STATE COLLEGE, Pa. -- It really doesn't get much worse for a pitcher than what Chris Archer went through Tuesday against the Braves.
Four out of his five home runs allowed came on fastballs. Technically, three were four-seam fastballs, while two were sinkers.
My very first edition of Mound Visit here at DK Pittsburgh Sports detailed the need for Archer's fastball to be better. Going into the season, this is how I appraised Archer's straight heat:
An already bad pitch has gotten worse in 2019. As of this writing, 158 starting pitchers in Major League Baseball have thrown at least 50 or more fastballs of any kind, shape, bent or ilk. Archer has the 14th highest slugging percentage against those pitches with a .648 clip.
How did Archer's fastball find another layer of ineptitude?
NOT A NEW STORY
I suppose we shouldn't be surprised at this. After all, Archer's four-seamer has been hit for a slugging percentage of .500 or greater in each of the past three total seasons before the current campaign.
Despite this, Archer was effectively a two-pitch pitcher before famously bringing back his sinker last season. He was a classic four-seam/slider guy. That's great if you're a late-inning reliever with Archer's velocity and movement. That's not so great when you're a starter counted on to get through a lineup at least twice before giving way. It's no wonder then that Archer seemed to constantly flirt with a 4.00 ERA despite high strikeout totals.
But then again, Archer's times through the order struggles have shown to be the inverse from the norm. Here is a look at his slugging percentages against his fastballs for 2019:
Aside from the numbers, if we took a look at Archer's two-seam fastball, we see a pitch that is flat as soon as it leaves his hand. Take a look below, you can see just how well any competent major league hitter can crush such a lifeless pitch.
Each and every one of those sinkers -- and there are more, believe me -- carry a similar trait. On the surface, this is not quantified by the numbers. Archer ranks 30th out of 115 qualified starts in terms of vertical sinker movement, and 34th in horizontal movement. The pitch itself has merit, but its usage has been very off-kilter ever since he re-introduced it last season.
This season, the sinker has been involved in 45.1 percent of Archer's pitch pairings, meaning that each one of his other pitches has been matched up with a sinker in consecutive pitches at that rate. Hitters are carrying an xwOBA of .498 against those pairings.
Ostensibly, Archer can use a changeup to offset some of this by way of sequencing. Mixing and matching velocities is a pre-requisite for effective pitching, but his offspeed stuff -- used 13.9 percent of the time overall, by the way -- carries just 5.94 mph of separation in velocity against his combined fastball velocity. Historically, most sturdy changeups carry a change of at least 8 miles per hour.
Without an effective path to mixing things up, the spotlight goes back to Archer's four-seam fastball. Mechanically, there may be some changes afoot that could explain away some of his trouble with the pitch — Archer's release point on the pitch changed substantially year over year.
What you're looking at here is a graph showing the variance in the horizontal release points of Archer's four-seamer year-over-year. You see less variation from 2012 through 2015 than in years following. Today, the release point is the "highest" its been for his career. The "-1.2" here, and the other figures as well, represent the release point, in feet, from the center of the pitching rubber. So, a theoretical release point figure of zero would mean a pitcher would release a pitch directly over the center of the rubber. Physics tells us this is impossible, really.
So, in this example, Archer's four-seamer is not being released from a point as far away from the rubber as he has in years past. In those years before 2016 when the first substantial change was noticed, Archer carried a cumulative .269 batting average against on the pitch. That's not particularly great, but much better than the years that followed, when it ballooned to .296.
By making this change, he might be trying to recapture his "salad days," even if the salad was not very fresh. The problem here is that it hasn't really worked out that way.
And neither has the trade the Pirates made to acquire him. I was a staunch defender of the trade up until the fourth of Archer's five home runs in Tuesday's start.
As good as his slider may be, as high as his strikeout totals might have been and even considering the built-in disclaimers that came with his middling performance in his prior-to-Pittsburgh career -- among them, pitching in the AL East, pitching in the AL in general -- if his fastball can't be counted on, Archer simply cannot even sniff being good value as the return for Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz.
MORE MOUND VISIT
June 12: Looking at Tucker's first taste
June 11: Marte’s partay rages once more
June 10: Colin Moran barreling toward consistency
