Thirty-three innings into his major-league career, Anthony DeSclafani was traded to the Reds. The Reds braintrust must have seen a few things they liked about his arsenal, and now it looks like he's got a rotation spot. He's got a good fastball, a decent breaking ball and good command -- that much most people agree on, even as they doubt him. So much of his future, though, hangs on the quality of his changeup.
Ask the pitcher to sum himself up, and you get what you might see the first time you take a look at DeSclafani's numbers. "I'm an aggressive pitcher, especially with my fastball," he said before a recent spring game. "Attacking hitters, going after guys -- I just like to attack the strike zone, really."
DeSclafani walked just two batters per nine innings in the minors, and only five in his first 33 major-league innings. Last year, the league's starters threw 56% fastballs, and the 24-year-old Marlin threw 70% fastballs. He was in the zone 49% of the time last year, and the league average was 42%. He knows himself well. His short description of himself is decent.
But most agree that he has a good fastball and decent command. And also that his breaking ball is good. It got 19% whiffs last year, and the major-league average is around 14%.
Still. Batters had an OPS of .850 against his slider last year. That might be because major-league hitters can be ready for those fastballs and breaking balls when the pitcher is obvious in trying to even the count.
"You have to be able to throw any pitch in any count," DeSclafani says he learned last year. The league threw breaking balls 20% of the time in counts with zero or one strike last year, and then upped that to 30% in two-strike counts. DeSclafani went from 20% to 40% slider usage once he got two strikes, and maybe that was too predictable.
But part of the issue here is the depth of repertoire. If he had more faith in the curve or the change, he'd have another weapon at his disposal in those moments.
The curve is almost a total unknown. "Just started throwing a curveball at the end of the year last year, in September," the pitcher admitted. He had thrown it before, but it wasn't any good. "It was a below-average pitch so I kinda canned it. Fixed the mechanics, and I spike it now."
Our systems didn't identify a single curve in September, but that doesn't mean he didn't throw this new spike curve in games. Take a look at his breaking balls, mapped by their horizontal and vertical movements -- with the color showing the month in which they were thrown. See that purple group at the top left?
That purple group looks like a new pitch. It averaged 85 mph compared to the 81 his slider averaged until September started, and it had less movement. We probably shouldn't say anything more about 14 new pitches in one month -- especially not that it got two whiffs, and that of the two put in play, only one was a single -- other than, yes, there is this new pitch, which has the chance of giving him two good breaking balls.
Still, the traditional argument about a young pitcher with a limited arsenal is about the changeup. DeSclafani has thrown 34 of those, at least, and gotten five whiffs!
Maybe more importantly, DeSclafani's changeup has good shape. It has nearly three inches more arm-side run and an inch and a half more drop than the average changeup from a right-hander. It might not have the biggest gap -- the gap between his fastball and change is about a half mile per hour smaller than average -- but it's a bendy change.
Only four righty starters last year had more horizontal movement than he did, and the pitch that most closely resembled his was Stephen Strasburg's excellent change (-9.2 x-mov, 3.1 y-mov, 6.7 mph difference). Surprisingly, DeSclafani gets all this movement without manipulating his arm action -- "not trying to pronate, just throw it like a fastball" he said of his mechanics.
"Whenever I throw it right, I get the good action and depth I want on it," DeSclafani said of the change. "The big thing for me is throwing it like my fastball. I don't try to do too much with it. Just throw it down the center of the plate and usually just let the ball work, drop out of the zone, or the hitter will just hit the top of the ball."
Given the movement on his pitch, DeSclafani does have a weapon on his hands, even if the velocity gap isn't huge. Harry Pavlidis found that movement was always better for whiffs, and that pitchers could use firmer changeups with less of a velocity gap for grounders.
The pitcher spent the Arizona Fall League working on the change, and feels like he's ready to throw it more. He's appreciative of the chance the Reds have given him, and is spending the spring -- like his nine strikeouts in the six innings against the Rangers last time out -- showing them they made a good choice. "I just want to show them what kind of pitcher I am and what I'm about so the managers and coaching staff can see for themselves," he said.
Yeah, but how does the changeup look, kid?
DeSclaRizzo
