Logan Gilbert Just Got Better. But At What Cost?
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- Опубліковано 28 чер 2024
- Logan Gilbert made a few tweaks this offseason. He added a cutter, changed his curveball into a sweeper and tweaked his splitter.
Let's break down his pitch mix, approach, and what he's doing differently while also considering whether new pitches can affect a pitcher's movement patterns and whether it even matters.
My substack can be found here: lancebroz.substack.com/
Big Thanks to TruMedia for the plots and data within this video. You can check them out here: www.trumedianetworks.com/base...
Video and images via MLB, MLB.tv, USAToday, AP Images
0:00 Intro
0:17 Logan Gilbert's Stuff+
1:26 New Cutter
3:19 Fastball Location Adjustment
4:17 Did His Mechanics Change?
5:52 New Sweeper
6:37 Are New Pitches Bad?
8:33 Chicken or the Egg Problem
10:24 A Fun Question for Coaches - Спорт
High level content. Happy to see you’ve doubled subscribers since I subbed myself. This channel is a gem
Appreciate you coming along for the ride. 🤙
I think his biomechanics and pitches changed in tandem. Logan is very very analytical in his pitching. He's got that pitching coach in Florida he goes to all the time. Either 710 or Seattle Times had an article about him and how seriously he takes his biomechanics with all his pitching toys he brings for warm up and cool down and stuff.
Yeah, he’s super sharp. Can tell just from PitchingNinja’s interview with him
That’s why I inserted the part about he/the Mariners probably knowing what’s best for him on the movement side of things. 👍
Such good depth in information. Not many channels are this well versed. Very excited to see how this content evolves
Appreciate it!
Criminally underrated video
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This is EXACTLY the kind of baseball content I’ve been looking for !!!!
Sry for commenting on everything, im binging your stuff. Halladay also said his switch to a heavy reliance on cutter+sinker instead of his fastball+changeup had a lot to do with his shoulder issues
No problem haha thanks for binging my stuff!
I'd agree with you on the body-throw-shape. I think biomech data is starting to give teams the ability to understand each individual pitcher's range of outcomes for what they are capable of regarding pitch shapes based on how they move, then the coaches can attempt to alter grips, cues, etc in order to attempt to achieve the desired outcome that's within each pitcher's realm of possibility. And I think that's the smart/optimal way to do it?
With that being said, I think often times teams might also target larger-scale biomech changes if they believe it'll be better for the pitcher long-term from a health, efficiency, or overall arsenal quality standpoint.
And I think there is such thing as small-scale movement changes that attempt to bridge that gap, helping a pitcher increase velocity or change shape with a specific pitch in the instances when grip changes and cues don't work, and doing so without impacting the rest of the arsenal dramatically.
But I think it becomes difficult because, very frequently, attempting to alter one pitch DOES end up affecting one or more of the other pitches in an arsenal. It's a difficult tradeoff to navigate!
In Gilbert's case, I would guess the Mariners saw the potential for the Cutter addition and Sweeper change based on his current biomech characteristics, then identified movement changes would result from adding these two pitches, and then determined they were ok with the tradeoff in movement changes or that they were so marginal that they weren't worried about it impacting anything else. In this case, the Cutter was especially necessary and beneficial with the undesirable Fastball performance. (I believe you have similar thinking based on what you said in the video)
Really interesting stuff! I like those two questions you posed at the end, and would be curious what you hear.
Your thinking lines up with mine pretty nicely here. Not much for me to add apart from saying thanks for the in-depth comment. 👍
Curious to hear what responses are to those questions as well.
This is one of your best videos, and that's saying something. Fantastic stuff, very well explained.
I've been wondering this or things of the sort ever since Logan Webb broke out by radically altering his mechanics and becoming the most extreme east-west starter in MLB. Like you, I would hope that the order of this developmental question is very much body - throw - shapes, although that's reliant on guys actually throwing the way they should and not having learned some unnatural patterns, which may go back to well before they were pros.
Thanks! Appreciate that.
I think most orgs believe it’s body - throw - shapes. But I’ve run into a lot of conversations where that’s preached and then not executed. Kind of like the “we develop all guys to their strengths!” Idea in development. Cool and logical, but hard.
Might be the case here, I hypothesize. Would love to care about the body first, but when your task is make a bunch of MLB arms and you have a stuff model you believe in, might have to take a casualty in a guy who can’t get to big sweep by just forcing him to try to get to big sweep and breaking him.
Great video lance, interesting to see how this change has shifted his results
My favorite channel on UA-cam fr
First season I’m trying to get into baseball, your channel will teach me a lot , thank you! Subbed 🎉
Any questions, let me know. My stuff can be dense but trying my best to distill
Strider's injury was just a bone fragment that developed back from his 2019 TJ surgery and they said he probably had it since 2022. It just started effecting him this year. His UCL was still in good shape according his interview. Which was why they opted for the internal brace because they normally only opt for it if the UCL isnt all jacked up.
My interpretation of the cutter is that it's a 'neutral' pitch. It barely moves, it drops mostly like you would expect, and it's at a speed that is generally right between a four seam fastball and an off speed pitch. In theory, it's the most hittable pitch. However, batters are LOOKING for fastballs that carry and off speeds that break. So by being neutral, the cutter induces a lot of soft contact because hitters think it's either going to be above where it is, or below where it is.
I think there’s some merit to that, sure. I think the risk is just that those pitches which don’t move a ton are often subject to the whims of command. So they run into higher damage-when-in-nitro-zone rates if that makes sense.
So in theory they make a lot of sense and seem necessary but we’ve seen a lot of righty cutters just get bludgeoned by lefties and others work.
I think this is why we’re seeing a lot of gyro-style cutters that have more drop, so there’s a greater chance for whiffs, even if the command element doesn’t leave, at least the upside is greater.
8:36 I agree that the cutter probably came first, and then mechanics were changed to make it work better. I'm not too concerned with it affecting his 4 seam though, since it was already mediocre last year it can't get much worse. The curve/sweeper usage is pretty interesting, but I do think that is liable to change over the course of the season. Might just be using it to steal strikes for now while other teams aren't expecting it, and could switch it up after that gets stale.
Yep! I also think the grip he shows at the end is pretty odd for a cutter, which makes me think there’s perhaps a smaller chance it blurs with the 4S.
Hey as long as Logan continues to dominate and gives us a great chance to win every 5 days that's all I can ask. He's just that good and not slowing down any time soon. Nice video though!
Agreed! He’s a stud
3:39 flat out sickening image.
Sick as in cool? I agree 😉
So 95 is just an average fastball now? Yeah maybe its time to lower the mound again lol.
That’s a “stuff plus” model meaning 100 is the average of whatever they’re measuring, which is more than velocity. That being said, the average is about 94 MPH
Exactly yeah, you have to consider things other than velo in grading a pitch, even if velo is the most important variable.
Results prove out is average too, and SEA is telling you it’s average by pulling down the usage
outlier avgs. should definitely play a role in stuff grade!!
It’s a tough balance because stuff models are historical for the most part, looking at how shapes have done versus hitters. So ascribing value to outliers can’t be dramatic because we don’t exactly know how players would perform versus said outlier.
Give it a ton of value? Give it a little? What outlier is it? How much of an outlier is it?
I think it’s better to apply adjustments after the fact to Stuff+ based on those outliers than to bake them in.
Small sample size, but Logan's fastball value according to Baseball Savant (I'm assuming his cutter is included) is in the 99th percentile. Last year? 39th percentile. To be fair his FB value was high during his other years, but gosh darnit ignore that. I'll have to pay more attention to his curveball/sweeper now. My uneducated opinion is that Logan's four-seam can be a little too hittable if he's throwing it 40% of the time.
Love the mechanics side of the video. I don't know much other than "hey that's a nifty looking grip". Also I noticed that Logan's cutter is 129th in spin rate. Is that a big deal?
Yeah, the question is really why did the fastball back up in terms of performance last year. It seems like the Mariners saw enough of a reason to pivot towards the cutter to lefties in particular.
And the 4S has been pretty solid this year because of it.
I don’t think the spin rate matters much here. He’s a low spin guy generally, I’m unsure here. Spin helps in terms of the “capacity for movement” part of the equation. But Gilbert’s game isn’t really lateral movement, it’s more depth and multiple velo bands from big extension.