BRADENTON, Fla. -- Joe Musgrove has been a popular breakout candidate pick among the pitching analytics community for a few years now. He checks just about every box one could want in a starter. He's big and strong. He has six pitches that he can pick and choose when to throw. Just about every one of his peripherals is at least pretty good, including his FIP, which has been in the mid-threes each of his first two seasons with the Pirates. The ERA just hasn't followed suit.
Musgrove has been fine since coming to Pittsburgh. He's not Gerrit Cole, but then again, how many pitchers are? Baseball-Reference had him pegged for 1.6 WAR last year, a very average total. FanGraphs' pitcher WAR is primarily based on FIP, and they had him worth 3.3 wins above replacement, a quietly very good total.
Even if his ERA and FIP matched, it still feels like Musgrove has another gear that he has not been able to reach yet. Until perhaps now.
Take this interview with our Dejan Kovacevic after his first spring appearance:
Big Joe on showing a really big curve, a pitch he didn’t use much in 2019. #DKPS #Pirates pic.twitter.com/mn3ShLi6HF
— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) February 25, 2020
That's certainly a change in rhetoric from the classic "pitch down at the knees" mentality. Let's dive into how that may affect Musgrove's performance this year:
High fastballs have been a popular counter to the home run explosion in recent years. Most launch-angle optimized swings focus on drilling lower pitches, while higher fastballs are tougher to get a hold of. Overall, it has worked in the pitchers' favor. Few pitchers threw as many high heaters as Cole last year. Few threw them as often as Tyler Glasnow. The Rays have been throwing high for years. The Reds' pitching turnaround last season was sparked by high fastballs.
High fastballs, on a macro sense, work. Perhaps not for everyone, but definitely for most.
On Saturday, I talked to Musgrove about him going up in the zone with his fastball more. He told me it was something he had been doing more each of the last two years, but he wanted to do it better in 2020.
As he put it, "It's a safe spot for a lot of pitchers if you do it well."
"Looking at my numbers and my splits, I get a lot of swing-and-miss and weak contact and a lot of chase at the top of the zone," Musgrove continued. "I'm just trying to improve the quality of the pitches up there and try to use spring training to get that usage up."
Musgrove, of course, is right. Last year, 24.8 percent of his fastballs resulted in either a whiff or a called strike, the ideal outcome for a pitch (CSW). When he pitched in the upper-third of the GameDay strike zone, his CSW percentage was 26.8 percent. His expected wOBA -- based on quality and frequency of contact -- on his fastball was .371 overall, but when he went up in the zone, it was .252. He did his best work up there.
And there is another benefit to his high fastball: It tunnels well with his curveball. The curve is a plus pitch for him -- getting above-average break, spin and whiffs -- but it was only his fifth most used pitch in 2019 (9.5 percent), barely edging out the cutter.
But as the year progressed, you can see he started relying on the curve more. It looks like this trend is going to continue into 2020, especially with some high heaters providing it some protection.
To illustrate how the two pitches work together, Michael Augustine of Bucs Dugout and FanGraphs made a great overlay to illustrate how a well-executed curve looks like it's coming in as a belt-high fastball up to the point where the batter needs to make the decision to swing or not. If he guesses wrong, the curve is going to run much too far away from right-handers for them to do anything.
The #Pirates Joe Musgrove with a fastball/curveball in his #ST2020 debut.
H/T to @ATTSportsNetPIT (@theFortMcKenry) for their stellar centerfield camera angle! pic.twitter.com/c8st8AcCX8
— Michael Augustine (@AugustineMLB) February 26, 2020
And it doesn't stop there.
"The more I throw my curveball, the more it protects my fastball up, the more it protects my slider," Musgrove said. "The hitters get the same sheets we get on tendencies and percentages, and a lot of guys know I go to my slider with two strikes. I think if I can protect that a little longer in the game [with my curveball], it gives me another weapon to use."
Musgrove not only has a repertoire of six pitches, but when he's in a groove, they can complement each other, too. More high fastballs could be a catalyst for his breaking stuff — and perhaps that long-awaited breakout campaign.
Stats and graphics courtesy of Baseball Savant. Additional stats from Baseball-Reference and FanGraphs.
MORE MOUND VISIT
Feb. 24: Chad Kuhl might have found his fix
Feb. 17: How Stratton became a spin doctor
Feb. 5: Getting most out of middle infield
Jan. 31: Can Bryan Reynolds play center?
