Kyle Wright's Stuff

BeanieAntics said:
I could be wrong, but I think I remember Kyle Hendricks having something similar to that cutter. I think he called it a "cut-changeup" or something like that. It was a changeup that had opposite movement to a circle change, meaning that it had glove side run on it. I wonder if what Wright is doing is similar to that.
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The spectrum of breaking balls with glove-side movement in terms of velocity/movement ratio goes cutter -> slider -> curve.

Wright seems to throw a cutter/slider hybrid (I call it a slutter) as well as a slider/curve hybrid (called a slurve). It makes them hard to grade, and I'm not sure how effective either pitch is going to be. I'm guessing the pitches will work just fine though.

The FA movement is very worrisome, but maybe it works after batters see a few of those breaking pitches from Wright early in the game and shows he can locate them.

He will probably need to pitch backwards, meaning establish the slutter and slurve before breaking out the FA. If he pitches like a normal guy and tries to establish the FA first I'm afraid it will get hammered before he has a chance to work in his slutter and slurve. If batters sit on that insanely straight FA early in the count, they will likely be able to do serious damage if Wright obliges and serves it up.
 
Huh. I've read some secondhand information on TC about him, including the thing that said the Braves forced him to work on things for developmental reasons before loosening it up later on, so that interestingly makes me think they made him work on the fastball and changeup. It seems like the cutter and especially slider were his best pitches as an SEC guy. (I'm not certain though as I was happy about the pick but didn't do much research on him)
 
More than likely if his FA is that straight hw will need to develop an average at least sinker to be a quality starter. Become a sinker/slider guy mixing in his other 2 quality pitches and being a good mid rotation guy, perhaps a touch better. That’s the good end of the spectrum. Bad end is not a successful mlb starter without some semblance of a respectful FA.
 
The good news is, movement is the least important of the fastball characteristics. He will have to have great command of it, along with his velocity remaining where it is, for it to be effective.

We need more data, but I actually like the overall picture here. Command will obviously be key, as it is for most, but he's got some things to work with for sure.
 
smootness said:
The good news is, movement is the least important of the fastball characteristics. He will have to have great command of it, along with his velocity remaining where it is, for it to be effective.

We need more data, but I actually like the overall picture here. Command will obviously be key, as it is for most, but he's got some things to work with for sure.
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I'm not sure this is true. We've seen Fried's FA suck at 94, and we've seen Hill's FA be effective at 90...the only difference being movement.

We've also seen Mauricio Cabrera who threw 100+ for the Braves suck because he had terrible rise on his FA.

https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/the-physics-of-a-rising-fastball/
 
I wonder if Wright has ever been worked with to develop a 2 seamer. With his arm angle and the movement that his slider gets, I have to feel like he'd have a good chance to have a 2 seamer with plus movement. If he could have that wipeout slider paired with a 2 seamer that swings back over the plate (a la Maddux), that would be lights out.

That being said, it's not easy for pitchers to pick up new pitches at this level so it's probably a pipe dream.
 
Whatever Wright does seems to lend itself to natural glove side movement. Trying to develop a pitch with notable armside movement seems like a hopeless attempt at swimming against the current. For all we know, the FA may actually be a SI because it moves vertically more like a SI than a FA.
 
Enscheff said:
Whatever Wright does seems to lend itself to natural glove side movement. Trying to develop a pitch with notable armside movement seems like a hopeless attempt at swimming against the current. For all we know, the FA may actually be a SI because it moves vertically more like a SI than a FA.
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It could be a sinker. I doubt it considering the velocity but who knows how he's throwing it.

When I see a guy with a slider moving like that, I really want to see a 2 seamer running the opposite direction probably because I grew up watching Maddux. Maddux would draw X's on the strikezone. His slider would break down and away from right handers and his two seamer would go down and in.

Those pitches are why I laugh whenever anyone brings up Maddux when talking about pitchers without good stuff. Maddux's 2 seamer and slider had ridiculous movement on them.
 
Enscheff said:
I'm not sure this is true. We've seen Fried's FA suck at 94, and we've seen Hill's FA be effective at 90...the only difference being movement.

We've also seen Mauricio Cabrera who threw 100+ for the Braves suck because he had terrible rise on his FA.

https://www.fangraphs.com/tht/the-physics-of-a-rising-fastball/
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You could be right. It's also possible command was a bigger issue than a lack of movement on those pitches. Neither Fried or Cabrera has ever been a pitcher with much command, and Hill jumped way up when his command suddenly improved.

There's no doubt it's true that movement will mitigate command issues, I'm just saying I think it's also probably true that command will mitigate movement issues. Wright hasn't had fantastic command, either, so obviously he needs to improve. But I don't think his fastball is destined to be terrible because of a lack of movement. It certainly won't be plus without it, but I think it can still be a decent pitch with that velocity if he commands it really well.
 
Wright has only thrwon 31 pitches at the MLB level, so we obviously don't have a lot of data to work with yet. However, the 16 FAs he threw were 52% of his pitch count.

There are currently 71 qualified SPs in MLB. If Wright were to maintain something close to his 52% FA%, he would rank somewhere around the middle.

My initial guess is Wright will need to throw that FA less than 50% of the time while displaying average or better control with his other pitches to be effective. I don't think he will succeed if he relies on that FA any more than that.
 
Wright's stuff last year:

Enscheff said:
FA: 94.6 mph (Grade 56.1), 1.0" XMov (Grade 26.5), 5.2" VMov (Grade 16.9)

SL: 80.4 mph (Grade 32.0), 9.0" HMov (Grade 80+), -4.3" VMov (Grade 77.7)

FC: 85.0 mph (Grade 32.9), 2.9" XMov (Grade 63.4), -2.1" VMov (Grade 80+)

CH: 11.2 mph delta (Grade 66.8), 8.5" XMov (Grade 55.8), 3.2" VMov (Grade 56.9)
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Wright's stuff after his first 2019 start (SL reclassified as a CU, FC reclassified as a SL):

FA: 94.2 mph (Grade 54.1), 3.7" XMov (Grade 37.3), 7.6" VMov (Grade 37.3)

Wright maintained the velocity, and increased the movement in both directions. Problem is, while it served almost like a weird SI last year, it acts like a flat FA so far this year. This is not a good development on its own. This is a bad pitch, especially bad if he can't control it. And he threw it way more often than he did in 2018 because he couldn't command anything last night.

CU (previously called a SL): 80.9 mph (Grade 57.7), 9.7" XMov (Grade 80+), -2.9" VMov (Grade 42.9)

Whether you call this a slider or a curve or a slurve, this is a nasty glove side sweeper. It lost some sink from last year though. This is the pitch that gives Wright the potential to be good.

SL (previously called a FC): 84.7 mph (Grade 50.5), 2.5" XMov (Grade 50.0), -0.8" VMov (Grade 61.2)

Same type of movement as last year. Should be an above average pitch, even hogh it also lost some sink from last year (notice a theme?).

CH: 9.1 mph delta (Grade 56.6), 8.6" XMov (Grade 56.6), 5.4 " VMov (Grade 47.9)

Same above average CH we saw last year...also missing some sink.

Overall it looks like Wright lost some sink on every single pitch. Either last year's data wasn't accurate, this year's data isn't accurate, or Wright made changes to reduce the sink he gets on everything. I think that sink is going to be a key to his future success, so I hope to see it return.
 
Enscheff said:
Wright's stuff last year:



Wright's stuff after his first 2019 start (SL reclassified as a CU, FC reclassified as a SL):

FA: 94.2 mph (Grade 54.1), 3.7" XMov (Grade 37.3), 7.6" VMov (Grade 37.3)

Wright maintained the velocity, and increased the movement in both directions. Problem is, while it served almost like a weird SI last year, it acts like a flat FA so far this year. This is not a good development on its own. This is a bad pitch, especially bad if he can't control it. And he threw it way more often than he did in 2018 because he couldn't command anything last night.

CU (previously called a SL): 80.9 mph (Grade 57.7), 9.7" XMov (Grade 80+), -2.9" VMov (Grade 42.9)

Whether you call this a slider or a curve or a slurve, this is a nasty glove side sweeper. It lost some sink from last year though. This is the pitch that gives Wright the potential to be good.

SL (previously called a FC): 84.7 mph (Grade 50.5), 2.5" XMov (Grade 50.0), -0.8" VMov (Grade 61.2)

Same type of movement as last year. Should be an above average pitch, even hogh it also lost some sink from last year (notice a theme?).

CH: 9.1 mph delta (Grade 56.6), 8.6" XMov (Grade 56.6), 5.4 " VMov (Grade 47.9)

Same above average CH we saw last year...also missing some sink.

Overall it looks like Wright lost some sink on every single pitch. Either last year's data wasn't accurate, this year's data isn't accurate, or Wright made changes to reduce the sink he gets on everything. I think that sink is going to be a key to his future success, so I hope to see it return.
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Do conditions affect pitch movement?
 
msstate7 said:
Do conditions affect pitch movement?
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No idea, but whatever was making everyone throw the ball all over the place could possibly affect their ability to manipulate spin on the ball.

Either way, Wright wasn't very impressive last night.
 
Might have been tough for those warm weather boys to feel those finger tips last night. Shoulda thrown Soroka.
 
msstate7 said:
Do conditions affect pitch movement?
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Breaking balls had to be tough to throw. The ball is so slick and you can hardly feel your fingers in weather like that. Any pitch reliant on friction from your fingers is probably going to struggle.
 
bravesfanMatt said:
You just lost some cool points for that.
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Does this get any back?

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