You’ll Never Guess What Spencer Schwellenbach Will Do Next

I’m not a lot of a YouTube man or, actually, a fan of movies generally. For those who ship me an Instagram reel, I’m sorry, I can’t watch it. However Lance Brozdowski delivers his baseball ideas in video type, so I’m compelled to make an exception. Lance’s posts prodded me to begin writing about baseball within the first place; I at all times be taught one thing once I watch his stuff and have a tendency to agree with all of his evaluation.

So I used to be shocked — shocked! — to listen to him specific pessimism about Spencer Schwellenbach in a current video. All via this offseason, I’ve had the other thought: There isn’t sufficient enthusiasm about Schwellenbach’s rookie marketing campaign, throughout which he posted a 3.29 FIP over 123.2 innings. However Lance wasn’t the one one with a tepid appreciation for the right-hander. Eno Sarris ranked him as his Thirty fourth-best beginning pitcher; Thomas Nestico had him at no. 36. If I had been obliged to make such a listing, I is perhaps pushing him some 20 spots greater. I feel Schwellenbach’s rookie excellence could be repeated and even improved upon for one key motive: When he delivers the baseball, no person is aware of what to anticipate.

Contemplate Schwellenbach’s scores in terms of Baseball Prospectus’ new arsenal metrics. These metrics analyze a given pitcher’s arsenal and grade it throughout 4 classes: Pitch Kind Chance, Shock Issue, Motion Unfold, and Velocity Unfold. As I wrote in January, “Every rating is transformed right into a percentile type, permitting for simple comparisons between pitchers. The knuckleballer Matt Waldron, for instance, ranks as a 98 in Shock Issue, the best amongst all pitchers.” It’s these first two qualities — Pitch Kind Chance and Shock Issue — the place Schwellenbach stands out amongst his friends. Towards hitters from each side of the plate, Schwellenbach makes use of his broad combine and the overlapping motion between his pitches to domesticate confusion. As Michael Baumann wrote about Schwellenbach final September, “He can throw something, wherever, at any time.” Check out his arsenal scores:

Schwellenbach even stays unpredictable on the rely stage. There isn’t a single rely — to righties or lefties — the place Schwellenbach threw a pitch in even 50% of conditions. His most predictable pitch/rely mixture was his slider to right-handed hitters in 1-2 counts; in 105 of those conditions, he opted for that pitch 50 occasions, or 47.6% of the time. For comparability, Logan Gilbert — who additionally has six pitches and throws his four-seamer a just about similar quantity of the time — had seven totally different pitch sort/rely combos above 50% utilization. (In 1-0 counts to lefties, for instance, Gilbert threw his slider almost 60% of the time.)

Schwellenbach’s 0-0 tendencies illuminate the problem of sitting on one particular pitch towards him. To lefties in 0-0 counts, he threw his curveball 35% of the time and his four-seamer 33% of the time; there was roughly a one-in-three probability you’d see one in every of his different 4 pitches. To righties on the primary pitch of a plate look, the curveball dropped right down to 11.4% utilization; the fastball was thrown 38% of the time, the cutter 23.6%, the slider 19.2%.

However he isn’t only a artful deep-mix man — the stuff is nasty. Schwellenbach throws three fastballs, together with a four-seamer that averaged 96.1 mph in 2024, rating within the ninetieth percentile of all starters final season. The form on that four-seamer, nonetheless, is so-so — his low arm angle and tendency to chop the baseball means it doesn’t get a lot of that bat-missing vertical hop:

It’s actually the offspeed stuff that units him aside. Towards right-handers, Schwellenbach wields a grimy slider, thrown with plus velo and sharp two-plane break. For lefties, there are two choices to induce swing-and-miss: a splitter, dropping over a foot beneath his common four-seam fastball, and a low-80s curve, tunneling proper beneath his tougher slider.

Impressively for a rookie who transformed to pitching full-time simply three seasons in the past, he manages to throw all six of his pitches for strikes. The placement plots counsel that Schwellenbach is a control-over-command sort of pitcher at this stage of his profession, preferring to problem hitters over the plate fairly than purpose for wonderful targets. Contemplate the areas of his four-seam fastballs towards right-handed hitters. Maybe there’s a slight tendency to focus on the surface a part of the plate, however that’s a variety of fastballs over the guts of the strike zone:

That kind of aggression could be accommodated when hitters have such a dim concept of which pitch is coming subsequent, to not point out so little time to react to it. And it actually saved the walks down: His 4.6% stroll charge was eighth amongst all pitchers with at the very least 100 innings pitched final yr.

Greater than any particular element of his recreation, Schwellenbach’s excellence could be finest defined by the way it all matches collectively. Solely a handful of beginning pitchers handle to area their pitches aside whereas concurrently making them look related out of the hand. Typically, it’s two forms of guys. There are the Patrick Corbins and Miles Mikolases of the world, overcoming subpar velocity with deception and guile. After which there are the pitchers who handle to mix these traits with top-tier velocity.

Utilizing the same methodology to Baseball Prospectus, Driveline’s Combine+ and Match+ fashions measure the motion unfold of a given pitcher’s arsenal and the similarity of the motion out of the hand, respectively. There have been three pitchers who posted at the very least a 105 Combine+, a 105 Match+, and averaged at the very least 96 mph on their four-seam fastball: Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, and Schwellenbach. (Within the pursuits of not choosing arbitrary endpoints to make my level stronger, I’ll concede that Cole Ragans and Nathan Eovaldi missed the fastball velocity cutoff by 0.6 mph.)

Schwellenbach’s pitch plot exhibits how he accomplishes this feat. In contrast to almost every other pitcher in baseball, his pitches contact all 4 quadrants of the plot, concurrently protecting a ton of area whereas creating bridges between every pitch:

It’s value contemplating Lance’s doubts intimately. As he factors out, Schwellenbach wasn’t nearly as good towards left-handed hitters. His strikeout charge vs. lefties — 21.8% — was roughly league-average. And the flip aspect of Schwellenbach’s broad arsenal is that there isn’t essentially a brand new trick to unlock that can remedy this downside. Pitchers like George Kirby, Gilbert, and Bryce Miller ascended to new ranges by including pitches to their repertoire and subsequently slicing their heavy use of their four-seam fastball. Schwellenbach is already close to the underside of all beginning pitchers in main fastball utilization; presumably, it might’t go a lot decrease than 30%. If he’s “maxed out,” as Lance places it, meaning he may not have a trick up his sleeve towards opposite-handed hitters.

However I’ve a way that Schwellenbach may be capable of assuage Lance’s doubts with an easy tweak: growing his early-count cutter utilization.

Schwellenbach most well-liked to throw his cutter to right-handed hitters, concentrating on the surface of the plate the place it tunneled nicely together with his four-seam fastball. That was on show in his remaining begin of the season, a seven-inning gem in that wild first recreation of the September 30 Braves-Mets doubleheader, in the beginning went nuts. He threw zero cutters via the primary 4 innings; it completed as his most-used pitch that day. He threw 24 cutters to righties, utilizing it as his main fastball the second and third time via the order; he threw simply two to lefties.

Within the common season, the cutter was his fourth-most used pitch towards left-handed hitters; he threw the four-seamer with double the frequency. Lefties did the majority of their harm off that four-seamer. If he reached two strikes, he was in a great spot — lefties whiffed 45.8% of the time they swung at his splitter. However to deploy that chase pitch, Schwellenbach first has to get to 2 strikes. Final season, he principally used the cutter when he fell behind lefties, making an attempt to induce weak contact when his again was towards the wall. (It was his most-used pitch towards lefties in 2-0, 2-1, and 3-1 counts.) Schwellenbach may select to extend the utilization of the pitch in early counts, stopping opposite-handed hitters from looking four-seamers earlier than the arrival of the dreaded two-strike splitter.

The fastball form is much from splendid; Schwellenbach nonetheless has some issues to determine towards lefties. However I simply don’t see some huge correction occurring. He instructions a large combine, wields weapons to each lefties and righties, throws his heater with plus velo, and even fields his place with the perfect within the enterprise (his +5 DRS was tenth amongst all pitchers). And if a pitcher refuses to be predictable, how are hitters supposed to regulate?