Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports
Curt Casali suggested MLB’s crackdown on foreign substances would be beneficial for the Giants, and as June winds down, the catcher is looking prophetic.
Every team’s spin rate is down as pitchers adjust to life without substances that ranged from sunscreen to Spider Tack. Since June 3, when word leaked out of an owners’ meeting that penalties were coming for pitchers found using a non-rosin substance for grip, the Giants’ is, too. Their average spin rate on breaking pitches has dipped from 2,355 Revolutions Per Minute before June 3 to 2,260 RPM in the 23 games since. Before the meeting, opponents posted a .623 OPS against Giants breaking pitches, which is surprisingly sliced down to .557 in the games that have followed.
The obvious caveat here, though, is the Giants’ staff has been remade, with bullpen additions such as Dominic Leone, John Brebbia and Jimmie Sherfy performing well and Sammy Long’s back-breaking curveball helping the post-June 3 numbers. But that’s kind of the point: As an evolving San Francisco staff adjusts in both personnel and style, the club’s hitting has surged against pitches that might hang and that have both less break and less spin.
Since the June 3 dividing line, the Giants’ batting average against breaking pitches is up (from .169 to .199), and their OPS has skyrocketed (.520 to .648) against breaking pitches that formerly averaged 2,554 RPM and have since been cut to 2,419. Put simply, opposing pitchers used a heavy dosage of sliders and curveballs to get Giants batters out, and the Giants tried to wait for a hanger or a fastball in their zone. Those mistakes now are much more plentiful. (All advanced data is from Baseball Savant.)
Through this 23-game stretch in June, the Giants have scored 122 runs, posting 5.3 per game en route to a 16-7 roll leading up to Tuesday’s finale of a two-game set at Dodger Stadium.
Justin Viele, one of the three hitting minds around the club, said they don’t pay much attention to whether an opposing pitcher has diminished stuff from a month or two ago; what they concern themselves with is how the pitcher has pitched recently.
“We just get ready for what that guy’s been throwing. If we see his break or something in his last outing or spin is different, we just go off that,” Viele said this weekend. “We’re really not diving too much into what he was doing in April.”
Players like Wilmer Flores had a tough time in April and May. Flores’ slow start was in large part because of his struggles against breaking pitches, going 4-for-35 (.114) against those offerings up to June 3.
Since that time, the average breaking pitch that he sees spins with 126 less RPM. His OPS against the pitches is .794 since June 3, going 4-for-16 (.250) with a home run.
Flores said he does not believe it’s a cause-and-effect relationship and says he is now wider at the plate, trusting that tweaks to his approach have helped him get hot this month, during which he is batting .319. Still, he had seen pitches earlier this year that he had not seen in his first eight big-league seasons.
“Some pitchers you say, ‘Man, that ball is not real. It’s going like a machine,’” Flores said this weekend. “But you adjust to it.”
“Some of the stuff they were seeing, I’m sure it was ridiculous,” Viele added.
The opposing pitchers have begun adjusting, of course, and are beginning to throw fewer breaking pitches the Giants’ way, sliding down from using 29.2 percent breaking pitches earlier to 26.5 percent post-June 3.
There are clearly Giants pitchers adjusting, and Alex Wood has become the face of Giants pitchers who are seeking a grip. And yet, the crackdown appears to be helping Giants hitters more than it is hurting Giants pitchers.