Marcus Stroman's time with the Blue Jays has ended, as he's been sent to languish with the Mets of New York - a baseball team that seems to never run out of ways to baffle and frustrate its fanbase. While he was with the Blue Jays, Stroman showed a very strong collection of breaking balls, a potent sinker, and sometimes a cutter. Marcus was always good at getting hitters to pound the ball into the ground, but not always great at actually preventing runs, with a 5.54 ERA in 2018 being a particularly low point in his career.
To combat this ineffectiveness, Stroman and the Jays 'went with the times' starting late last season, and continuing this year, by having him throw his signature sinker a lot less, and throwing his cutter and curveball more. It's part of a trend around baseball of doing away with the sinker and seeking outs via the strikeout, rather than the worm-burner. For the fans of the Blue Jays, that might sting a bit, considering the great memories we have of Roy Halladay pitching to contact like one of the best the sport has ever seen. 'Sinkerballers' used to be an integral part of watching great pitching, and it seems we'll have to wait a bit to enjoy that style of pitching again.
When I saw which prospects were coming back in the trade, I noticed that Anthony Kay seems to be almost the opposite of the pitcher he was traded for. Not just that he's left-handed, but he's got an extreme flyball profile as well. His scouting report on MLB.com indicates that he has a fastball and a curveball that both feature a high spin rate. If that sounds familiar to you, it's because it should. Just this offseason, Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins traded away Aledmys Diaz to get Trent Thornton, another AAA-pitcher - at the time - who didn't have great numbers but has both a fastball and a curve that have been praised for their high spin rates.
What do we need them spin rates for, you may ask? Well, the nice thing about them is that you can get a measure of the movement of a pitch without having to interpret a scout's vague reports on 'late life', 'a little armside run' or 'sharp bite'. The downsides are still plentiful however. First of all, while a high spin rate sounds nice, it is not always clear how it contributes to making a pitch's movement better. In the case of an overhand four-seamer or curveball, like those thrown by Clayton Kershaw for example, it's quite simple, as the spin goes towards making the fastball 'rise' and the curveball drop. When the spin goes towards horizontal movement, whether that is good or not, the picture painted by spin rates becomes unclear.
Let's look at Corey Kluber. Kluber throws a sweeping curveball that moves like a frisbee across the zone from right to left (or the other way around if it's you in the batter's box). According to FanGraphs' pitch values, it has been twice as valuable as any other curveball. To use official terminology it has been 'completely bananas'. I imagined the previous sentence in Rowan Atkinson's voice, so apologies to those who aren't into British comedy. Regardless, Kluber's curveball (sometimes called a slider) is in a league of its own, right? But when we sort 2018's pitchers by curveball spin it becomes clear that Kluber is ranked only 111th out of 383 pitchers with a curveball thrown, more than 300 rotations-per-minute below familiar face Aaron Sanchez.
Spin rates, then, do not tell the whole story. Perhaps you never expected them to, but it seems their use is fairly limited even coming from low expectations. To determine which pitcher has unexpectedly good movement, you need to correct these numbers for velocity, then also adjust for arm angle. And then throw out all the pitchers who are using a different game plan, like cutters, sinkers, changeups, or sliders.
You may think I'm hating on spin rates, but I'm not really against the use of them as an interesting new tool. When I started working on this article I was very skeptical, but after some research I do see potential for spin rate info to be applied and enrich baseball analysis. However, I would caution at this stage to read too much into it. Having a pitcher with great spin is great, until he can't locate consistently. Or he never develops a good third or even secondary pitch. Basically, the same caution as trusting radar gun readings to do the scouting for you, except with the added limitation that spin rates have only been proven useful for two out of the six most common types of pitches.
So, if the claims that Anthony Kay has a high spin rate fastball are true, that is great! Good velocity and spin rate on a fastball from the left side means that maybe he'll develop enough command to become a pitcher not unlike J.A. Happ. It's far from certain, but the potential looks to be there, so we can hope. It's not a bad gamble by the Blue Jays organization by any means. And I love the fact the Jays got Simeon Woods Richardson, so the trade is okay with me. I don't think it's great, but it's okay.
Thanks for reading "Blue Jays Replace Sinkers with High Spin Rate Fastballs" by Jasper Bosman. If you have any questions or comments relating to this article, we encourage you to leave them below.
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