What is wrong with Bryce Elder?

Is the 2023 All-Star and one-time MLB ERA leader turning back into a pumpkin?

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Bryce Elder has struggled recently. 

The 2023 All-Star has seen his ERA consistently climbing since late May - as of May 30th, after Elder had made 11 starts, he had a 1.92 ERA, one of the best marks in the league Since that day, his ERA in the eleven starts he's made is 5.07. The most damage to his numbers has been in the month of August, where Elder's two starts (at the Cubs on 8/5 and the Pirates on 8/10) have seen him combine for 12 runs (10 earned) on 13 hits and 5 walks in just 9.1 innings.  

Not to say it's all August, though - Elder allowed seven runs in two of his five July starts, with Elder not making it out of the 4th against Tampa (3.1 IP, 7R on 6H, 4 BB, 0Ks) and not making it out of the 3rd against Arizona (2.2 IP, 7R, 5ER, on 7H, 1BB, 4Ks). 

So what's going on? 

It's not the stuff

David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

From a sheer "movement profile of his pitches" perspective, Elder is mostly the same pitcher that he has been all season. 

His pitch arsenal is mostly sinker & slier, both thrown over 35% of the time, with the difference being made up of changeups and four-seam fastballs.

Looking at the stuff, those pitches are mostly the same.  

Pitch movement:

The slider has lost half an inch of armside movement, going from 0.5" to 0.0", and gained four-tenths of an inch in drop.

The changeup has gained one-tenth of an inch of armside movement, going from 11.4" to 11.5", while losing two-tenths of vertical movement.

The sinker has gained two-tenths of armside movement, going from 13.2" to 13.4", while breaking half an inch less.  

The four-seam fastball has three-tenths of an inch less drop (18.0"-17.7"), while running two-tenths of an inch less to the armside. 

Release point and extension all come out about the same, with a release point 6'5 off the ground and extension of right about 6'. 

The only thing that's significant there is the slider straightening out a bit, but nothing to explain the significant drop in performance. 

What about his peripherals?

Dale Zanine-USA TODAY Sports

In analytics terms, "peripherals" refers to all of the other stuff outside of the baseball card stats - hard-hit/barrel rate, GB rate, Fielding Independent Pitching, etc. 

Elder's expected line given up to opposing hitters is .256/.300/.405, and he's actually given up a .245/.311/.383. He's actually over-performed versus what would typically be expected from his "stuff". 

A lot of his early-season excellence can be looked at, in retrospect, as over-performance. 

Fielding Independent Pitching, or FIP, is essentially ERA adjusted for only what a pitcher can control - home runs, walks, strikeouts, and HBP. 

Elder's xFIP - what would be expected based on what he's thrown - versus actual FIP have had significant gaps, but those gaps have been narrowing throughout the course of the season and have actually converged after his last start. 

Same thing goes for his strand rate - leaving runners on base - which was in the low 80s for a good portion of the season and has been dropping towards the league average of 72%. 

So Bryce Elder's regressing towards where he "should" have been all season?

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

In essence, yeah. Luck normalizes over a long enough sample, but some of it's scouting, too. 

Hitters have started ignoring the sinker early in the at-bat, for the most part, and waiting to do damage on the slider. 

His groundball rate has been dropping for most of his pitches over the course of the season, but most glaring is the slider - he went from over 60% groundballs on the slider to just below 30%. 

The four-seam fastball is getting better groundball rates, yes, but he only throws it 12% of the time because he can't throw it more - it's a below average pitch, with velocity of only 90.6 mph and actual batting averages against it of .339. 

So what do the Braves do now?

Neville E. Guard-USA TODAY Sports

Bryce is going to have to change something up.

I'm not suggesting a wholesale change of what pitches he throws, but there's enough of a book out on Elder that opposing hitters are much more effective against him. 

I'd start with some more usage of the changeup - it's not getting punished like the other pitches, so strategically increasing that usage might be helpful. 

It's just incremental tweaks, though - there's no significant changes you can make in August that'll have massive impacts. It's a matter of trying to make sure you're not overusing certain sequences and doing a through job of checking your own tendencies.   

And, well, hope. Hope it works. 

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