The UFO Slider, and Its Supporting Solid, Makes the Giants’ Employees an Outlier

Tyler Rogers, simply the proprietor of the Statcast Period’s lowest vertical launch level, throws a rising slider that’s rising much more this season. The positioning of his forearm at launch implies that a conventional curveball grip places his thumb on high of the ball and the remainder of his fingers beneath; because the ball rolls off of his hand, it creates backspin along with the sidespin extra typical of a slider:

Tyler Rogers, 72mph Rising Slider. ? pic.twitter.com/1pRK3ybSaT

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 28, 2023

As you possibly can think about, the normal fastball grip locations his index and center finger pointing in direction of 5 o’clock or 5:30 fairly than a extra typical two or three o’clock from a three-quarters arm slot. This leads to arm-side sidespin, but additionally some further drop, such that his fastball sinks greater than his slider:

The Tyler Rogers four-seam fastball has extra drop than the common MLB curveball. ? pic.twitter.com/dZIjz9DDI1

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) April 7, 2023

Evidently, I’ve discovered these two choices to be among the many most unusual pitches within the majors this season by a few barely completely different strategies. In consequence, the Giants have been a confounding information level after I used my team-wide pitch-uniqueness mannequin to estimate which pitching staffs roll out the widest array of “appears to be like.”

The mannequin in query makes use of Euclidean distance, which you most likely utilized in center faculty to search out the gap between two coordinate pairs on a graph. However as an alternative of an x-y pair, I used 9 completely different inputs: horizontal and vertical motion, spin axis in three dimensions, spin fee, and launch level in three dimensions.

Final week, after I was on the lookout for the following sweeper, I used the mannequin to check each pitch (min. 100 tosses this season) to different choices from the identical workforce to see if anyone workforce was testing out a specific form of pitch. There is likely to be some new cutter/slider variations, however for probably the most half, it appeared that the mannequin was more proficient at figuring out groups that wanted to diversify their pitch varieties than it was at figuring out new pitches. For that train, I omitted launch level because it’s usually not used to categorise completely different pitch varieties, however for the definitive rating of pitch sort variety, it ought to be included.

Beforehand, I’ve stored lefties and righties separate because the mannequin can confuse a lefty changeup and a righty slider for being comparable (amongst different pairs of choices). The inclusion of launch level right here ought to allow the mannequin to distinguish between choices, although it additionally implies that lefty pitches will stick out extra since there are fewer of them. That’s how it’s in actual life, although, so the next evaluation contains each lefty and righty pitches.

As for the way I truly utilized the mannequin, I took the imply Euclidean distance of the three most comparable choices team-wide (a metric that I known as TED for “three Euclidean distances”) for each pitch thrown at the very least 100 instances to date. Then, for every workforce, I took the imply of those means for a rating of most numerous pitching staffs. Listed below are the top- and bottom-five groups (for context, the imply TED was 1.92):

I felt justified in my strategies for probably the most half, since Tampa Bay — identified varier of launch factors — ranked second-highest, and the Mets and Nationals — each of which I recognized final week as having plenty of pitchers with comparable choices — positioned within the backside 5. However I puzzled how a lot the aforementioned Rogers needed to do with the Giants’ number-one rating. Moreover, an outlier like Rogers had extra sway for the Giants, since they solely had 39 pitches that certified, whereas the lowly Mets weren’t helped out as a lot by the distinctiveness of Brooks Raley, their one lefty stalwart on workers, since that they had 48 qualifiers.

So, I attempted a brand new methodology. Amongst all pitches, the median TED was 1.82, so I ranked groups by the proportion of their qualifying pitches that have been above the median (i.e., have been above-average by way of their uniqueness). I used median because the distribution of TEDs was right-skewed, and I used the proportion of qualifying pitches since every workforce had a distinct variety of qualifiers. Right here’s how that seemed:

Predictably, the Giants dropped, however solely by two spots. Taylor Rogers, Tyler’s brother and a lefty who throws from a three-quarters slot, has a sweeper that ranks 18th in TED (Tyler’s slider and sinker rank first and second, respectively) among the many 1,291 qualifiers. The Giants produce other lefties, however none throw a pitch with almost that quantity of horizontal break; the 14.7 inches Taylor’s sweeper averages dwarfs the 5.9 inches Alex Wooden will get on his slider, the Giants’ subsequent sweepiest. Wooden and Sean Manaea’s lefty sliders additionally stand out, rating thirty fifth and thirty seventh, respectively.

As you might need guessed by Taylor Rogers’ standout sweeper, the Giants achieved their place close to the highest of the TED rankings because of the biggest normal deviation (and interquartile vary, when you favor to maintain with median-centric measures) of horizontal actions amongst their qualifying pitches. They’ve a whole lot of choices with little to no vertical motion, however all of them have horizontal separation, whereas their smaller clusters of pitches with comparable horizontal break all have vertical separation:

Apart from Tyler Rogers’ UFO slider, the Giants owe a whole lot of their excessive rating to their lefties. I anticipated lefties to face out extra, however the TED rankings weren’t only a checklist of groups with probably the most qualifying lefty pitches. The truth is, of the 5 groups with the best share of pitches above the median TED, just one (Cincinnati) ranked inside the highest 10 by way of the proportion of their qualifying pitches that have been thrown by lefties, they usually ranked ninth at 30.4%.

Solely 20% of the Mariners’ qualifying pitches got here from lefties, the bottom of the highest 5 groups in median TED, they usually ranked fifth in normal deviation of horizontal motion and first in a single dimension of spin axis (sine of spin axis, which is unsurprisingly correlated with horizontal motion; the Giants positioned second right here). In different phrases, Seattle’s motion unfold covers many of the similar areas as San Francisco’s, even with fewer lefties:

The Padres, however, achieved their excessive TED rating on account of a wide selection of launch factors. They have been the one workforce to position within the high 5 in normal deviation of each horizontal and vertical launch level:

Sidewinding lefty Tim Hill is definitely an enormous assist right here — his two fastballs are within the backside proper nook. Moreover, not one of the Padres lefties throw from an overhand slot; if the imply launch level lies someplace in between the lefties and righties, overhand lefties shall be nearer to it, which might decrease normal deviation. Such a measure of unfold might be deceptive on this manner, and that’s why I opted to make use of so many different variables — their presence renders launch level extra of a demarcator for handedness.

You could be questioning the place the Rays are in all of this; in any case, they high the TED rankings. They’ve a whole lot of overhand lefties along with Pete Fairbanks, probably the most excessive overhander within the league, which penalizes their normal deviation. However a easy eye take a look at signifies simply how completely different their pitching appears to be like are:

Along with the outlier Fairbanks, the Rays have three right-handed sidearmers in Kevin Kelly, Trevor Kelley, and Ryan Thompson. However what fascinates me probably the most about their distribution of launch factors is that the three sidearmers throw from comparable heights regardless of very completely different horizontal launch factors. The Kell(e)ys’ arms look comparable at launch, with slight bends on the elbow, however Trevor crops along with his driving leg in direction of third base whereas Kevin steps immediately towards house. Whereas the Kell(e)ys stand at 6-foot-2, Thompson stands at 6-foot-5, however he achieves the identical launch top by protecting his arm fully straight (from left to proper: Kelley, Kelly, Thompson):

If something, the mannequin is likely to be underrating the Rays due to guys like this trio (even when Kelley is within the minors in the meanwhile); they need to be given further factors for having pitchers with completely different horizontal releases regardless of the identical vertical launch, one thing that would mess with a hitter’s height-based pitching supply expectations. Whereas that very same numerical end result can typically be achieved by simply transferring alongside the pitching rubber, at different instances it signifies an actual distinction in supply that solely provides to deception.

A technique we’d seize a few of this further variability is by utilizing arm angle, which controls for top, as an alternative of or along with launch level. Both manner, enhancing the mannequin looks as if it could be a helpful enterprise provided that three of the highest 5 groups by TED (the Rays, Mariners, and Padres) are within the high six in ERA and 4 are within the high 10, whereas three (the Mariners, Giants, and Rays) are within the high seven in FIP. The one one of many high 5 that doesn’t seem close to the highest of both of these classes is the Reds; their excessive TED could largely be on account of their cadre of lefties, so one other manner of coping with handedness is probably going in retailer for the mannequin’s future. Maybe the Giants could be tops in each of these classes too if they might discover somebody to pair with Tyler Rogers’ vertical launch.