Pitching 101: Dissecting Secondary Offerings

Pitching 101: It takes two pitches to be an effective reliever, and three pitches to start.
There are plenty of reasons this makes sense. Starters need to get through the lineup three times, and when facing a batter for the third time, it's particularly helpful to add a wrinkle that the hitter did not see in the first two matchups. Additionally, starters – more than relievers at least – have to face lefties and righties, and they need secondary pitches that break in opposite directions in order to reliably have a pitch that breaks away from each batter's box.

There are several ways to judge the effectiveness of a pitch, but since we're talking fantasy baseball, it's natural to gravitate to the swinging strike. Swinging strikes lead to the strikeouts we're all looking for. And, really, baseball is built on the strikeout, anyway. Let's start with the whiff.

So which starting pitchers had multiple non-fastballs that were better than average at getting the swinging strike? Let's take a look, setting the minimums low (100 pitches thrown) so that some small sample pitchers jump in. After all, we're more interested in tomorrow's breakout than yesterday's.

There are 10 pitchers that had three secondary pitches that were better than league average based on the swinging strike. Six of them would probably be among the more popular guesses: Felix Hernandez, Max Scherzer, Matt Harvey, Corey Kluber, Jake Arrieta, and Carlos Carrasco. If you're a pitcher, you want to be in the same club as these guys.

Two veterans that had good seasons last year also make the list. Jaime Garcia has been making this list ever since his arrival in St. Louis. He chooses to focus on his fastball and tries to get outs on the ground, and his lack of production can be attributed to injury more than anything else. Still, it's worth noting that his changeup and curveball are above-average. Garcia admitted that his slider, which used to be elite and was merely above-average last season, was still coming back in 2015. But the story is the same as it's always been: he's good when he's in there.

Erasmo Ramirez also has three above-average secondary pitches, and that might explain some of his breakout last year. His changeup is elite, and his curveball is slightly above average. The slider looks good too, but it's given up so many homers over the years. Ramirez said that the Rays had him using the slider as a 'strike-stealing' pitch — in counts where the batter expects a fastball and is likely to take a breaking ball — because he throws it in the zone so often. Many fantasy owners won't believe in Ramirez's success in Tampa Bay, but that is a mistake.

Two other names on the three-pitch list stand out, in a bad way. Chad Bettis and Michael Lorenzen. Are these guys going to even be in their rotations next year? At the very least, they may be worth consideration in deeper (NL-only) formats.

When you get down into the two-pitch guys, things are a little less certain. Sometimes having a good slider and curveball isn't enough if your fastball isn't great. Felix Doubront has two good non-fastballs, but his fastball is straight and his velocity is down considerably since his arrival to the big leagues. He's not necessarily a recommendation, even if he shows up on the same list as Jacob deGrom, Clayton Kershaw, and Dallas Keuchel.

Let's look for young pitchers without a huge track record instead. Guys like Kris Medlen are on this list, but his production weighs almost entirely on health. The promise of youth also means the guys below are pre-peak, at least. Velocity only declines once a pitchers reaches the big leagues, so let's try to get guys closer to their debuts. And let's talk about them in order, with the best sleepers coming first.

Only 15 pitchers generated more swinging strikes from their slider last year than 23-year-old Carlos Rodon, and all of the guys ahead him on the list (save perhaps Jason Hammel) are going to be high picks in drafts this coming season. That's especially impressive considering he didn't throw 140 innings and didn't show great command out of the gate in his debut.

"But what about the changeup" comes the refrain on a pitcher like this, and it's warranted. Rodon's changeup dropped two inches more than the average changeup, and had five inches more run than the average, and got more swinging strikes than your average change. It was called a ball more than his other pitches, and may have been the source of some of his walks, but another season of experience with the pitch could help that immensely. Further, as a third overall pick, there is plenty of upside for the big lefty.
When Raisel Iglesias signed with the Reds, he didn't make a Puigian splash. He was only a reliever in Cuba, and there were concerns about his small frame. He's 6-foot-2, but looked 175 pounds soaking wet. The 26-year-old had trouble maintaining velocity, too.

"Since the beginning of spring training, my main goal was to create more strength in my workout," Iglesias said about his size. "By the halfway point, we switched to more endurance and resistance training." The righty lost 1.8 mph of velocity on his four-seam fastball between the first and fifth innings in the first half. In the second half, he had that down to a 0.8 mph difference.

Now that he can maintain above-average velocity, he should be good to go. His slider was in the top quartile for starters by whiff rate, and his changeup, with good movement, was above-average. Iglesias has three arm slots he can use to confuse the batter, and can command his many pitches. He should be on everyone's sleeper list.

Going into the season, Rubby De La Rosa knew he had a problem. We talked about how he had to make his slider better in spring training, and he demonstrated that he was working on his arm speed on the pitch. Over the course of the season, he then added four mph on the slider and threw it twice as much as he threw it in 2014. The 27-year-old also doubled his whiff rate and cut the slugging percentage on the pitch in half. It appears as though he has figured something out with the pitch.

That's great because he throws a changeup that Pedro Martinez taught him, and throws 94-96 mph with lots of movement on his fastballs. The Arizona righty may not have great natural command, but this is the same story we saw with Carlos Carrasco. A tweak on a breaking ball, great velocity, and the confidence to attack the zone — that's how the Indians found themselves a great pitcher, and that's how you may find a great value this year.

When Jerad Eickhoff was included in the Cole Hamels deal, he wasn't a headliner. A 25-year- old that had never spent a full year striking out more than a batter per inning, he didn't have the groundball rate or the fastball velocity (91 mph) to suggest he was going to be a great pitcher.

What Eickhoff does have is an elite pitch. His slider got whiffs more than a quarter of the time he threw it, a rate that only Carrasco and Clayton Kershaw bested last year among starters. It's a small sample — 117 pitches — but it's a great pitch.

Speaking of samples, if you lower the sample so that his lesser-thrown changeup makes the cut, he actually has three secondary pitches that are above-average by whiffs. It doesn't have great movement when you look at it in a vacuum, but
compared to his fastball, Eickhoff's change looks more useable.

Even if the changeup doesn't work out, Eickhoff has options. His big curveball got more whiffs per pitch than Jacob deGrom's did last year, to put it in perspective. And though Eickhoff's fastball isn't above average by velocity, it has an extra inch and a half of 'ride,' or 'rise,' which is good for whiffs and pop-ups. As a bench pitcher in 15-team mixed leagues, or $4-5 NL-only buy, he offers more upside than similar pitchers.

Kyle Gibson had the same swinging-strike rate last year as Gio Gonzalez, Mike Fiers, and Jeff Samardzija. He had more whiffs than Sonny Gray and Shelby Miller, but he posted fewer strikeouts than the lot, and that's probably because the Twins prefer to have pitchers working to contact.

If he ever decided to go for more strikeouts, Gibson has the tools to pile them up. His changeup has above-average drop and fade, and got above-average swinging strikes. His slider was always his best pitch and got almost 50 percent more whiffs than the average slider. The righty didn't throw his curve enough to qualify, but if he did, he'd have three pitches with good whiff rates.

The good news is that Gibson must be noticing this. He's throwing the sinker less every month -- August and September were the first consecutive months in his career where his sinker usage dropped below 40 percent. More strikeouts means more value for Gibson this year, not less.

So there you have it, from mixed league mid-round values all the way down to bench picks in only leagues, sleepers can be spotted by looking for two or more high quality secondary offerings combined with a decent fastball. It's Pitching 101.

This article appears in the 2016 RotoWire Fantasy Baseball Guide. Order the magazine here!