Depends. Waldrep's splitter is deadly and has very low spin rates.
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Depends. Waldrep's splitter is deadly and has very low spin rates.
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
so you are saying the Braves just need to teach him to throw 99 and locate it and they will have their own Saski
I'm just trying to keep this argument going.
msstate7
Well-known member
Shouldn't be hard. This offseason has the whole board cursing at the sky.
The data disagrees that Waldrep's splitter is "deadly". Here is the statcast data for every Dodger and Brave who has throw a splitter in ST:
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/stat...ts_velocity=on&chk_stats_spin_rate=on#results
Notice Waldrep has a very mediocre vertical movement of +3.2" and a very mediocre 10" of arm-side run.
Sasaki has an off the charts -5.0" of drop...yes, the only actual sinking splitter on either team, and almost no armside movement. This is a straight downer split, and it is quite different than anything any other SP has.
Waldrep has a terrible FA and a mediocre split. I'm still not sure where this notion he has anything approaching "deadly" pitches came from. It's almost like the Braves didn't look at a single piece of pitch metric data before drafting him.
jpx7
Very Flirtatious, but Doubts What Love Is.
But why? We should all be hopeful that Murphy stays healthy enough to post the fwar levels he always posts when he’s healthy. And he’s always been healthy enough to do that, over the course of his major-league career, until last year. Calling him ded is not only premature, it’s no fun—the team really needs him to not be ded.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Braves/com...dy_knew_hurston_waldrep_had_a_good/?captcha=1
https://lancebroz.substack.com/p/hurston-waldrep-splitter-mitch-spence-athletics
There is enough data on Waldrep to know that his splitter legitimately a deadly pitch. This isn't exactly news either. Everyone talks about how filthy his splitter is. A simply google search reveals everything you need to know. Even in his ML debit last year, his splitter had a 43% swing a miss rate.
The issue Waldrep has is that everything else is average-below average and he has mediocre-bad command.
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bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
43% is just slightly above the MLB average of 35ish%... just adding context.
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
to argue on the other side.. that 43% could be lower due to poor command in general.. basically a splitter on a 2-1 count isn't as effective as a splitter in a 1-2 count.
Really? Let's pull a few quotes from that article...
"His slider... great....FanGraphs Stuff+ of 111 (above average)."
He claims FG's Stuff metric proves the slider is "great", even though a quick look at the movement numbers shows it is barely above average.
"Splitter is a near-unicorn pitch....FanGraphs stuff+ of 90, which we all know is incorrect."
Literally the next sentence he completely does a 180 on validity of the Stuff metric when it doesn't fit his narrative.
This is the content you are basing your assessment on Waldrep's stuff on? As always, I guess we will see how it plays out. I think it was telling he's no longer an option to fill either of the 2 rotation slots. The FA is so bad I'm not sure how anything can play off it.
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I hope Acuna comes back at 110% and posts another 9 win season.
I hope Sale stays healthy and wins 5 games in October.
I hope Strider comes back throwing 101 and wins 5 games in October.
I hope Profar continues to stripe the ball and posts a .380 OBP.
I hope Olson defies the 1B aging curve and posts 15 wins over his contract.
I'm also able to separate my homerism from logical thinking.
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
Lets go!!!!!
huh?
Would you like me to pull one of the dozen or so other articles? Maybe you like Fangraphs?
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/hurston-waldreps-freaky-splitter-is-coming-beware-beware/
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/hurston-waldreps-first-mlb-start-was-a-land-of-contrasts/
In his minor league appearances where such numbers are available, Waldrep’s splitter averaged 85.2 mph with 7.8 inches of arm-side movement and a spin rate of only 695 rpm. Among big leaguers in 2024, only Logan Gilbert and Tylor Megill have slower-spinning splitters; this pitch wobbles like a knuckleball and drops like an anvil. The first one Waldrep threw came in at 640 rpm; one of them got down to 578.
"But the life of a rookie pitcher is all about learning. And we saw the whole Waldrep experience in his debut: Plus velocity and an unholy splitter, but a fastball that he really needs to locate and a slider that he really needs to bury if he’s going to get big league hitters out regularly.
So yeah, deadly seems like an aptly named adjective for his splitter. And again I say, while the splitter legitimately is a deadly pitch, everything else is just so mediocre-bad that it doesn't really matter. He might make for a dominant reliever. Or if he can develop some command, he has chance to stick in someone's rotation even with a flat fastball.
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Southcack77
Well-known member
I did not follow that comment either. Perhaps sarcasm?
Yup. Just about every pitcher with one elite pitch but poor secondary stuff and bad command ar not gonna make a top 100 list. Most turn into relievers.
bravesfanMatt
Steve Harvey'd
I was saying the the league average whiff rate for a splitter thrown 100 times is around 35% if I remember correctly. so 43% is only a bit higher...
however, even I don't understand the point I was trying to make because there could be a lot of guys in between 34% and 44%... I think I just started typing and didn't really think what I was saying.