Braves Acquisition of Jimmy Herget Mirrors Key Deadline Deal from 2023

The Atlanta Braves made a low cost trade with the Los Angeles Angels that could pay huge dividends after some work in the lab

Los Angeles Angels relief pitcher Jimmy Herget has joined Atlanta's organization after being acquired last night for cash considerations. / Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports

The Atlanta Braves just made a trade. 

It’s not a big one, mind you, but it’s a classic Alex Anthopoulos “let’s see if we can optimize his usage” deal. 

The Braves announced last night that they have a deal to acquire recently DFA’d reliever Jimmy Herget from the Los Angeles Angels, with cash considerations going back to LA. 

Cash considerations is defined as an amount of money not to exceed $100,000, making this a relative low-cost opportunity for Atlanta. And there’s some similarities to previous deals Anthopoulos has made in the past. 

Because Herget, similar to Pierce Johnson when he was acquired from the Colorado Rockies last season, has one particular pitch that he throws really well: a curveball

Tell me what stands out about the pitch in this clip:

2022 PitchingNinja Award for Curveball of the Year 🏆

Winner: Jimmy "The Human Glitch" Herget pic.twitter.com/ExRarJSRdD

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) November 12, 2022

If you’re saying “he swung at a pitch that hit him in the hip”, that’s what happened, yeah. And the only way for a professional hitter to get fooled that much is for the movement characteristics of that pitch to be an outlier, and that’s absolutely the case. 

One of the big keys for a pitcher is just to be unusual - have a pitch move more than most do, do it from a weird arm slot or at a significantly different velocity than most. The goal is for a hitter to not be comfortable, and Herget makes guys uncomfortable. 

Notice how Pitching Ninja calls him “the Human Glitch” in the clip? It’s because of his arm angle - he releases from just about a perfect sidearm slot, right at 180° - combined with the outlier movement of almost 17 inches of horizontal break makes it hard for professional hitters to square up the curveball. (Truthfully, that movement profile is really close to that of a "sweeper", but he calls it a curveball so it classifies as a curveball.)

When Herget’s curveball has been at its best, it allowed only a .120 batting average against with a .241 slugging. 

Last season wasn’t as good for Herget, for whatever reason, with his overall statistics sitting at 2-4 with a 4.66 ERA after the curveball gave up a .237 batting average and a .458 slug. He’s been stuck in Triple-A Salt Lake with a 3.97 ERA over his first ten appearances all season, and LA decided to move on and reclaim the 40-man roster spot by designating him for assignment just the other day. 

And so, with the deal, Herget joins the team that actually first drafted him - the Braves took him in the 40th round of the 2012 MLB Draft out of high school, but he went to the University of South Florida instead and was re-drafted by the Cincinnati Reds in the 6th round of the 2015 MLB Draft. 

Herget was optioned to AAA Gwinnett, where he’ll join the multitude of depth relievers currently toiling for Gwinnett and waiting for their opportunity like Ray Kerr, Ken Giles, and Jackson Stephens. But expect Atlanta to spend their time working on optimizing his pitch mix, similar to what they did with Pierce Johnson after his acquisition. Johnson, post-trade, significantly increased his curveball usage at Atlanta’s urging and it worked, with Johnson’s ERA going from 6.00 with the Rockies to just 0.76 with Atlanta down the stretch. 

Suppose I’m the Braves pitching development group. In that case, I’m sitting down with Herget and discussing upping his curveball usage (38% last season) to somewhere around 50% and taking his sinker (which also has outlier movement characteristics, getting 2.9 inches more drop and 2.0 inches more armside run than the MLB average) up to about 25% or so, with a corresponding decrease in his slider usage (31%) to make it the clear third pitch. Don’t scrap the slider - as a pure vertical breaking pitch, it’s a nice change-of-pace on a hitter and had decent results in that stellar 2022 season, but it doesn’t tunnel enough to make it the main secondary option. 

The sinker/curveball option, however, tunnel exceptionally well and need to be used as the primary pairing with the slider being the tendency breaker and/or punishment for sitting on that primary pairing. 

Jimmy Herget, Fastball (ball)/Breaking Ball (strike), Individual Pitches + overlay. pic.twitter.com/ytUS5pqvXc

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 25, 2022

As we said at the top, it’s an exceptionally low-cost move that could pay significant dividends if Atlanta’s tweaks work out...and based on previous history with relief acquisitions, it’s likely they will.