What “leaning on your best pitch” looks like

Vince Velasquez is slinging sliders

Last Sunday afternoon, Vince Velasquez exceeded the expectations of a 30-year-old free agent starting pitcher who signed a one-year, $3.15 million deal. Velasquez threw seven shutout innings, punching out ten Reds while allowing only four to reach base.

Sunday’s start was the third in a run of strong outings. It’s early, to be sure, and he’s faced some of the league’s weaker lineups. But this year, Velasquez has generated more swing-and-miss than he ever has¹.

So how’s he doing it? Did he learn a new pitch? Did he start throwing harder? No and no. Velasquez is just throwing his slider more often:

This slider is not a brand new one for Velasquez. On the surface, it is similar in shape and velocity to the one he threw last year. We’ve heard nothing about a new grip or an overhaul. He’s just throwing the old one more often and getting better results with it.

That’s an over-simplified description of what’s going on, though. It’s fair to say that Velasquez’s slider isn’t just an inconsistent wrinkle anymore. He’s executing it more consistently than he probably ever has. And he’s making it do what he wants it to do. For example, when he wanted to put a right-handed hitter away with something that swept out of the zone, he did that:

The story of an increase in usage for an underused pitch is probably one you’ve heard before (if you follow other pitcher transformations). A pitcher joins a new team, the new team shows him that his slider is his best pitch, and the pitcher throws the slider more often.

You probably want value for your free newsletter subscription, so I think it would be a worthwhile exercise to break down exactly how and why the “throw your best pitch more often” strategy can work so well. Through Velasquez’s outing and a few postgame quotes that I’ll try to decode, that’s what we’ll cover today.

Reason #1: Repetition improves execution

Velasquez: “It feels great to have that confidence and utilize it [at] any count. All the work I’ve been putting in to develop this trust and this confidence in this pitch, I don’t see why not that I can use it 50% of the time.”

Vince Velasquez is a pitcher who might be tired of hearing your front office’s sales pitch on how he can use a full 5-pitch mix more effectively. Why? He’s had six pitching coaches in roughly seven big league seasons and is (in his words) a little tired of “being pulled left and right and told what to do.”

In those seven big league seasons, Velasquez has tried to do it all. He’s mixed and matched a changeup, slider, and curveball; until 2022, he never threw any one of those pitches more than 20% of the time. But, as the quote above indicates, he’s now found something significant in one single pitch that he couldn’t find by juggling the whole toolbox: confidence.

Velasquez seems to be feeling good with a slider grip in his hand. He doubled up on his slider in 6 sequences on Sunday and tripled up on it (slider-slider-slider) five times. His feel for the pitch improved throughout the afternoon.

Here’s one of the first he threw (Pitch 5). It was soft (79 mph) and it backed up on the hitter:

Velasquez ran through a brief stretch of misfires like that one in the first three innings of Sunday’s start, but he pushed through those and stuck with the pitch. Here’s pitch 95 of the day:

Snappy! Perfectly located. Confident strikeout strut to follow.

It turns out that Velasquez isn’t the only Pirate who’s leaning in hard on his best breaking ball. This is somewhat of a staff trend, apparently². Pitching coach Oscar Marin is up to something:

Velasquez, Roansy Contreras, and Johan Oviedo are all now throwing more sliders than fastballs. And this group is executing their sliders more consistently. The breaking ball-first approach is the future, I think, and the future has already arrived in Pittsburgh.

Reason #2: A pitch to get you back in the fight

Velasquez: “I think it’s one of the primary pitches I can use to get back in the zone.”

When you imagine a pitcher upping the usage of a breaking ball, you might imagine the counts where you already typically see breaking balls. These are counts in which a pitcher sits in the driver’s seat and can expand: 0-1, 0-2, 1-2, etc.

But to double usage of a primary breaking ball (essentially what Velasquez has done), you need to throw it early and in whatever count you find yourself in. For Vince Velasquez, that means pitcher-leverage counts but also the hitter-friendly counts: 1-0, 2-0, 2-1, etc.

And Vince Velasquez is no stranger to hitter’s counts. He tried to establish his fastball on Sunday, but his command of the pitch wasn’t strong:

If you count generously, that’s 9-12(ish) of 41 fastballs that hit the target. Would you believe that this chart is associated with a 7 inning, 10 strikeout, 2 walk performance? Before I watched the tape, I didn’t.

When Velasquez missed with his fastball on Sunday, he did not serve up more hitter’s count fastballs. He also didn’t do what 2022 Vince Velasquez might’ve done - he didn’t dust off a changeup he hadn’t thrown in two innings to try to get back even. The potpourri approach might have led to another mistake and a deeper hole to dig out of.

Instead, Velasquez drew on some of that confidence he’s developed in his slider and threw that when he fell behind. The typical reaction to the hitter’s count slider on Sunday was a flinch, because Vince Velasquez’s pitch selection surprised them:

New Velasquez doesn’t care if you flinch at it or read it as a fastball and swing. As he puts it, he’s fine “forcing contact”:

When you layer in the count-switching benefits of the hitter’s count slider with the benefits that come with repetition and confidence (Reason #1), you get a sequence like this one:

• 0-0 Fastball (ball - missed target)

• 1-0 Fastball (ball - missed target)

• 2-0 Slider (flinch, called strike)

• 2-1 Fastball (ball - missed target)

• 3-1 Fastball (called strike)

• 3-2:

That’s a well-executed slider, and it was executed in a situation where Velasquez likely wouldn’t have thrown one in 2022: a 3-2 count to a left-handed hitter.

Reason #3: One pitch becomes several

Velasquez: “Once you execute, you start messing around with it, start going backdoors, backfoot.”

This is where the slider-heavy approach becomes fun. Pitchers who throw their slider as much as Velasquez does now will sometimes begin to think of this one pitch as several different pitches. There’s the “flinch” slider we just covered and the sweeping one that coaxes right-handed hitters into chasing.

To Reds left-handed hitters, Velasquez most often worked his slider “ball-to-strike” over the other side of the plate: the backdoor slider. Because Velasquez’s slider has a little more depth to it than some, he can land it in a safe spot while coaxing hitters to swing at it (kind of like the 3-2 slider above):

Velasquez’s backdoor slider execution on Sunday was excellent. Per his quote at the top of this section, he may have aimed a few at the back foot of left-handed hitters, too. Here’s one:

That pitch didn’t quite “get there,” but it’s a step towards adding another dimension to the same pitch. Velasquez’s execution of the different slider types impressed manager Derek Shelton:

“The ability to execute it to both sides of the plate were what stood out,” said Shelton on Velasquez’s slider. “There was a ton of action on it with the ability to go back door to the left-handers and then away from the right-handers. He looked like he was in total command the entire game.”

In total command. Remember the fastball target execution chart above? That’s not “total command,” but Velasquez overcame that and convinced his manager that he was in control. He turned his fastball into his secondary pitch. He used his slider to catch back up, to expand against right-handed hitters, and to come at left-handed hitters.

Now, the hard(er) part

Velasquez still has a lot of work ahead of him. After Sunday’s performance, he will start to see left-handed stacked lineups. He’ll need to execute the backdoor version as well as he did last week and the backfoot version a bit better than he’s shown.

If he does keep rolling like this, Velasquez could be a Yankee in August — or a Met, or a Dodger, or a Ranger. He’s a $3 million pitcher this year, but he could be a $30 million pitcher next year.

Just ask José Quintana - he was the Pirates’ $3 million pitcher last year³. Quintana signed with Pittsburgh for a guaranteed opportunity to start games, found an approach that worked for him, and rewarded the Pirates with a prospect in return at the trade deadline. It’s not a bad deal for either side.

Have a great weekend!

1. Per Pitch Info/FanGraphs

2. Well, not a “team” trend per se. Just a set of individual pitchers who all happen to be making a similar tweak under the same pitching coach.

3. Quintana actually signed a $2 million deal with Pittsburgh last year. But free agent salaries went up last offseason, so the $2 million pitcher cost you $3 million.