![]() There’s no shortage of sinker-heavy starters with low strikeout rates in baseball it’s a time-honored number three starter profile. Here’s the real lesson I’ve learned from poring over Alcantara’s performance this year: for a pitcher with his game, the margins really matter. It’s a truly marginal change – an inch here or there – but it’s weighing on the strikeouts that Alcantara used to get, turning them into balls in play or extended at-bats. As you might expect, pitchers fare much better when they dot the corners of the zone. ![]() Missing by just a hair is still good – but it’s a lot less good. Hitting the outer edge of the strike zone with a hard-to-hit pitch is the best thing you can do as a pitcher batters rarely hit it, but they have to swing. That might sound like a thin difference, but it matters. Last year, those rates were 21% and 23%, respectively. He’s locating his changeup just outside of the strike zone 30% of the time with two strikes, and just inside the strike zone only 13% of the time. That’s partially a smart move by opponents, but it’s also partially a tiny loss of control. He might be hitting the shadows of the strike zone as frequently as he did last year, but opponents are swinging at those pitches less frequently. When opponents do make contact, they’re hitting it harder and elevating more frequently. Though opponents are swinging and missing as frequently as they did last season, they’re doing so less frequently with two strikes. Good luck finding the bad parts of this:ĭespite that, it’s getting worse results on the margins. Bad news: I can’t tell what’s wrong with it, because he carved the Red Sox up over seven one-run innings. Good news: he threw a ton of changeups, 35 in total. I came up with an article idea I would watch Alcantara’s start last night, document a few reasons that his changeup was still hurting him, and use that as a springboard to examine what’s going on. Opposing hitters are chasing more frequently when he leaves the zone and posting lower contact rates. He’s going to set a career low in changeup zone rate by a sizable margin if he keeps up his current pace – 45.4% of them were in the strike zone last year, and only 37.2% this year. He wasn’t getting the same downward bite as last year, either, which helped explain the other problems. At the time, he was throwing it in the strike zone too frequently, and batters weren’t chasing the pitch when he left the zone. By pitch values, it’s been his worst pitch this year. The reason why isn’t particularly hidden: as Robert Orr documented back in May, Alcantara’s changeup is the culprit.
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