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The dog days of August are anything but for today’s pair of pitchers, who have both spent too much time off the field this season as injuries have drained their innings. A pitcher gets a bit of a mulligan in his first couple of starts back from the disabled list, and in the case of one of our pitchers, it had been two years since he had last stepped on a major-league mound, so one could understand if he took some time to shake off the rust.

Instead, he exploded out of the gate.

Tyler Skaggs
Skaggs hadn’t pitched in the majors since July 2014, having undergone Tommy John surgery and enduring the rehab necessary from such a major procedure, but he’s back. The lefty made his big-league debut on July 26, nearly two years to the day after his last appearance in the show. When a young pitcher works his way back from TJS, the hope is that he merely survives with most of his stuff intact (command is a bonus), but Skaggs has taken off with two outstanding starts that have raised eyebrows as to his potential in 2017 and beyond.

Date

IP

R

H

HR

BB

K

PC

July 31

5.1

0

4

0

2

8

97

July 26

7.0

0

3

0

1

5

88

Skaggs was ridiculously efficient in his first start, helped in part by the high-contact offense of the Royals, as he churned through 24 batters in just 88 pitches to finish the seventh inning (something that he accomplished in four of his first five starts of 2014). His ability to last deep into games without exhausting the pitch count is just another reason to like what we’re seeing from the lefty so far. Perhaps most impressive is the fact that his second start came against the most potent offense in baseball, as he shut down the Red Sox into the sixth inning with eight strikeouts among the 16 outs that he coaxed on the day. He tore through the minors during his rehab stint, posting a composite ERA of 1.60 over 39 innings split between three different stops, rocking a K:BB of 53:8 over that span. He pitched at the Triple-A level for 32 of those frames, where he compiled a 1.67 ERA and a 45:8 K:BB despite pitching in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League.

From a mechanical standpoint, Skaggs has been a fascinating case study during a career that has taken him from the Angels’ organization to the Diamondbacks and then back to the Angels, as the delivery has morphed considerably during that time. Back with Arizona, I proclaimed Skaggs as having one of the shallowest release points in the major leagues, thanks to a combination of slow momentum and a ton of spine tilt that artificially raised his arm slot but cost him distance at release point. I have written about Skaggs numerous times over the years due to the extreme nature of his delivery at times and the incredible changes that he has made to his mechanics over the years. A GIF is worth a thousand words, so here’s 3,000 words on how Skaggs’ motion has morphed over the past five years.

2012

2014

2016

His 2016 delivery is the best I’ve seen yet. Gone is the stay-back approach that used to cost him stride length and distance at release point, as Skaggs gets his forward momentum going earlier in the delivery and features a more powerful pace down the slope of the mound. He still has some rock-n-roll in his delivery, tilting the upper-half back towards second base a bit during his stride, but he leads with the hip and corrects the Z-plane imbalance into and out of foot strike. The glove-side is still sloppy, but one can tell that Skaggs is now reaching out rather than reaching up to find his release point, further extending his distance and giving opposing batters even less of an opportunity to identify incoming pitches before they must decide whether to swing.

The fastball command has been relatively sharp, but it’s the curve that has been giving batters fits. The pitch has a slight elevation in its out-of-hand trajectory, but the break is so sharp that batters often come up empty even when they see the pitch coming, and his improved extension has helped to mask this aspect of his breaker so that opposing batters do not get an early indication. Too often, we see swings like that of Mookie Betts in the 2016 clip from above.

Pitcher development can be fascinating, particularly in the more extreme cases of players such as Skaggs, who make significant mechanical adjustments en route to finding success at the highest level. He serves as a reminder that development can occur in bursts, and that a pitcher’s delivery at any given time represents a snapshot of his motion on the winding road of development.

Gerrit Cole

Cole missed more than a month due to a strained triceps in his throwing arm, and his first start back in action was less than encouraging, as he coughed up five runs (four earned) on seven hits and two walks in 4.0 frames at the Nationals. His performance prior to the injury was also less than what we’ve come to expect from the right-hander, as his strikeouts were down while his walks and hits allowed were up when compared to the 2015 campaign. The ERA has remained low for most of the season, as Cole has limited the opposition to just three homers on the season in 16 turns on the hill, and the right-hander hasn’t surrendered a homer since May 20, a span that covers eight starts.

Date

IP

R

H

HR

BB

K

PC

August 2

5.0

2

7

0

2

4

94

July 27

9.0

1

3

0

0

6

97

Cole’s last three starts were something else entirely, and the complete game that he tossed against the Mariners two starts ago was actually the first CG of his career. His most recent start is a bit less impressive when considering that he was playing the punchless Braves (one of the two runs was unearned), but all told, over his last three starts Cole has tossed 20 frames of 1.35-ERA baseball, including a 17:3 K:BB but three hit batsmen along the way. Granted two of those three starts were versus the Phillies and at Atlanta, facing the two weakest offenses in baseball, but the best game that he pitched was also against the toughest opponent.

His command was impeccable against the Mariners. Check out this pair of strikeouts, one with the slider and the other with a 97-mph fastball, and keep an eye on the catcher’s glove:

Paint.

There might as well have been a tractor beam hidden in Francisco Cervelli’s catcher’s mitt, because many of the pitches the Cole threw were guided like a heat-seeking missile to the target. His fastball command was particularly impressive

Last season, Cole leaned heavily on his slider and four-seam fastball to finish off strikeouts, but he is generally not getting the same results on those pitches that he had last season. For example, Cole’s slider registered an impressive 41.4-percent rate of whiffs/swing last season, but that value is down to 36.6 percent on the slide in 2016. The whiff/swing rate on a fastball is naturally expected to be much lower than it is on a breaking ball, but in relative terms, Cole’s four-seamer suffered an even more dramatic plunge when compared to 2015. Last season, Cole’s whiff/swing rate on the four-seam fastball was 18.5 percent, but this year that value has dropped all the way down to 13.3-percent whiff/swing on the four-seam fastball (numbers courtesy of Brooks Baseball).

Interestingly, his fastball velocity is down 0.6 mph from last season, on average, but the pitch=-speed of both his slider and his changeup have gone up about a half-tick. The net result is not just a split-second of more reaction time for hitters on his fastball, but it also means that his spread between fastball and offspeed has narrowed by more than a full mph, decreasing the ability for Cole to utilize effective velocity to his advantage. This puts a greater emphasis on pitch command as Cole’s margin for error has been effectively been slimmed, but performances like his complete game against the Mariners shows how far exceptional pitch command can take him.

Thank you for reading

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davidcox
8/07
I'm a new subscriber to BP and must admit, the type of analysis, the depth of analysis and the use of tools like this article by Doug using video and pitch analysis and yearly comparisons is really solid... very enjoyable and feeds into my own interest in learning how to analyze this great game... thanks!
darthack2661
8/08
Doug is the man! I'm a total pitching nerd, and his analysis has really helped me understand more of what I'm watching.