Should Devin Williams only throw changeups?

A hypothetical that doesn't make a whole lot of sense...until you start to think about it for a minute or two.

Jun 01, 2021

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The Orioles and Diamondbacks, folks, they are bad.

Baltimore lost its 14th consecutive game when Hansel Robles pulled off a Houdini and picked up the save for the Twins on Monday afternoon. Arizona didn’t quite get that far, but did lose 13 in a row before a win on Sunday (they proceeded to let a lazy fly drop between two confused outfielders, intentionally walk a guy and then give up an RBI hit to Jacob deGrom in a blowout loss Monday).

It got me to thinking about the worst Brewers losing streak of my life in 2004 when they lost 12 straight games (the longest in franchise history was 14 in 1994, and, yes, the actual worst losing streak in terms of pain came in 2014 but we aren’t talking about that year any further). Here are some fun facts from that 12-game skid from August 18 to August 30 of the fabled summer of ‘04.

The Brewers gave up more runs (87) during the streak than they had strikeouts (79).
Chris Capuano made two starts during the streak. He gave up 15 runs (all earned) and got 15 outs.
Phillies pitcher Cory Lidle hit a homer off Wes Obermueller in a 10-0 loss.
Glendon Rusch picked up a three-inning save in one of the games.
The Brewers snapped the skid when they scored four runs off something named John Van Benschoten and hung on for a 4-2 win over the Pirates.
Doug Davis got injured in the second inning of that game, which, along with a Chris Capuano injury, led to a rotation of Sheets/Victor Santos/Obermueller/Ben Hendrickson/Jorge de la Rosa/Gary Glover to close out the season. Amazing.
Sheets’ worst start of his spectacular ‘04 season came on 8/23: 6 IP, 10 H, 6 ER, 1 BB, 5 K in a 8-3 loss to the Cubs

Fun stuff. Or something like that.

Let’s converse.

The Changeup Challenge

~Curt

A thought, relatively fleeing, crossed my mind the other day while watching Devin Williams’ fastball get hit around a bit.

What if Williams only threw changeups?

I sent that exact question to a friend as we texted about the game and soon thereafter quickly forgot about that absurd idea. Until Williams’ next time out when he ran into some trouble off of the fastball again, that is.

Is...is it really that absurd of an idea?

Okay, yeah, it’s definitely absurd. Guys can’t excel in the league throwing literally only changeups.

But what if that changeup is the best changeup in baseball?

Alright, that’s enough, brain. Let’s investigate.

Williams has struggled to establish consistent success off his four-seam throughout his 60 career big league innings--even during his Reliever of the Year campaign in 2020.

It’s a decent swing-and-miss pitch (27% whiffs/swing), but when it gets hit, it’s trouble. Opponents are batting .324 with a .632 slugging percentage (five homers, four doubles, one triple) off Williams’ changeup for his career. This year, those numbers are even worse: a .429 average, .623 wOBA and .929 slug.

The charts below display just how much worse it has been in 2021 than a year ago.

Why, exactly, Williams’ fastball has failed to even be an average pitch is a bit confounding. Velocity is down this year to 94.8 mph from 96.6, but at neither point is that not still a firm speed. It has 98 percent spin efficiency, which basically means that almost all of its spin comes from backspin or sidespin, the types of spin that give a pitch a “rising” effect. (Josh Hader also has a similar spin efficiency, which is one of the primary reasons his mid-90s heater is one of the most unhittable pitches in baseball.) The pitch has a normal spin axis of a typical four-seamer despite begin thrown at a lower release point than average, which would indicate it is getting decent movement with some deception mixed in, as well.

Yet, even with The Airbender in the back of batters’ minds at all times, Williams isn’t fooling them with the fastball.

It could be that hitters are sitting fastball because they know they have no chance against the change, but they swing at 40 percent of four-seamers and more than 50 percent of Airbenders. So that theory doesn’t seem to hold up.

It could be command, which is almost always in play when discussing a pitcher’s struggles. While Williams has certainly left too many fastballs near the middle of the zone, only 27.5 percent of his four-seamers this year have been in the zone and “middle-and-down” in Brooks Baseball’s zone quadrants.

It could be that the pitches don’t pair well together and hitters recognize fastball out of the hand.

Whatever the case is, we’ve reached a sample size where we can definitively say that without some serious tweaks or tinkering, Williams’ fastball is going to have a tough time being effective against big league hitters.

So, back to our initial question.

What if Williams only threw changeups?

There is little-to-no precedent for a pitcher doing this, so we can’t rely on that too much to guide us in this hypothetical quest. But let’s dive in anyway to see if we can glean anything from other similar situations.

Williams, in fact, is already in the midst of the highest changeup usage seasons of all time by a pitcher not named Valdez. Cesar Valdez throws his Dead Fish 80 percent of the time this year and Phillips Valdez, also in this 2021 campaign, throws his changeup 65 percent. Williams, already upticking his changeup usage, is spinning his up there at a 63 percent clip. (Next-highest in the Pitch F/X Era: 2007 Matt Wise!)

While it’s a small sample, Cesar Valdez has a .050 isolated slugging percentage against his out-of-water aquatic friend while generating swinging strikes on roughly one-third of swings.

That’s encouraging for the Literally Throw Only Changeups, Devin crowd, but it’s one player over a two-month sample.

What other single-pitch pitchers could we look to? There’s Mariano Rivera and his cutter, of course, but as a general rule of thumb I tend to try avoiding comparisons to the greatest closer in history. If not Rivera’s cutter, then we could check Bryan Shaw, who has made a living off his cutter and cutter alone.

But the best frame of reference may be San Diego right-hander Pierce Johnson. Once a well-regarded prospect with the Cubs, he pitched one season for the Giants in 2018 after they claimed him off waivers from Chicago. It didn’t go well (5.56 ERA, 4.15 FIP in 37 games), but he has since posted back-to-back sub-3 ERA seasons with the Padres. He has raised his curveball usage from 28 percent in ‘18 to 54 percent last year and now a remarkable 74 percent in 2021. He has largely ignored his fastball (which isn’t good) and reaped the benefits.

Could Williams follow in a similar vein?

The answer, after all of this babbling, is that we don’t know. Perhaps Williams could find an even greater gear as a changeup-only specialist. Perhaps erasing the possibility of a 95 mph heater being unleashed would decrease the effectiveness of a changeup. Perhaps there are tweaks that can be made to the pitch that could make the fastball more viable. Perhaps Williams could pair the changeup with a cutter or sinker or mix in more sliders.

There isn’t a precedent set for changeup-only pitchers succeeding, but, then again, there isn’t a precedent for someone having a changeup like Williams’ that spins at 2,800 rpm. Let the thing ride.

Tom’s Takes

~Tom

We have big, big news out of the American League Central.

FOURTH PLACE! FOURTH PLACE!

Winners of seven of their last 10 games, the Twins have finally surpassed the behemoth Detroit ex-Twins lineup of Niko Goodrum, Jonathan Schoop, Robbie Grossman, Akil Baddoo and Wilson Ramos.

In last week’s newsletter, we were dangerously optimistic. One could say I was ready to run through a wall for this club. It turns out I didn’t need to.

Rob Refsnyder had it covered.

During the fifth inning of Minnesota’s 3-2 win over Baltimore on Monday, Refsnyder ran full speed right into the center-field wall while trying to chase down a Ryan Mountcastle big fly.

But really, who put that wall there?

Instead of doing a deep dive on the Twins’ solid past week, or how Miguel Sano has gone from horrific to unstoppable to horrifically unwatchable, I compiled five GIFs of characters crashing into walls to make Refsnyder feel better about himself. He’s only played 12 games in center field anyway.

1. When you think of wall collisions, you think of the sweet, sugary drink of Kool-Aid. Oh yeah. At least he busted through.