Mike Minor And Breaking Balls, Part Two
August 9, 2012 at 8:48 am by Ben Duronio under Atlanta Braves
Needless to say, Mike Minor has had an up and down season. Lately, he has been on an upswing, with a 3.15 ERA over his past 11 starts spanning 65.2 innings. His ERA has dropped from 6.57 to 4.95 during that time frame. There is pretty much no way, unless he puts up a Cy Young caliber performance down the stretch, that his numbers look good this season. But that does not mean that his season would not have been a success, especially if he can continue to pitch as effectively as he has since the start of June.
So what has Minor done differently to receive significantly better results in his last 11 starts compared to his first 10? He has upped the usage of his breaking balls while dropping the frequency in his changeup. In his first 10 starts, Minor through his changeup 18.9% of the time while he threw his curveball and slider a combined 22.9% of the time — 11.9% and 11.0% respectively. Over the past 11 starts, Minor has thrown his changeup just 12.5% of the time and his breaking balls a combined 26.7% of the time — 14.1% for the curveball and 12.6% for the slider. While he has been effective, he has thrown his changeup — commonly known as his best pitch — less frequently than any other pitch he has.
Here is a quote from an article I wrote in February about Minor’s success with his breaking balls.
While his fastball-changeup combination is his bread and butter, he threw the two a combined 72% of the time in August compared to 81% of the time for the season. When he relied on his breaking balls more heavily, we saw Minor pitch as well as he ever has at this level. With the confidence and feel he has in his breaking balls entering the season, pitch frequencies like he had in August could lead to a big break out year.
I had said during Minor’s rough stretch that a lot of the problem was sequencing. Minor certainly pitched poorly during the first two months of the season, most notably in May, but it is good to see that the staff has come to the realization that his breaking balls are instrumental to his success and need to be thrown with a higher frequency than they were early in the season. Not all of his issues can be blamed on sequencing, but over the past two years when Minor has been his most effective, he has been relying on his breaking balls. Hopefully that continues.
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Good article Ben. Do you think his problem was also due to location? When he was getting hammered, it seemed as though he left a lot of change-ups up in the zone. And regardless of the pitch sequence, if you hang a change-up, it will likely get hammered. I agree with your overall point of the article, just pointing out that his failure’s could have been due to the quality of the pitch and not just the timing of it.
Selection and sequence are no doubt important and changed as indicated, but command and location appear more significant. By month the ratio of BB’s to K’s and ERA this year:
April 8-30 / 27% / 4.68
May 13-21 / 62% / 9.65
June 17-21 81% / 4.55
July 4-26 15% / 1.98
The more detailed splits would probably show this more persuasively, but to my observation when he lacked command he was either walking folks or throwing them meatballs.
I would say though that given Minor’s recent success and everything a 4.50 ERA should not be out of the question. That would make him relatively average which I would not complain about. Given he has about 10 more starts this year that is not out of the question either.
Well, you know in the game it’s about “what have you done for me lately”. In the stats world, it’s about “what have you done for me for the season.” As far as winning I think the Braves organization are more concerned about recent, consistent performance. If he continues as is, I would say he is a success. Who really cares if he didn’t pitch well at the beginning of the season if that’s the old Minor? If he continues like this I think he would make a great #3 or #4.
It is hard to let a pitcher go through his growing pains in the majors when your team is in the middle of the hunt. But I am glad the Braves have stuck with Minor. Watching him pitch the past couple years he has always seemed like he has good potential, and we are just now starting to see that come to fruition when we need it the most.
I am curious as to your thoughts on Hanson. He seems to be following in JJ’s path of falling velocity. His fWAR has fallen each of the past 2 seasons and baseball ref has it falling all 3 years. At the same time his ERA has risen as has his FIP. Shouldn’t there be some concern among the Braves that instead of progressing like a lot of young players do Hanson has regressed?
Now Ben can say, “I told you so”. Somebody must be reading your posts in the Braves organization.