Lance Lynn Just Keeps Tweaking

28/04/2024 15:00

The right-hander has shuffled his pitch mix yet again and is showing some tweaked pitch shapes as well.

Lance Lynn is a fastball pitcher. We all know that by now but I wanted to start with that statement because I fear that it gives us a limited perception of Lynn. We all know what he does - throw fastballs - so we don't look under the hood too often.

But that's what I want to do today.

It would be notable if Lynn had stopped throwing fastballs but that's not the case. In fact, his 88.2% fastball usage rate is the third highest of his career. Lance Lynn is still Lance Lynn after all.

But there's a lot more to dive into beyond just beating the dead horse of fastball usage and that's what I want to do today.

Pitch Usage

I will start with a discussion of fastball usage because it's relevant to my overall point, which is that Lance Lynn just keeps tweaking. This shouldn't be surprising either. Pitchers generally like to make tweaks after having a season like Lynn had in 2023.

The tweaks are just limited to this year, though. Lynn has been great at making tweaks throughout his career and it's his willingness and ability to do so that have helped him carve out such a long and effective career.

Lynn has changed his fastball usage throughout his career. At times he has split his usage pretty evenly between his four-seamer and his sinker. Then in 207 he was primarily a sinkerballer, throwing the pitch 42.6% of the time.

2 years later he was a Cy Young candidate throwing his four-seamer 54% of the time while cutting his sinker usage to just 17%. But recently, as Lynn has gotten older, he has started to lean on his cutter more and he's now throwing it at a 31.2% rate.

That's a career high.

He's still using his four-seamer as his primary offering but his 36.2% usage is a career low for the pitch.

His 20.8% sinker usage is also the highest it has been since 2018.

So is Lance Lynn still a fastball pitcher? Absolutely. But he's relying on subtle changes in movement and velocity much more than he has in past years.

That's the key for him.

This makes sense too. Lynn's fastball velocity has been declining every year since peaking at 94.6 mph in 2019. Now it sits at 92 mph with the sinker a touch slower at 91 mph.

The right-hander has never been someone who relied on big velocity to get outs but that's still a notable decline. Fastballs tend to be more hittable at 92 mph than at 94-95 mph. By diversifying his fastball usage a bit, Lynn is doing exactly what an older pitcher looking to stave off decline should be doing.

The thing is that none of Lynn's pitches are that good. At least in a vacuum. In fact Lynn's cutter gets the highest Stuff+ grade at 86 with his four-seamer coming in at 84 and his sinker registering at 69.

Those simply aren't good grades.

But while stuff+ is a really helpful and useful metric, it doesn't tell us everything.

I really want to stress this next point. Lynn is a smart pitcher. He knows what he's working with and he knows how to maximize his stuff.

Take a look at his fastball shapes to help better illustrate this point.

All 3 of these pitches live in about a 4 mph tunnel. That's not huge but it can be enough to disrupt a hitter's timing and make his slightly early or slightly late. That's valuable.

But pitch movement matters too here and his pitch movements pair perfectly with his pitch locations.

I'll start with the sinker and the cutter.

Take a look at where Lynn throws his sinker:

And now take a look at where he throws his cutter:

This is how he is able to tunnel the two pitches off each other. He can start both pitches close to the glove side edge of the plate and let the cutter's slight cut take it to the edge while the sinker's arm side run takes it all the way to the other edge. Factor in a slight 3 mph velocity difference and it's clear to see how these pitches are able to perform above their pure stuff grades.

And then there's Lynn's four-seamer.

While the big righty generally likes to live arm side down with his sinker and glove side down with his cutter, he's not afraid to throw his four-seamer up which helps make another tunnel since the four-seamer "rises" relative to the other 2 fastball variations.

That's not all, though.

Lynn is able to command his four-seam fastball to both sides of the plate and that allows him to use the pitch differently depending on the handedness of the hitter. Or, to put it another way, it allows Lynn to live outside with the pitch against both lefties and righties.

Here's his heat map against lefties:

And here's his heat map against righties:

This kind of fastball command, which not every pitcher possesses, allows Lynn to use his four-seamer how he wants to. And I can't overstress how important it is for Lynn to keep his fastball away from hitters.

That's because against right-handed batters in his career, Lynn's four-seam fastball has generated a .193 wOBA and 34.1% whiff rate when thrown on the outer third of the plate.

Not only are those exceptional numbers, they are especially exceptional numbers for pitches thrown in the zone.

But if we look at the inner third, Lynn's fastball fares much worse. When the pitch drifts over to the inner third it generates a .383 wOBA and 21.5% whiff rate.

We see a similar if not as extreme trend against left-handed hitters too.

So suffice it to say that Lynn's fastball plays better on the outer third than the inner third and his ability to command the pitch to both his arm side and his glove side helps him throw the pitch where it's at its best.

Factor in the tunneling of all 3 fastball variations too and we're looking at a pitcher who is able to pitch beyond his stuff+ grades and relatively limited velocity.

I've spent most of my time on the fastballs so far because they make up such a large portion of Lynn's arsenal but I don't want to stay on the subject the whole time because Lynn has made another noticeable change besides jumbling his fastball mix.

He has stopped throwing his curveball.

The pitch has never featured prominently for Lynn as it saw only 7.4% usage last year but it has been an ever present part of his arsenal. At least until this year. And the curious thing is that Lynn hasn't thrown his other breaking ball, his slider, more. Rather he has leaned even harder into his cutter and his 3 fastball mix.

So why did Lance Lynn drop his curveball?

Well it's probably because his curveball has never been all that good. I'll admit that it feels weird to talk about Lynn's curveball that way since it allowed a solid .318 wOBA last year and a very good .260 wOBA over the course of his career.

But yet, again, I'll reiterate the fact that the pitch simply isn't very good. It's true that hitters didn't have a ton of success against the pitch when they chose to swing at it but that's the thing. Hitters rarely chose to swing because Lynn rarely threw the pitch in the zone.

In fact, last year the pitch was thrown in the zone just 27.8% of the time.

That means that the pitch led to a lot of balls and that actually gave it a run value of -4 last year. That wasn't just a one year trend either as the pitch has never actually finished a season with a positive run value.

So it seems that Lynn has decided against the idea of having a curveball that he throws almost exclusively outside the zone. Instead he is turning more to his cutter and his sinker and using them in the zone.

The other big result of this change is that Lynn uses his 3 fastball variations almost exclusively against right-handed hitters. In the past, the curveball was mixed in as a fourth pitch and a primary breaking ball against righties and instead of replacing his curveball usage with slider usage, Lynn is relying strictly on the hard stuff against right-handers.

In fact, he has thrown just 8 sliders and 1 changeup to right-handed swingers. That's just 9 non-fastballs.

So that means the difference between the fastest and the slowest pitches the average right-handed hitter will see against Lynn is just 4 mph. I can't say I've seen many pitchers pitch this way but yet Lynn has chosen to pitch that way this season and is off to a strong start.

What this change has allowed him to do is be less aggressive with his fastballs. Since the curveball was primarily used as a chase pitch, Lynn needed to pound the zone with his fastballs to be able to risk wasting a ball on a curveball.

Now that he isn't throwing the curveball, he's able to put his fastballs outside the zone a bit more and he has taken advantage of that, throwing just 48.8% of his four-seamers in the zone against right-handers this year after throwing 61.3% of his four-seamers in the zone against right-handers last year.

His cutter has seen a similar decline by roughly 5 percentage points.

Taken as a whole, Lynn is now throwing just 44.9% of his pitches in the zone against right-handers. That's the second lowest rate of his career.

His chase rate is below average so it's fair to wonder how sustainable of an approach this is if Lynn isn't going to hitters to expand the zone. There is a reason he's sporting a double digit walk rate (10%) against right-handed batters after all.

Still, though, Lynn seems to think his fastball variations are more effective than his curveball and he has leaned all the way in on that idea this year. That very well could work and I'm excited to see how things develop for him.

Pitch Shapes

The pitch usage is really what fascinates me but I also want to point out that the tweaking doesn't stop there. Lynn has come back this season with an extra 2.2 inches of running life on his sinker and an extra 1.9 inches of running life on his four-seamer. Those changes pale in comparison to the tweak Lynn has made to his slider.

His sole breaking ball is now being thrown 3 mph slower with an extra 9 inches of drop and 3 inches of sweep.

He has only thrown the pitch 29 times this year so it's pointless to look into results at this point (though the pitch has fared well so far) but it's not lost on me that Lynn has dropped one breaking ball and completely reshaped the other.

Interestingly he uses the slider mostly against left-handed hitters which run counter to conventional wisdom as sliders tend to show somewhat larger than usual platoon splits so I wouldn't mind seeing Lynn sprinkle in a few sliders to righties to really throw a different look and, perhaps more importantly, a different speed at them.

There's really nothing else to be said about the changes to Lynn's pitch shapes. I simply wanted to point them out because the guy is just a relentless tweaker and that is worthy of attention.

Final Thoughts

I am absolutely fascinated by the changes that Lynn has made this year. To summarize the key changes:

• Fewer four-seamers
• More cutters
• More sinkers
• Dropped his curveball entirely

But even beyond that Lynn is getting more running life on his sinker and four-seamer and more sweeping action on his slider.

The guy has simply never stopped tweaking in his career and that trend has very much continued this year as Lynn attempts to prove that he still has more in the tank.

I can't wait to see what this season has in store for him.

Thanks for reading.