Nat Lefties

The Nationals have come under fire for some of their pitching philosophies in recent months. Are some of their best young guns on the right track?

Introduction

There's no question that the Nationals have struggled in recent years. They've posted no winning seasons since their championship title in 2019, while also providing limited signs of hope to latch on to in the interim. Times have changed as of late, though. CJ Abrams and Luis Garcia are on the path to serious major-league relevance offensively, and James Wood looks like the next elite prospect with almost no holes in his game. Pitching-wise, the Nationals seem to have found quality assets in two left-handed pitchers, Mitchell Parker and MacKenzie Gore. Their stories are opposites: Parker was an unheralded pitching prospect called up to fill the rotation spot of continually uninspiring starter Josiah Gray, while Gore has gone from a consensus top 10 prospect - not amongst pitchers, but all players - to a potential lost cause thanks to crazy erratic command, to finally showcasing his prospect pedigree this season.

The Nationals have also come under fire during this time for their pitching philosophy with their infamous “I don't care how hard you throw ball four” signs in Spring Training. No matter how you feel about the premise, their ideas have appeared to bear some fruit - so far this season, they have the 6th-best walk rate in the league and the 13th-best K-BB%. Remember, one-fifth of the starts go to Patrick Corbin. But do those signs truly reflect an outdated philosophy, or do they simply call attention to an outdated aspect of an otherwiwe modern pitching development unit? Let’s take a look through the lens of these two pitchers. 

MacKenzie Gore

Gore reminds me a lot of Blake Snell; they both operate from the left side and hinge their success on their three secondaries, which fittingly also consist of a curve, slider, and change. Of course, Gore hasn’t merited such a comparison with his performance yet, for a variety of reasons. For example, Gore hasn’t been able to run 30% K rates with regularity, something Snell did from his age 25 season on (Gore's present age), while also giving up lots of free base runners and hard contact (Snell only did the former to reduce the latter). Throughout, I’ll make comparisons between the two for convenience, but they are quite different in many respects. 

Fastball

Gore has an elite fastball that is only held back by its erratic command. It has elite extension, at 7 feet, a low release at 5’9”, three inches lower than last year, and great velocity, at 96.5 mph. The new release and 18 inches of induced vertical break give it +.3° VAA compared to the average, which is very strong. It’s also quite straight, with 5.5 inches of horizontal break, giving it a tighter tunnel with other pitches. This follows the blueprint of guys like Glasnow and Eury Perez, who trade in great horizontal break differentials for the deception of having limited horizontal separation between their pitches. Anecdotally, I’d say this creates more whiffs, but also more hard contact, which explains why Gore (14.5 inches of difference between greatest arm-side and glove-side break) gets hit harder than someone like Snell (26.5). 

While Gore’s command of the pitch is suspect, it still produces average results against right-handed batters (RHB), and elite results against left-handed ones (LHB). It’s clear he intends to elevate, and he’s gotten better at ensuring his misses are a foot above the zone, rather than down the chute. But further refinement will make it into the premier pitch its shape implies it to be. Its heavy usage, 55% at the time of writing, makes it less effective than it might otherwise be, but it still is able to garner great results.

Slider

The slider might be his strangest offering. He pushed it up 3 mph to 91.5, while retaining its 2 inches of horizontal break, which perhaps helps clarify speed ranges, but costs him the great 8 mph speed differential he had with the fastball before. One could argue the results don't indicate it was a smart trade: its swinging strike rate is identical, the flyball rate is significantly higher, and its whiff rate is lower, despite its far better location in the bottom third of the zone. This emphasis on the lower glove-side part of the zone did lead to more chases, and a great 58% strike rate given its 31% zone rate, but one would hope for that to be the case. 

The most interesting part of the slider is how it defies expected results. One would expect it to dominate lefties and struggle against righties, but it’s actually been the opposite. While it’s been utilized 35% of the time against LHB, it has induced far below-par whiffs, chases, and only good results on great location. Against righties, it has an absurd 48% chase rate and 27% swinging strike rate on just under 10% usage. It does get knocked around for a 43% ideal contact rate (ICR), but it’s well worth it with those rewards. We’re talking small samples here, of course, with only 86 offerings to RHB and 99 to LHB to work with. But perhaps the pitch is far more matchup-agnostic than he gives it credit for, thanks to its small amount of horizontal break. That’d open up his approach to RHB, which currently relies on heaters more than half the time, to decent, but not outstanding, results. I also believe that Gore’s reverse splits are in large part from this discrepancy, and the slider's poor performance vs. LHB in general.

Changeup

The changeup is the key to the puzzle, and is the primary reason in my opinion Gore has the potential to be a top 10 SP as soon as next year. Like fellow left-handed pitcher Tarik Skubal last year, his changeup hasn’t seen much change entering this season. However, its results have exploded into stratospheric heights, thanks to improvements to his fastball location and shape, which is self-evident from its improvement in season in tandem with the four-seam. Despite location that can be described as spotty at best (22% of them land in the upper third, compared to Skubal’s 10-15% and Snell’s <10%), it has a 50% whiff rate. That’s 4% higher than Skubal’s this season and Snell’s 47.1% last season. No starter has a higher whiff rate than Gore on their changeup with at least as many thrown. Of course, Skubal throws his twice as often and induces far more swings from its better location. But there’s something here. 

Now, to the not-so-great part. First, something so strange that I still can’t believe it. He hasn’t thrown a single one to a left-handed batter in his entire major league career. How is that possible? (There was never even a case where he misread the sign???) Secondly, it has a propensity to get knocked around and not getting chased, despite it being an irregular feature in the arsenal, but one could easily argue that’s from command rather than the pitch itself. Hopefully, that rectifies itself in due time, because it could unlock the door to Cy Youngs. 

Curve

Perhaps the curve is the point where the Snell-Gore comparison falls flattest: Gore opts for a curveball with 0 inches of horizontal break, while Snell goes for a sweeping 12-incher. Gore opts to make it into a strike stealer at a relatively hard 83, rather than Snell’s uses for whiffs, but it still creates plenty of whiffs and weak contact. Lance Brozdowski, a top pitching analyst in the space, loves curves that are thrown hard (albeit, primarily when it functions as a whiff pitch, rather than the called strike pitch Gore utilizes), and Gore’s ranks in the upper echelon of that category.

Conclusion

The fact that MacKenzie Gore has such great results with such clear flaws is fascinating. His fastball is erratic, his changeup lands who knows where and has never seen a same-handed hitter, and his slider has a 21% CSW when employed in the strong-side platoon matchup. Yet, his ERA is 3.47, his SIERA is 3.48, and he has a 20% K-BB%. 

The proposed fix seems apparent. Against LHB, he should trade a good share of his sliders for changeups, perhaps taking some from the fastball as well. Giving exact ratios seems silly with the sample sizes we’re working with on the slider and change, but against RHB, the changeup should be far more prevalent. Skubal uses his 30% of the time, despite a better 5-pitch mix, so 20% seems like the bare minimum for Gore. His slider probably could be pushed up a bit as well, allowing his four-seam to be taken off the hook.

I see a top-10 starter here, with the chance to be even better, just from modest changes in overall repertoire and location on the changeup. Bryan Woo is the player that I’ve been most surprised by when analyzing players for an article like this, but Gore might have surpassed him. It’s sometimes hard to separate the pitches from the way they’re utilized, but it’s all there. It just has to be pieced together by the man on the mound. 

Mitchell Parker

Parker is a very different type of pitcher. His fastball is mediocre at best, but he manages to get by with a trio of great secondaries. Like Gore, his prioritization appears to be a little out of line, but his unique repertoire allows him to outperform his conventional ceiling. 

The heater sits 92 mph with slightly above-average extension, but it gets almost no whiffs and has a 23% CSW%. It has eluded punishment so far, but I don't see that sticking around at a staggering 50% usage and an in-zone rate of 5% above the average. 

His curve is a bit harder than average at 80 mph, and resembles Gore’s in terms of shape and success: it steals strikes effectively while eliciting chases, with a minimal amount of horizontal break. It runs a high 26% usage, maintaining itself against righties and lefties, but I could see it get elevated even further towards Aaron Nola’s and Jose Berrios’ marks of 31-32%.

The most interesting part of Parker’s repertoire might be the splitter. It gives him a great way to attack right-handed hitters, and has done its job so well that he is running heavily inverted splits - he has dominated RHB for a .629 OPS against, compared to .701 vs. LHB. He has a propensity to miss with it away, rather than leaving it under the zone, giving him some room for growth, but it already can feature regularly against LHB as well. Unlike Gore’s changeup, it’s been featured in a same-handed matchup this season. Once. Behold it below, in all its glory.

Parker’s one splitter of the year against a lefty, vs. Gunnar Henderson on May 8th. The graphic originates from BaseballSavant’s Matchups section.

Last up is his slider, which has the opposite end of the extreme platooning compared to the splitter. It has been incredible on 27% usage against LHB, with a 25% swinging strike rate and 19% ICR on pitches that reliably land on the outer third. Like the splitter, it tends to leak up on misfires, but it performs incredibly well all the same. I don't think it’ll maintain the outstanding results, especially if it gets ramped up in use, but there’s no way it should be conserved for only the weak-side platoon matchups with just 6 inches of horizontal break. He’s gotta let it fly. 

Overall, Parker suffers from some of the same problems Gore does, with complete segregation of the changeup and slider. It invites a ton of fastball usage, which unlike Gore, is the worst possible thing for him to throw. If he could get his 4-seam usage down to 30% or so, like Skubal has done with a similarly mediocre shape, he’d be far better off. He could also consider replacing it with a sinker to add some width; his current arsenal only encompasses 12 inches of horizontal brake differential between the splitter on the arm-side and the slider on the glove-side. I see a potential above-average arm in the long-run, but I’m not sure it packs top 25 upside without significant upheaval. 

Conclusion 

The Nationals have some great young arms, but it’s clear their streamlined approach to pitch selection is limiting their performance to some extent. Even fellow youngster Jake Irvin follows the general guidelines! It’s a heavy dosage of fastballs and curveballs with a mix of secondaries that are split down the middle based on matchup, and while Irvin’s divide comes with sinkers and cutters, rather than Parker’s and Gore’s sliders, splits and changes, it’s all the same tune. If Gore and Parker are to reach their potential, they’re going to have to experiment more with their secondaries to get around the pesky left-handed hitters they already have the tools to beat.

Sources

PitcherList

BaseballSavant

Alex Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard

FanGraphs