Collette Calls: End-Gamers Off to Hot Starts

Once we all knew exactly how long the baseball season would be, assuming ALL players start taking the guidelines more seriously, we knew variance would reign supreme this season. That said, I still cannot grasp the concept that 5-10 games into the season, depending on the situation, that the pitcher with the leading swing-and-miss rate (min. 50 pitches thrown) is Chasen Shreve? 

1. Chasen Shreve - 28 percent
2. Luis Castillo - 25 percent
3. Jalen Beeks - 24 percent
4. Grant Dayton - 23 percent
5. A.J. Minter - 22 percent

The leaderboard looks a bit different when we raise the minimum to 100 pitches:

1. Luis Castillo - 25 percent
2. Jalen Beeks - 24 percent
3. Shane Bieber - 22 percent
4. Max Scherzer - 21 percent
5. Trevor Bauer - 20 percent

In both cases, Jalen Beeks (741 ADP) rates highly. This is the same Beeks who worked as a bulk guy last year and won six games with a 4.41 FIP and an 11 percent K-BB%. This season, he has a 1.72 FIP and a 41 percent K-BB% having struck out 14 of the 29 batters he has faced this season. 

Coming into the season, Beeks said he was dropping his cutter and adding a slider.  The other thing he has done is move as far to the third base side of the pitching rubber as legally possible. The pitch data at BaseballSavants shows that the cutter is still around, but the curveball is gone and Beeks is mostly going changeup and four-seamer this season. Beeks goes FF/CH against righties, and more FF/CT against the lefties:

Beeks's curveball was a usable pitch for him last season with a 27 percent whiff rate and a .272 xwOBA, so its disappearance is intriguing. The 2020 cutter is not the curve as it's coming in at 85.4 mph rather than the 75.1 mph the curve averaged last year, so this isn't a pitch classification issue. Beeks has dialed back the use of his fastball as the pitch was not good for him last year:

Overall, the stuff is not that much different. He is getting a bit more run on his changeup, and his heavy use of it is making his fastball look better than it really is. He has a 69 percent first-pitch strike rate, which is affording him the change to get ahead early and use his changeup more often. He is not starting games, but rather coming in as the next man up, and has done well in the role even if he does not have a decision to his credit. The secret to his success will be limiting him to a time through the lineup, unless he is going to bring the curve back if the club decides to stretch him out further in the bulk role.

Tyler Chatwood (629 ADP) is now 2-0 with a 0.71 ERA, 0.79 WHIP and 19 strikeouts in 12.2 innings. This is a stunning turnaround for a guy who walked more batters than he struck out two seasons ago and found himself relegated to middle relief last season. Chatwood did not work on a new pitch this offseason as much as he wanted to tinker with an existing one; his cutter. Chatwood talked to The Athletic in early March about the work:

"I'm in a pretty good place. It's good to get in there when you feel good and then you have a baseline for what you want to do. It's nice to have that reassurance. That's when we started throwing a backdoor cutter. That could be a big pitch for me if I can get that down. So that's one thing I worked on in there. I see the visuals and I see where I started and where my hand was."

He has now become a guy that primarily works with a sinker going one way and a cutter with a lot of horizontal movement and drop in another, as the gif below shows:

He has mostly kept his two-semer on the inner half and the cutter knocking on the backdoor against righties, as it has been a recipe for success for him in recent years as he has limited righties to a .174/.314/.272 line in 502 plate appearances against righties. The trouble has come against lefties who hit him at a .293/.401/.464 clip the last three seasons in 733 plate appearances. This year, his new approach has led to drastically different outcomes against lefties who are hitting .133/.212/.200 against him in 33 plate appearances. He still throws the sinker, but he is getting two more inches of break on that cutter than he had last season, and the league has not adjusted yet as they're 0-for-12 with nine strikeouts when Chatwood uses his cutter. In fact, the league is just 3-for-43 the last two seasons when the cutter is the final pitch of the plate appearance. 

Poor command has always been the thing that has held back Chatwood from harnessing his stuff. The fact his swinging strike rate is nearly double (17.2 percent) what it was last year (9.3 percent) speaks to just how well the new approach is going for him. 

Yusei Kikuchi (ADP 474) has no wins to show for his effors, and even a 4.66 ERA and 1.34 WHIP are not much to write home about, but that does not tell the complete story with him. Kikuchi looks like a different pitcher, both with velocity and repertoire this season.

That is not a pitch classification error; Kikuchi has dropped his curveball and added a cutter. He has also added three miles an hour to his fastball and changeup, converting from a finesse guy to a power pitcher this season.

The new approach and repertoire has allowed him to strike out one third of the hitters he has faced this season. He had a rough first outing against the Astros, but came back very nicely against the Athletics.

Seattle is not going to help with runs and the bullpen is still shaky, but Kikuchi can help in strikeouts, and perhaps more if he can repeat what he did against Oakland on Saturday night.

Colin Moran (ADP 593) leads the league in home runs as play begins Sunday. Cue the "Age 27" theorists who point to the corner man's age as the reason he is having a breakout opening to the season. He had 24 home runs in 968 plate appearances the last two seasons, and has five through his first 30 this season. He did not hit his fifth home run until the 54th game of the 2019 season.

The stats do not lie; Moran is hitting the snot out of the baseball  this season:

He says he made a mechanical change to his approach, replacing a leg kick with a toe tap to his front foot. In looking at a home run video from 2019 as well as one from this season, I see the same front leg action. Moran hit .292 with a .444 slugging percentage against fastballs last year, including eight of his 12 homers. Breaking balls gave him fits with a .230 average and a .381 slugging percentage in 2019, but he has killed breaking balls in the early season two homers and a double in eight plate appearances. The 63 percent HR/FB ratio is comically unsustainable, but Moran is well his way to shatter the homer projections for him in 2020, and he is going to do so while also earning in-season first base eligibility.