Many popular opinions of pitching prospects are formed from general scouting reports. While these reports are invaluable resources, they can’t always be trusted. Hundreds of minor league hurlers are credited with “mid-90′s velocity,” but very few MLB starters actually have that grade of heat, for example. It’s incredibly frustrating to hear about a pitcher with “a mid-90′s heater and plus curve,” only to have him come up to the big leagues and show a fastball that averages 90.5 mph and a slider.
When a pitcher come up to the majors, we can finally get a foolproof reading on what exactly his arsenal is comprised of, thanks to the great Pitch F/X system. In this series, I analyze just that–the “stuff” of recently-promoted MLB pitchers. Now that they’ve achieved their big league dreams and thus factor directly into the MLB picture, it’s high time that we know exactly what these guys are providing.
This time, I’m taking a look at Pirates starter Jeff Locke.
It hasn’t been a kind introduction to the big leagues for Jeff Locke. He’s lasted just 12 2/3 innings across his three starts, and he’s walked out while striking out just two batters. The 23-year-old lefthander’s performance can be somewhat excused; aside from the usual issues with small samples (not to mention the hiccups any rookie is liable to experience transitioning to the big leagues), he’d only made five starts in Triple-A, so facing MLB-caliber hitters with any regularity is very new to him.
The question thus becomes: Can Locke’s struggles be explained away as a mere blip in the radar as he adjusts, or are there more concerning, persistent flaws, a la Brad Hand? Obviously, Hand’s had half a season in the bigs, not just a trio of September starts, so it’s not a perfect comparison; however, the 2/8 BB/K ratio does raise some alarms.
Locke’s reputation as a minor leaguer was as a good-not-great lefty prospect; he projected as a big-league rotation member but lacked the “wow” factor to be seen as more than a #4-type starter. His Double-A numbers this year epitomize that–he struck out 114 and walked 49 in 125 innings while allowing nine home runs. That’s good for a 4.03 ERA and 3.61 FIP, which is nice but not overwhelming for a 23-year-old in Double-A.
Baseball America’s preseason observation that Locke “mostly sits at 90 mph and peaks at 92” seems to be mostly accurate. Locke’s thrown his fastball in the 88-93 range, averaging just a shade over 90 mph. He backs it up with a curveball and changeup which were both said to be serviceable pitches in scouting reports, with a chance at turning into plus offerings down the line. Locke will vary the break on the big curveball, which he throws anywhere from 72-78 mph; the changeup comes in at 78-81.
Obviously, one primary concern that Locke’s statline evokes is his lack of strikeouts. His Pitch F/X data reveals that he has indeed had some problems getting batters to swing and miss, as just eight of his 230 pitches have resulted in a whiff (3.48%). For comparison’s sake, the Nationals’ Chien-Ming Wang–a noted non-strikeout pitcher–has a 5.8% whiff rate.
As a lefty with decent velocity, a big breaking pitch, and a useful changeup, Locke doesn’t seem the type of pitcher to be turning into Kirk Rueter on the mound. So what’s going on here?
Well, first, let’s put the whiff rate in context of some of Locke’s other pitch rates, and break it down against lefties and righties as well:
Strike Rate Called Strike Rate Whiff Rate
vs. L 53.3% 24.4% 2.2%
vs. R 58.1% 16.8% 3.8%
Now, the data against lefties consists of a grand total of 45 pitches, but it does seem odd that only one of those 45 has been whiffed at. Or, at least it seems strange until you realize Locke’s thrown lefties 40 fastballs, four curveballs, and one changeup. When you talk about rookies needing to learn to optimize their approaches to big league hitters, things like “realizing that being lefthanded and throwing 90 mph doesn’t make you Matt Thornton” may not be part of the discussion, but that’s an adjustment Locke needs to make. Since, again, he only had five starts at the Triple-A level, it’s quite possible that the problem is less an issue of Locke stubbornly entertaining Randy Johnson fantasies and more an issue of him needing to reconcile the difference between Eastern League lefties and MLB ones. After all, I wouldn’t be all that surprised if 90-mph lefty heaters could tie Double-A southpaws up.
Against righthanders, Locke uses a more even distribution of his three offerings. That leads to more strikes, more swings, and more empty swings, although none of his rates against righthanders are stellar either. What is quite notable, however, is that Locke’s fastball goes for strikes just 54.5% of the time to righties–almost exactly the same as his overall (fastball-driven) rate to lefties. It’s his offspeed pitches that push his strike rate against righties more toward respectability, which is rather counterintuitive. But Locke has gotten strikes on 19 of his 29 curves to righties this year, which is impressive for a big, slow breaker. Further impressive is where he’s put those curveballs:
Basically, he peppers the lower half of the zone, both inside and outside, with the pitch. It’s a small sample, but if this location is for real, then I’m quite optimistic about the curveball’s ability to work out for Locke in the big leagues. With its big movement, it could also be a nice weapon to lefties, and he needs to learn to use it far more often in that capacity and stop relying solely on the fastball.
It’s tough to get much of a read on Locke’s changeup yet, because Pitch F/X often conflates it with his two-seam fastball, and he’s only thrown about 33 or so of them (to my eyes, just looking at all the “2S/CH” <85 mph, it comes out to around there), so it’s not particularly feasible to get any meaningful data in the first place, let alone given all the classification confusion. But, it does boast about 10 mph of velocity separation from Locke’s fastball, so that’s a good start, and he throws a good number of them to righties, so he has trust in the pitch. It does seem that he likes to pound the zone (roughly 16 of these 20 pitches are actually changeups):
So that seems to work out at least somewhat okay…pointing the finger of criticism squarely at the fastball. And, if we look at Locke’s fastballs to righthanders, we get this:
There are clusters of pitches in all the wrong places here. There are a bunch of middle-in fastballs around belt-high and a bunch of pitches way in off the plate; very little is down or away. Against lefties, he works the same areas:
You can see why he’s not getting enough strikes to lefties–almost all of the balls here are way out of the zone. The up-and-away location for the fastball is defensible here, but it’s not really optimal.
It’s no surprise, given his imprecise fastball location, that Locke has given up a ton of line drives thus far, and his propensity to work up the zone with the heater also limits his groundball ability, despite his solid location of the other two offerings.
It’s pretty simple, in the end: Locke should succeed if he gets more precise with his fastball command. Until that happens, we should expect him to continue to struggle. At his age, of course, he has some time to make adjustments, and it’s likely that his being somewhat rushed to the majors played a role in his lack of preparedness regarding the fastball. Both his offspeed pitches look to show promise, and he shouldn’t have any sort of platoon problems–that’s a positive, although it does mean Locke wouldn’t really be a viable lefty specialist if starting doesn’t work out.
It’ll be interesting to see how this young lefthander adjusts to MLB hitters, or if a more extended stay in the International League could coax him to utilize an approach better suited to consistently battle batters at the game’s highest level.
For more on the Pirates, check out Rum Bunter.
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