Good day there, FanGraphs readers. Right this moment I’d wish to let you know a few reliever on the Los Angeles Angels. Now positive, simply final week, I wrote about how a lot assist the Angels wanted on the pitching entrance, and within the bullpen specifically. And positive, the man we’ll be discussing in the present day has a 4.05 ERA and a 4.08 FIP thus far this 12 months, not precisely stud nearer numbers. Was he a commerce throw-in final summer season, one among 4 lottery tickets the Angels landed in alternate for a reliever in a contract 12 months? He positive was. However that doesn’t change the truth that he’s attention-grabbing. So I’d wish to introduce you to Ryan Zeferjahn, the most effective reliever you’ve most likely by no means heard of.
The very first thing you must find out about Zeferjahn is that his main pitch is bizarre. Everybody calls it a cutter, and in some ways, that is smart. Let me present it to you in motion:
Yep, that’s a cutter. It’s 90-ish mph, with much less rise and arm-side fade than a four-seam fastball, and it makes batters look uncomfortable as a result of they will’t fairly classify whether or not it’s a fastball or a breaking ball. Miguel Vargas learn that pitch as inside, after which it held the plate because of sudden minimize. However Zeferjahn’s cutter has, for lack of a greater approach of claiming it, lots of minimize even for a cutter. This isn’t one thing you’ll decide up from watching a GIF or two, however that pitch has about six inches of glove-side break.
How a lot break is six inches? Effectively, laborious cutters like Zeferjahn’s sometimes break 2-3 inches to the gloveside. Which means his will get round three inches of sudden motion relative to the cutters that opposing hitters see night time in and night time out. There’s precisely one pitcher in all of baseball this 12 months throwing a cutter with extra velo and extra arm-side run: Ben Casparius of the Dodgers. Casparius doesn’t throw his cutter fairly often, solely 15% of the time, whereas Zeferjahn makes use of his half the time. In different phrases, the motion profile of this pitch is bizarre.
It will get weirder, too. The place does that additional motion come from? It’s not simply that he can magically spin the ball extra. He’s imparting the spin in a special path. His cutter has much less backspin than most. The typical cutter thrown 88.5-90.5 mph options about 7.5 inches of induced vertical motion. That’s far lower than a four-seam fastball, which provides a cutter its misleading form; hitters anticipate it to journey and struggle gravity by greater than it does, however there’s nonetheless loads of backspin. Zeferjahn’s cutter has solely about 1.5 inches of induced vertical break. In different phrases, from the hitter’s perspective, it fully dies.
One other approach of claiming that? Zeferjahn has an unremarkable four-seam fastball, 98 mph with league common drop. His cutter falls 20 extra inches than that fastball, with a velocity hole of 8.3 mph. Chase Dollander, a starter you’d create in a lab to show prototypical pitch shapes, will get about 15 inches of vertical separation between the identical two pitches with the identical velocity differential. This cutter merely doesn’t behave like hitters anticipate it to.
Actually, Zeferjahn’s cutter is nearer to a high-velocity slider than the rest. I get Ryan Helsley or Emmanuel Clase slider vibes from the pitch. It’s sharp and disruptive, with loads of glove-side break and that bizarre, rise-less form that batters merely don’t anticipate from one thing touring 90 mph.
That places Zeferjahn in a bizarre spot, however an excellent one. The pitch he throws most frequently, his bread and butter in practically each rely, seems to be like a better’s out pitch, with a 23% swinging strike price that might be proper at residence ending video games. And in contrast to these closers, he’s flooding the zone with this child; his 69% zone price is among the 5 highest marks within the recreation for any fastball, not to mention any cutter.
With a main pitch that good, you would possibly assume that Zeferjahn would strike out the world, and also you’d be proper – he has confronted 27 batters this 12 months and retired 14 through strikeout. At-bats in opposition to Zeferjahn are like life, per Thomas Hobbes: nasty, brutish, and brief. He even has two helpful change-of-pace pitches in a using fastball and a sweeping slider.
These pitches are price breaking down in higher element, as a result of additionally they assist clarify Zeferjahn’s unusual line thus far this 12 months. As I’ve famous, his fastball is your common four-seamer, 98 mph with unremarkable vertical motion. He spots it above the strike zone when he’s forward within the rely. When he’s behind within the rely – effectively, perhaps at some point we’ll discover out. He’s thrown precisely one four-seamer with extra balls than strikes within the rely all 12 months, and it was this 3-2 providing to Willy Adames:
His breaking ball – or perhaps his different breaking ball, it’s laborious to categorise with a pitcher who principally throws a flexible fastball within the strike zone – is an exaggerated model of his cutter, with massive glove-side break. A montage of batters swinging at it seems to be such as you’d anticipate:
Fairly frankly, when you didn’t inform me who was throwing these pitches, you might persuade me that this was the most effective relievers in baseball. Zeferjahn’s fastball seems to be good as a show-me pitch, his cutter is an enviable workhorse, and that sweeper is deadly. Stuff+ thinks it’s his greatest pitch, in actual fact, although I’d take the cutter any day. The purpose is, pitchers with this broad an array of plus choices are inclined to do effectively.
Why don’t his total run prevention metrics present it, then? How can a man putting out greater than half the batters he faces sport a FIP greater than 4.00? It’s a must to look to what occurs when he doesn’t strike his opponents out. Up to now, Zeferjahn has allowed six fly balls, and two have left the yard. Whoops. First, he bought bought by baseball’s funniest hack, the Isaac Paredes lift-and-pull scheme:
Then Corey Seager did Corey Seager issues:
Honestly, I’m not too upset about both of these. If Zeferjahn has an extended profession within the AL West, he can anticipate extra of each. Need proof that it’s most likely not price getting labored up over? Take a look at an identical pitcher: 2024 Ryan Zeferjahn. He allowed 19 fly balls, none of which left the yard. He by no means had a lot subject with contact high quality within the minors; command was at all times the sticking level. In case your main pitch goes 90 mph and is most notable for its deception, you’ll most likely hand over at the very least a couple of residence runs when a type of pitches backs up and hangs over the plate, however a lot of the “keep away from residence runs” battle comes right down to not letting sluggers make contact, and Zeferjahn is superb at that a part of the equation.
That leaves me with two questions. First, can he hold throwing his cutter like this? The present form appears lots higher than final 12 months’s mannequin to me. It sinks and runs extra, placing it on the slider/cutter boundary. Each little bit of sudden break helps, and I’m notably concerned about his capacity to forestall backspin. Loads of hitters are swinging over Zeferjahn cutters this 12 months the place final 12 months they made contact. Mix that along with his newfound capacity to throw the pitch within the zone, and you find yourself with the ludicrous contact numbers he’s at the moment posting. Convey again final 12 months’s form and site, and he’s extra an attention-grabbing center reliever than a strikeout machine.
The second query is whether or not Zeferjahn can hold the ball within the strike zone regularly sufficient to problem opposing hitters. That was his biggest weak point within the minors; in 2023, he ran a hard-to-believe 19.6% stroll price over a considerable 43 innings in Double-A. Even this 12 months, along with his top-of-the-scale zone price, he’s strolling 11.1% of batters. That’s solely three walks – we’re nonetheless squarely in pattern dimension foolish season – however typically he simply loses management of the zone. Take a look at this sequence ranging from 0-2 in opposition to Jung Hoo Lee:
The loopy half? He did this to Lee earlier in that at-bat:
Two of his three walks have gone like that, with 4 straight balls from an 0-2 rely (the final one hardly counts — he bought changed mid-PA after a rain delay). It’s clear each from his minor league monitor document and from watching him pitch that Zeferjahn is liable to the occasional bout of wildness. It might be extra shocking if that weren’t the case; the explanation he debuted within the majors at age 26 as a substitute of earlier is as a result of he struggled to throw strikes within the minors, not as a result of he didn’t flash large strikeout stuff.
I wouldn’t guess on that out of the blue bettering. When you watch lots of Zeferjahn outings this 12 months, I believe you’re going to see a good quantity the place neither he nor the man he’s dealing with have any clue the place the following pitch will find yourself. And that greater zone price this 12 months? It’s come from simply aiming down the center, a plan I wholeheartedly approve of:
There aren’t lots of edges in there, to say the least. Hey, if batters can’t hit it, why nibble? Typically that can result in Seager homers, in fact, however the tradeoff appears good thus far, and I believe he’s going to maintain doing it.
As is so usually the case with these April check-ins on sizzling relievers who nobody has actually heard of, this isn’t Zeferjahn’s true expertise stage. He’s not going to maintain putting out half the fellows he faces, or placing up contact and zone price numbers that resemble a online game greater than actuality. However not like so many of those April check-ins, I believe that Zeferjahn’s ERA and FIP are underrating his true expertise stage thus far. If he’s the nearer in Anaheim by 12 months’s finish, I might hardly be shocked. You may’t at all times put a timer on when relievers will determine issues out, however for the second, he has. So long as he maintains his present mixture of pitch shapes and command, the info communicate loudly: This is among the high relievers in baseball.