Acquired from the White Sox in a surprising one-for-one swap with AJ Pollock just before Opening Day, he’s made 57 appearances. Kimbrel is in his first season as a Dodger. The Dodgers walked off in the bottom of the ninth inning anyhow, but the blown lead finalized the team’s decision to take a more flexible approach with the playoffs on the horizon. That includes a game-tying homer to Christian Walker to blow a save opportunity yesterday against the Diamondbacks. The decision comes in the wake of a dip in production for the eight-time All-Star, who has surrendered runs in three of his last four outings. Roberts didn’t guarantee he’d stick with the committee approach through the playoffs, although it’s hard to envision the Dodgers removing Kimbrel from the closing role for the final 12 regular season games before reinstalling him in the ninth at the start of the postseason. Craig Kimbrel will pitch in different roles while the club takes a variable approach to the ninth inning based on matchups. Hat tip to Keegan Matheson of MLB.com for helping me out with navigating Osuna’s Baseball Savant numbers.The Dodgers are going to take a closer-by-comittee approach for the remainder of the regular season, manager Dave Roberts informed reporters (including Fabian Ardaya of the Athletic). However, if you’re a reliever, especially a high-leverage reliever, if you don’t have confidence in your fastball – the building block for all pitchers – then what confidence do you have? This may ultimately just be a blip on the radar for Osuna: prior to this rough patch, he performed at Craig Kimbrel or Kenley Jansen-esque elite level for close to three months of the season. Osuna is far too young in his career to start losing miles per hour off his fastball already. This isn’t a reliever in his late twenties or early thirties where a dip in velocity may be an indication of a bigger problem. Not to mention, Osuna is only 22 years old. It seems like Osuna is cognizant of the fact that his velocity is down slightly compared to last year, which is likely why he’s increased the use of his secondary pitches not only to miss bats, but to simply get outs in general. This year, that’s been chopped in half, down to 3.82%. Last year, Osuna got opponents to whiff on 7.94% of the four-seamers he threw. It may only be a slight dip in velocity, but hitters have caught on Osuna isn’t missing as many bats with his four-seamer in 2017 as he did in 2016. It may in fact be a little bit of both, with a slight edge towards the former of the two. That means the Blue Jays’ closer either isn’t confident in his fastball (whether it’s location or the velocity of the pitch) or he’s leading heavily on his secondary pitches to get outs. Roberto Osuna 4-Seam Velocity (2015-2017) Year Since the All-Star break, Osuna’s four-seam velocity is down to 94.07 MPH. Last year, Osuna’s fastball velocity averaged around 96.4 MPH. If you thought Osuna was going to his secondary stuff more frequently this season, you’d be right, but I didn’t expect the differences to be that drastic.Īnother slight difference is the dip in velocity from year-to-year. Throwing 30.3% less fastballs from one season to the next would sound a few alarms for any pitcher, let alone for a relief pitcher whose pitch selections are often solely based off the fastball. Roberto Osuna Pitch Types (2016-2017) Pitch Type Looking at Osuna’s pitch type breakdown comparison between this year and last, it’s apparent he’s pulled back significantly on his four-seam fastball usage year-over-year and upped the usage on his slider, cutter and two-seamer. 377 wOBA this season, which is tied for the third best in baseball. Coincidentally, the Astros have been a tremendous fastball hitting team this year, punishing opponents to a. The Astros put all three of those four-seam fastballs from Osuna in play for hits. Sunday’s meltdown against the Houston Astros was the latest instance of Osuna relying on his secondary pitches (his slider and cutter) rather than his bread and butter: his four-seam fastball.ĭuring his 21-pitch appearance on Sunday, Osuna leaned heavily on his slider (14 of 21 pitches) and opted to use his four-seamer only three times. But after three rough appearances in his last five games, the focus has shifted once again to Osuna’s fastball and his decision to use it less and less. After all, Osuna was using his secondary pitches with such effectiveness that it didn’t raise a lot of eyebrows at the time.
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