SAN FRANCISCO -- The idea, as Oscar Marin described it, came when he was watching the Pirates' hitters take indoor batting practice.
In a conversation with DK Pittsburgh Sports earlier this season, the Pirates' pitching coach saw the pitching machine pump in high fastballs at the top of the zone. It's necessary practice because so many pitchers across the league attack batters that way. Ideally, a high-velocity, high-spin four-seamer will give the illusion of rise, so throwing them up in the zone plays off that movement.
As this rise in four-seamers was happening during the latter-half of the last decade, the Pirates stuck primarily with sinkers and two-seamers, pitches the staff had great success with during their playoff years from 2013-2015. The sinker ended up working to their detriment, though, as a juiced baseball made home-run rates soar. A sinker or two-seamer is a pitch-to-contact pitch, so it was impacted more than other offerings because it didn't get as many whiffs to even the score. Seeing pitchers like Gerrit Cole and Tyler Glasnow succeed elsewhere after they ditched their sinking fastballs, paired with the failure of Chris Archer primarily because they forced him to adopt a sinker, played a large role in the team's pitching struggles and an organizational house-cleaning in 2019.
When Marin took over, the Pirates quickly adopted more four-seamers and breaking balls, like the rest of Major League Baseball. League-wide, hitters struggled against the pitch for years, but that began to change at the start of 2022. That set teams up for an opportunity to change their fastball approach, and the Pirates made the switch.
“I think the game was asking us to make an adjustment, and we’re making that adjustment,” Marin said during that earlier conversation.
Some players, such as JT Brubaker, came into the year with revised sinker strategies, but the team's rate of throwing sinkers has increased by month, almost doubling where they were at the start of the year:
April: 14.7%
May: 17.9%
June: 20%
July: 26.8%
August: 27.3%
The focus is still on trying to maximize each pitcher in an individualized approach, so this is not a sinker mandate like what Archer and some of the previous pitchers experienced. However, it has been a way to get more production out of some pitchers who were struggling.
To take a deeper look, I talked to several pitchers who are throwing more sinkers this year, their motivation behind it and why the pitch is the better choice of fastball for them.
MITCH KELLER
No pitcher on staff has benefited more in a change in fastballs than Keller. He picked up extra fastball velocity and a new attitude this offseason at Tread Athletics, but when he returned to the regular season, the four-seam fastball was still being hit.
So in May, he brought up the idea of throwing a sinker to Marin. The pitching coach loved it and had wanted to explore the idea in the past, but Keller was reluctant because he could never get a feel for it. He recognized he needed a new weapon and threw himself into developing the new pitch midseason.
It started with the throwing program, which quickly transitioned into bullpens. Monitoring it on Trackman, he quickly gained faith in it when he saw good, consistent movement.
"It was the same metrically, so I was like, 'OK, I can use this [in games] now,'" Keller said.
He also dove into seam-shifted wake for the first time, or as he put it, "trying to let the ball do the movement for you rather than try(ing) to manipulate it." To do this, he and other Pirates pitchers who throw sinkers began coloring bottle-cap sized circles on the baseballs they throw in their bullpens. That way they can see how much of the movement is from their own doing -- either by release, grip, follow through or anyway you can manipulate a ball -- and how much of it is the ball's natural sink. Ideally, it will be the latter.
"The idea is to have it clean and at the end, when the seams take over, it wobbles," Keller said.
Keller said he has also been trying to apply the same lessons with seam-shifted wake to his slider. From April to June, he averaged about 37 inches of vertical movement on the pitch, according to Baseball Savant. In July and August, it's been about 43 inches.
But for the sinker, Keller recorded a 6.05 ERA in his first nine outings of the season, only throwing a few sinkers at the very end of that stretch. On May 31 against the Dodgers, he gave it a proper debut, throwing the Dodgers off with what was essentially a new pitch, and he threw it often. In his last 13 starts where the sinker has been his go-to fastball, he has recorded a 3.30 ERA, 3.58 FIP and averaged 5 2/3 innings a start.
His success is not just due to the results he's getting with the new pitch, but how it has expanded his repertoire, which is especially useful if he doesn't have feel for a pitch on a given night.
“I think in the past, only having [my] fastball [and] curveball, by having that slider not working, I’m limited to fastball/curveball, sprinkling in changeups here and there," Keller said after his start on July 30. "But just having the two-seam, to be able to have two different fastballs, especially when one of the off-speed’s not on the way I like it, it gives me so much more freedom to just navigate through lineups and get creative.”
BRYSE WILSON
Wilson's season can be effectively split into two halves: Before he was demoted to the minors and since he has come back up. Through his first nine starts, he had an 8.29 ERA. In his last seven starts since his promotion back to the majors in July, it's been 3.82.
While his slider and changeup rates have bumped up these last two months, the most striking change is with his two fastballs:
Since that demotion, Wilson has been working to learn more about how the different axes of spin affects the pitch's movement profile. That's given him a better understanding and feel for what he should be doing to get a sinker to his arm side compared to his glove side.
"Easiest way to explain it is I'm on top of the baseball more than inside of the baseball, and getting between this spin or this type of spin," Wilson said.
TYLER BEEDE
When the Pirates claimed Beede off waivers in May, they immediately approached him with a couple ideas. One was to bring back his 2019 slider. The other was to bring back his sinker, a pitch he said he stopped throwing in 2017, and pitch tracking stopped registering in 2018.
Beede was at a point in his career to experiment and was in the right environment to do so.
"They helped me figure out a grip that worked, with the Trackman, helped me bring it back," Beede said. "Once I felt comfortable throwing it in games, I began adding it slowly and it became my predominant fastball."
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The grip was the important part of the equation. Beede admits that his grip probably doesn't yield what is the most analytically-ideal pitch. He could potentially get more drop if he fidgeted with it more, but finding something that is comfortable that he can repeat is more important.
Most pitchers with a sinker -- or at least the ones on the Pirates he talked to at the time — Keller and Chris Stratton -- like to have their fingers apart when they throw it. Beede wants his close together, and he holds it more on the left side rather than middle or to the right like the other people he talked to, meaning more of the ball is in his hand.
"It's unique to me, but it performs well," Beede said. "Maybe in the offseason I can tinker with it a little more."
Earlier in the year, home run rates were significantly down, with many pointing to changes in the ball again. As the weather warmed up, so did home run rates, albeit not to 2018-2019 totals. As the homers across the league started to tick up, Beede doubled down on the sinker. He'll still mix in four-seamers, especially to lefties, but he doesn't like the tilt as much. He also feels better when he's throwing sink.
It's also helped his changeup become one of the best-performing pitches on staff. His offspeed pitch gets above average bite as well, so it plays off the sinker and holds hitters to a .158 batting average. Despite being used in a longer role and getting several starts, Beede has become a reliable hand out of the bullpen, recording a 3.49 ERA and 121 ERA+ in his 38 2/3 innings with the team.
"It comes down to conviction," Beede said. "I've got more conviction in my two-seamer. ... It gets more action, so I'll trust it more."
