guardians (Arm Angle Change, Sweeper Usage, Curve Usage)
It has been an up-and-down start to the year for Tanner Bibee, but I’ve started to see some pitch mix changes that I felt were worth digging into. In the first six starts of the season, Bibee had a 4.36 ERA (4.68 SIERA), 1.30 WHIP, and 18.4% strikeout rate with a 9.5% SwStr%, 28.8% CSW, and 31.3% ICR. Not awful marks, but a poor swinging strike rate and a SIERA that suggested he was earning his mediocre marks.
However, he started tweaking his pitch mix in May, which you can see in the table I made below, and in the seven starts since, he has posted a 3.38 ERA (3.79 SIERA), 1.13 WHIP, and a 21.1% strikeout rate with a 10.5% SwStr%, 27.9% CSW, and 37.5% ICR.
In his two starts in June, which you can see in Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard below, he has continued some of those earlier modifications. In both of those starts, he was tremendous through six innings before fading in the seventh. In those two starts, he has also posted a 24% strikeout rate, 12.3% SwStr%, 28.2% CSW, and 38.9% ICR, so while the contact allowed is getting a bit harder, the swing and miss is coming back a bit.
I immediately noticed that Bibee’s arm angle had changed pretty drastically throughout the season. Now, that could be an intentional overall shift, but it could be that Bibee has different arm angles on different pitches, which you can see in the chart. So if he were to alter his pitch mix significantly, which is what he’s doing, that could change his average arm angle. However, we can see that he has a little more carry/rise on his four-seam fastball, which is improving its overall performance. He also has a flatter cutter, which has similarly led to far less hard contact and better overall command of the pitch, and suggests that the arm angle change is an actual change and not just the result of a new pitch mix distribution.
Another big part of Bibee’s recent success has been the evolution of his sweeper and increased use of his curveball. The sweeper, in particular, has a few things that stand out. For one, Bibee has raised his arm angle on the sweeper by about five degrees. That’s not just a random sample or a potential mistake; you can see the huge change in vertical release point on the chart above. The new arm angle has led to a shift in his sweeper movement profile. Since May, his sweeper has gotten over 1.5 mph harder and tightened up its horizontal break while adding nearly two inches of drop. That has led to improvements in SwStr% and CSW but also more hard contact, likely because Bibee needs to alter his locations to account for less overall movement on the pitch.
In his last four starts, Bibee has a 15.7% SwStr% on his sweeper after posting a 10.4% mark in his starts before May 22nd. He’s using it less frequently early in the count, likely to account for its increased swing-and-miss abilities, but is throwing it more often when he gets deeper into the count (2-2, 3-2, etc.). The added drop has also likely made him more comfortable using it to lefties, as he’s increased his sweeper usage by over 7% in his last four starts.
Bibee has also started using his curve more as the season has gone on, specifically using it more in two-strike counts and more often to lefties. He could be relying on it more often because the cutter has not been as successful for him early in the season, but I also think the curve is a nice addition against lefties when paired with the changeup and four-seamer. The curve comes out of the same tunnel as his two fastballs, and since it’s a late-breaking curve, it stays in that tunnel for longer than you’d expect. It also has a similar pitch height to his changeup but breaks more vertically, while the change has armside run. That creates solid tunneling with the rest of his offerings to lefties. The curve itself has a 15.8% SwStr% against lefties over the last four starts, with a nearly 32% CSW and 74% strike rate.
I think Bibee is trending in the right direction with these changes. The decrease in reliance on his four-seam fastball and sinker is working because he has the secondaries to fill in the gaps. The curveball works early in the count to lefties, as does the changeup, and the changeup could even be used to righties more early on. The new sweeper shape gives him more swing and miss ability, and the cutter has flattened, which is improving its overall performance. If Bibee continues to use his more dynamic sweeper and keeps tunneling his curve effectively, he could get back to being a 26-28% strikeout rate pitcher with a low-to-mid 3s ERA.
Colton Gordon - Houston Astros (Pitch Mix Review)
After covering three pitch mix changes for veterans, I wanted to dive into an overall pitch mix review of Colton Gordon, the Astros left-handed rookie who has earned a spot in the rotation due to injuries and has a 5.11 ERA (3.30 SIERA), 1.38 WHIP, and 20.8% K-BB% in 24.2 inning across five starts this season. Below, you can see Kyle Bland’s chart that breaks down Gordon’s pitch shapes and usage in his last start against Cleveland, as well as highlighting the specific results of those pitches.
Gordon starts his arsenal with a four-seamer that he uses more often to righties than lefties. The pitch is just 91.2 mph from the left side with 11 inches of horizontal run and 14.8 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB). It is a flat fastball with a 1.0 Height Adjusted Vertical Approach Angle, but he doesn’t keep it up in the zone at all. He does a good job of getting it inside to lefties, but it catches far too much of the plate against righties, which has led to just a 7% SwStr% and 46% ICR. That’s concerning.
He also adds a 91.6 mph sinker, which is his primary fastball to lefties, but also doesn’t miss bats to them while posting a 44.4% ICR. So neither of his fastballs misses bats or gives up weak contact. That’s a bad start.
He does have a good sweeper as his primary secondary pitch, which he throws to both righties and lefties, and has above-average swinging strike rates to both. However, righties also hit the pitch hard when they do make contact, which isn’t entirely surprising, and he probably needs to stop throwing it early in counts as often to them as he has been. It can be used as a chase pitch to righties when he’s ahead in the count, but he can continue to use it regularly against lefties because it’s a truly dominant pitch there.
His other best secondary pitch is an underutilized curveball. He uses the pitch exclusively to righties, and it has an above-average zone rate, strike rate, and SwStr%. It’s a big breaker at 74.5 mph with over 15 inches of horizontal break and nearly six inches of drop. He has thrown it 97% of the time early in the count, but it really can be used for swings and misses late in the count based on how it’s performing as a whiff pitch. In fact, he really should be using it far more at the expense of a changeup that he uses 9% of the time to righties but misses no bats and gives up a 46% ICR.
Overall, there’s not a ton here that stands out to me. I do think the sweeper is a great pitch against lefties and can be a good swinging strike pitch for righties. I think he can use his curve more often to righties to give him two solid secondaries, but the changeup is not great, and he’ll need to hide his fastballs to both righties and lefties, which will always make him a bit of a minefield. If we see his curveball usage tick up then I feel a bit more confident using Gordon as a streamer in plus matchups, but that feels like the ceiling for me right now.
