Collin McHugh, by the standards he set in 2014, did not have a particularly good campaign in 2015. Though he eclipsed the 200-inning plateau for the first time in his career and came but one winning decision shy of becoming just the second 20-game winner in the last decade of Astros baseball, his baseline and peripheral statistics took steps backwards. I won’t delve into every regression, because you can do that on your own time over at Baseball Reference, but it’s important to understand the basics. McHugh witnessed his ERA balloon well over a run. He allowed an OPS of .702 the opposition, up more than 100 points from his rookie campaign. After striking out more than 25% of batters who stepped into the box against him in 2014, last season, he whiffed less than 20%. At least some of this can be attributed to random-ish forces — a .048 spike in BABIP against is nothing to brush aside — but as McHugh would probably attest, he was, objectively, less good in 2015.
Except there was one thing, oddly, that became much better for McHugh in 2015: His fastball, and more specifically, it’s ability to miss bats. Last season, McHugh threw 1,128 four-seamers, against which opponents swung at 454. Of those swings, precisely 24.9% ended in whiffs. In more practical terms, for every four swings against McHugh’s fastball, one ended with a miss. What makes this number interesting is that it’s a 4.1% increase in misses per swing from 2014, one of the ten highest fastball miss-rate spikes for any starting pitcher over this two-year window. What makes this number even more interesting is its place amongst other big-league fastballs last season: that 24.9% fastball miss-rate ranked third best for any starting pitcher who threw at least 1,000 heaters a season ago, trailing only Chris Sale (28.3%) and Max Scherzer (27.0%), while besting Jacob deGrom (24.1%), Clayton Kershaw (22.4%) and David Price (21.4%), among other elites.
What makes McHugh’s fastball success particularly odd is that, by one important measurement of fastballs, his four-seamer doesn’t really fit in well with Sales, or Scherzer’s, or deGrom’s, or Kershaw’s, or Price’s. That measurement? Yep, you probably guessed it: Velocity. It’s something that McHugh lacked relative to the rest of his competition atop the miss-rate leader-board. In fact, McHugh threw his four-seamers at an average pace of 90.3 MPH last season, down from a whopping 91.4 MPH in 2014 and nearly two miles-per-hour less than the average starting pitcher (92.0 MPH, highest in the pitch f/x era) in 2015. Less velocity, more whiffs? Doesn’t necessarily fit into our basic schema of how fastballs should work at the big-league level. Last season, starting pitchers set in all-time high in strikeouts per nine innings, and they also collectively threw a higher percentage of their pitches at or above 95 MPH than ever before. Should read more like: More velocity, more whiffs. Right?
*For starters who threw at least 1,000 fastballs
Exactly right — at least for the most part. The graph above shows a strong positive relationship (r = .2039) between average fastball velocity (x) and opponent miss rate (y) on fastballs in 2015, including 102 data points of pitchers who met the criteria of having thrown 1,000 heaters last season. Certainly, this isn’t a perfect positive relationship, but it’s one that shows we have a solid correlation between these two variables. Now, note the linear trend line that runs through the data points. This line helps determine how effective a fastball should be at missing bats on a per-swing bases, as we adjust for the average velocity along the x-axis. For example, a pitcher whose average fastball velocity is 88 MPH can expect his miss rate to fall around 12.5%, according to the trend line; a pitcher with an average velocity of 94 MPH, by contrast, should anticipate missing bats around 17.5% of swings against it. Nothing particularly groundbreaking here. Essentially, this model just helps us reconfirm what coaches and scouts and analysts have known for decades: Throw hard, and you’ll miss bats. Throw soft, and you won’t. Makes sense.
Then guys like McHugh come around every so often, throwing a metaphorical wrench into our understanding of what makes fastballs effective — at missing bats, at least — in the big leagues. Check out how McHugh’s fastball compares to the rest of this 101 counterparts. Arguably, he’s the biggest outlier in this plot. According to our linear model, McHugh’s fastball should have compiled a miss rate of about 15% based strictly on velocity alone. But, as it turns out, McHugh’s fastball wasn’t only slightly better than the trend line would predict. It was substantially better at eluding barrels. Instead, opponents came up empty on 24.9% of their swings against it last season — third-highest in the majors, let’s not forget — outperforming out model by 10%. Was this success purely coincidental, or were there other factors in play here? After taking a long, hard look at the 2015 version of McHugh’s fastball, it would have been difficult to chalk up its new success to anything close to coincidence. Something else played a role. But what the heck was it?
Think real estate: Location, location, location.
McHugh attacking the upper-third against Ender Inciarte. Whiff.
McHugh invested his fastball in a new property of the strike zone last season: The upper-third. As a rookie, McHugh threw 38.3% of his fastballs at or above this portion of the strike zone. That frequency was higher than about three out of four starting pitchers that year, so one could say McHugh was already bent on elevating his fastball. Then this year happened, and he placed even more value into the approach. By the end of his second full campaign in the bigs, in fact, McHugh had lifted his upper-third fastball rate to 42.9%, nearly a five percent lift from the season prior. Eventually, only seven other starting pitchers (min. 1,000 fastballs thrown) elevated their fastball at a higher rate than McHugh last season, with the notable inclusion of his eventual rotation-mate Mike Fiers, who posted a 44.1% upper-third rate with his fastball, which was also happened to be sub-par in the context of velocity and also missed bats at an above-average clip.
So McHugh started climbing the ladder with his fastball. Big deal, right? Well, actually, it is a big deal — and a pretty nifty approach from a cerebral pitcher. You see, fastballs up in the zone have proved to be far more effective at yielding swings-and-misses than their counterparts down in the zone. Since 2008, in fact, hitters have whiffed on 20.3% of their swings against fastballs located above the letters. Fastballs located at or below the lower-third of the zone? A miss rate of just 13.3%. That’s a pretty substantial difference in barrel-eluding ability, when you think about it. A fastball up in the zone has (almost) twice as good of odds to induce a swinging strike than a fastball down in the zone. I won’t delve too much into the technical terms of why this phenomena takes place — I highly recommend watching this to get an in-depth explanation — but, simply put, elevated fastballs are hard to catch up to. What you may be surprised to hear, however, is that fastball elevation has even stronger predictive value than velocity in relation to whiffs:
*For starters who threw at least 1,000 fastballs
Last season, elevation of fastballs had a greater influence over whiffs on fastballs than velocity alone. That’s what the graph above, showing an r-squared value of .3051 between fastball elevation rate (x) and miss rate (y), is telling us. Granted, the difference between .2 and .3 in relation to r-squared isn’t overwhelming, but it isn’t something that should be brushed aside — especially during an era of baseball in which swinging strikes and strikeouts are at all-time high marks and are being highly valued by front offices.
All of this brings this basic question into focus: Why aren’t more pitchers — especially the ones with premium velocity — climbing the ladder? It would seem, on a basic level, that combining velocity with elevation would yield optimal swing-and-miss results. If a pitcher like McHugh can elevate a below-average fastball with great success, what legitimate reason is there for holding back a guy who can reach back for 95 MPH with ease? Whatever the case, it appears that plus fastballs just aren’t being elevated anymore:
*Elevated: Located to upper-third of strike zone
Last season, less than one in three (32.6%) of all fastballs thrown at or above the 95 MPH threshold were elevated above the letters. Not only is that the lowest mark seasonal mark in the pitch f/x era, dating back to 2008, but it also happens to be the latest bit of evidence supporting the fact that elite fastballs just aren’t being elevated any more. Why? Perhaps the valuation of ground balls has something to do with it. There appears to be some negative correlation (r = -.1403) between fastball elevation rate and ground-ball rate, meaning that as a pitcher elevates his fastball more often, he will likely induce fewer ground balls because of it. There’s a little give-and-take at work here; elevating gets more whiffs, but at the expense of a few ground balls. Another plausible explanation? The well-documented expansion of the lower portion of the zone; instead of elevating for whiffs, pitchers are going for called-strikes low in the zone with heat. Certainly, that approach has worked in recent years.
Still, based on what we saw in 2015, elevation is still the most effective means by which to induce a swing-and-miss with a fastball. Even more effective than velocity alone, which we saw more of last season than ever before in the history of the sport. Case in point: Collin McHugh. Below average fastball velocity, yes. Below-average fastball spin rate (1,943.3 RPM), you bet. Below-average miss rate? Well, not so much. He missed bats with the best of ’em. McHugh wielded one of the most potent fastballs in the game at side-stepping barrels on a per-swing basis in 2015, predominantly due to the fact that he elevated at a higher rate than 90% of his competition. Surely there are intangible elements in play here — we still don’t know how to quantify a pitcher’s ability to hide the ball well, or his overall deceptiveness, each of which play big roles in missing bats, too — but as far as we can tell, fastball elevation breeds legitimate success in missing bats. Even more than simply throwing hard.
*All data courtesy TruMedia Networks, Inc. unless otherwise noted or hyperlinked*
Alec Dopp is a two-year contributor to Gammons Daily. He helps cover prospects for BaseballHQ.com and works with video scouting and operations at Baseball Info Solutions. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecDopp.