Brandon Pfaadt's Fastball Has a Long Way to Go
Brandon Pfaadt, (0-6, 7.16 ERA in 49 innings), came into this season as one of the most highly touted prospects in baseball. For example Baseball America had him ranked 26th in their pre season top 100. Today he will cross the 50 innings pitched threshold, meaning he will no longer have rookie eligibility beyond this season, and as such will not appear on end of season prospects lists.
Pfaadt struggled mightily through his first six major league starts going 0-3 with a 9.82 ERA in 26 innings. His strikeout to walk ratio was a respectable 21-10, but he gave up a whopping nine homers. It was clear that his fastball wasn't good enough to generate swing and miss anywhere near the middle of the zone, where he all too often left it to get hit hard. He was optioned back to Reno to work things out.
As a result of that poor beginning to his career, his rankings tumbled. Pfaadt currently ranks 52nd by Baseball America, 51st by MLB Pipeline among all prospects, both pitching and position players. Those rankings might have fallen further if not for the fact that since being recalled on July 22nd he's been much better.
In his first start back he went five scoreless innings before giving up three solo homers to the Reds in the 6th. Two starts ago he went seven innings giving up just one run, but the D-backs were shut out 1-0 by the Giants. In his most recent start he wasn't able to get out of the fifth inning against the Dodgers, giving up four runs in 4.2 innings. There was some bad luck perhaps in that start, and it was thought he pitched better than his final line.
Overall, in four starts since returning he's thrown 23.1 innings with a 4.21 ERA, including a 21-4 strikeout ratio. Since the three solo homers in Cincinnati he's only allowed two more. Hopefully he has turned a corner and can start living up to those lofty rankings. The home run is likely to continue to be an issue for Pfaadt, so it's critical that he continue to get ahead of hitters with fastballs on the edge of the zone and not walk batters, and then utilize his excellent sweeper to generate swing and miss and soft contact to put batters away. The table below shows his batting and slugging averages against on each pitch since coming back July 22nd, alongside the expected BA and Slug.
Brandon Pfaadt Pitch Breakdown since July 22nd
As can be seen above the fastball results are still quite poor despite "expected" or xBA and xSlug being considerably lower than the actual numbers. The league average BA on fastballs is .253 and slugging is .442 so if Pfaadt were able to achieve results in line with the expected he would at least be league average for the pitch. For the unfamiliar Baseball Savant describes their expected statistics as follows:
Expected Outcome stats help to remove defense and ballpark from the equation to express the skill shown at the moment of batted ball contact. By looking at the exit velocity and launch angle of each batted ball, a Hit Probability is assigned based on the outcomes of comparable historic balls in play. By accumulating the expected outcomes of each batted ball with actual strikeouts, walks and hit by pitches, Expected Batting Average (xBA), Expected Slugging (xSLG), and (most importantly) Expected Weighted On-Base Average (xwOBA) tell the story of a player's season based on quality of and amount of contact, not outcomes.
For Brandon Pfaadt questions surrounding his fastball quality won't go away until he improves his actual results, not just the expected. Despite having elite spin rates both the vertical and horizontal movement he gets on the pitch are below average. Still, if he can somehow gain equilibrium between expected and actual results on the pitch he should continue to improve.
Even if the fastball improves, he'll still need a third pitch to be an above average or good starting pitcher. His change up is still far away from being a consistent offering. Some days he gets swing and miss with the pitch, but other days he can't command it and throws non competitive misses that hitters don't offer at.
Expectations for Pfaadt's improvement should be tempered. With an average fastball at best, and a changeup that is currently considered below average he can only ride that sweeper so far. There is a lot of growth and development still that needs to happen and it's likely to be a bumpy ride with two steps forward and one step back for the young right hander.
