MLB's Weirdest Pitcher Doesn't Need Strikeouts | Baseball Bits

[Music] here are mlb's top active pitchers by career era you know these guys craig kimbrell is number one overall with the 2.18 and clayton kershaw is the best starter followed closely by jacob degrom as we scroll down the list there's a good variety of arms but there are still soft barriers of entry the vast majority average at least 90 miles per hour on their fastball while striking out at least one batter per inning some do much more than that but then we reached the 17th name on this list he's just ahead of chris sale but he doesn't seem to fit the mold especially when it comes to his astronomically low strikeout rate really only five strikeouts per nine innings let's talk about richard bleyer [Music] richard bleyer was a journeyman before he ever made the big leaks drafted by the rangers in 2008 he would go on to play for 10 minor league teams in four different organizations before reaching the majors in 2016. his debut with the yankees was the perfect microcosm of his skill set three pitches two ground ball outs that off season he was moved to the baltimore orioles setting up one of the weirdest seasons in recent memory here's a brief summary of mlb history strikeouts go up that's it so while richard blair's career rate of five strikeouts per nine innings would make him a power pitcher in the days of walter johnson and christy mathewson and a finesse pitcher in the days of tom glavin he certainly stands out in today's nlb what we need is a tool that can allow us to compare strikeout rates across disparate eras our best bet is going to be k percentage plus like all stats that end with plus 100 is always league average and higher is typically better here are the top relief seasons by k percentage plus eric gagne's 2003 campaign leads the way which only makes his cy young award and lab safety glasses look even better turning our attention back to 2017 the richard e blyrist of all richard bleyer seasons he struck out 9.8 percent of all batters faced compared to 21.6 for the league giving him a k percentage plus of 45 that's not the lowest relief season on record but it's certainly the lowest while being so darn effective he had by far the best era of the bottom 15 with a fabulous 1.99 before had such a comparatively low strikeout rate produced such a fine season you'd have to travel back a quarter century to find another pitcher with a sub 2 era while striking out less than 10 percent of batters in terry leech territory for crying out loud how does he get away with this [Music] for some pitching is simply a management of the three true outcomes with regards to strikeouts walks and home runs zac cranky once said that's pretty much how i pitch i try to keep my fip as low as possible we've already established that richard blyer would rather flip off an umpire than strike someone out he has the lowest k per 9 of any active pitcher but he also maintains an extremely low home run rate this is especially impressive considering how frequently he allows contact in the first place in fact blair has three separate seasons on three separate teams where he didn't allow a big league homer then there's the walk rate where blair also shines he trails only josh tomlin who's the modern record holder in this particular stat this is because tricky ricky is one of the gutsiest pitching archetypes out there he's a zone filler zone fillers are a brave bunch richard bleyer has played his entire career in the juice ball era with below average velocity yet he has the courage to say mlb hitters actually aren't all that good now he doesn't say that out loud but the way he fills up the strike zone implies it in 2021 only jake mcgee threw a higher percentage of pitches in the strike zone or at least what statcast's idea of the strike zone is but look at my guy richard bleyer we're talking about nearly 60 of all pitches in the strike zone just pumping away at that zone filling it with hot throbbing strikes i can't read that without laughing and here's the thing i think being a zone filler works you might not know all these names but the combined era of the top 12 was 3.24 you might say well that's just because they have good command but is it command isn't about throwing all your pitches in the strike zone in 2020 shane bieber had the lowest zone percentage of all qualified starters you think that guy wasn't putting the ball where he wanted it let's face it in the three true outcome era balls in play are synonymous with action and richard bleyer gives hitters more opportunities to put balls in play than anyone the game needs him and you know why because he's always playing the odds [Music] let's pretend you're an mlb pitcher yeah i know unless you're lucas giolito watching this it's hard to picture i mean seriously you okay all things equal would you rather allow fly balls or ground balls but before you answer that here's a helpful guide in the statcast era fly balls and pop-ups have a 201 batting average for ground balls it's 246. so as a pitcher which batted ball type would you rather give up i hope you didn't fall for my nasty trick because it's not worth trading 45 points of batting average for all that slugging did you know that a pitcher who only allows fly balls and pop-ups would have an era of approximately 4.48 that's not very good but the pitcher that only allows ground balls 2.12 so when we talk about richard bleyer playing the odds with all these balls in play keep that in mind ground balls are a really good outcome for a pitcher and dig this richard bleyer is the only active pitcher in mlb who can say that the majority of his played appearances end in a ground ball that's quite the accomplishment there's a lot of great syncroballers in today's league but on a per played appearance basis none of them are quite as prolific as richard bleyer he's one of just six pitchers in the statcast era with a negative career launch angle the average batted ball from him is heading toward the ground this effect has created some pretty funny outings while pitching for baltimore in 2018 he once began an inning with the ground ball out then surrendered a single to left field then finished up by coaxing a double play ball from jorge solaire what's so interesting about that well he went out the next inning and did the exact same thing ground ball out single to left field then another 4-6-3 double play ball that's what playing the odds looks like there are four individual pitches in the stat cast era that averaged less than 400 slugging after contact there's zach britton sinker which carried him to one of the best relief seasons in mlb history there's zac cranky's changeup which has generated whiffs and soft contact all throughout his hall of fame career there's rich hills curveball a giftable work of art and one of the most iconic pitches of the last decade and they're all in the same company as richard bleyer sinker pitching the contact is a phrase i don't really care for because it's just reacting to strikeout rates if a pitcher throws a complete game without too many swings and misses they'll always say he was pitching the contact the phrase is even invoked on blair's wikipedia page it's only used to describe a certain type of picture but what all pitchers do is pitch to miss the barrel that's something richard bleyer and chris sale can both have in common besides the fact they were college teammates no matter the approach every pitcher at every level wants to miss the barrel of the bat sale gets on the mound and breaks strikeout records recording whiff after whiff on his devastating slider and four seamer he misses barrels because he misses bats entirely blyer on the other hand moves his pitches just enough to avoid the barrel his opponent might make contact but they won't barrel it up he has the league's best barrel percentage since his first full season in what a guy [Music] the surprises never seem to end with richard bleyer he pitched in the playoffs in 2020 which is already quite the accomplishment for someone who's really only played for rebuilding clubs and his brief postseason stint went about how you'd expect ground out line out which he stopped and made a brilliant play on ground out fly out ground out ground out he really has a way of doing things yet strikeouts have been trending upward for player his k rate in 2021 was double that of 2017 but while he may be trending toward normalcy he's still not that close to league average a key development this year has been the re-emergence of his cutter see blair's always dominated lefties but the cutter gives him an option against right-handed hitters which is necessary with the three batter minimum he'll even throw out of the strike zone and get swings and misses i thought i knew you richard blyer yet he's still fundamentally the pitcher we love he continues to fight the good fight on the three true outcomes front his season just concluded with a walk rate and home run rate of less than 1 per 9 innings making him the first reliever to do so since kenley janssen and pat nishik in 2017 a return to the era leaderboard shows that he's an outlier in terms of strikeout rate and velocity it's a reminder that at the end of the day what matters most is runs we only talk about things like fip velocity or spin rate because we're trying to anticipate run prevention and we know that past era isn't always a great indicator of future era what the future holds for blyer who can say but no matter how we slice it or how he does it richard bleyer has been one of the best run preventers over the last half decade which makes him one of the most effective pitchers in the game right now at its absolute worst the last few years of pitcher development have encouraged some degree of homogeneity the feedback from an influx of new pitch tracking data seemed to say you have to throw high velocity high backspin four seamers up in the zone to be great players like richard bleyer have thoroughly disproven that his success advocates for a holistic approach to player development which in turn diversifies the spectator experience after all who'd want to go to a baseball game where everyone on the field looks the same big thank you to my newest patrons to see your name here check out patreon.com foolish baseball also thank you to maxo for the music [Music]

Channel: Foolish Baseball

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Keywords: richard bleier, weird pitcher, mlb reliever, richard bleier marlins, richard bleier orioles, richard bleier yankees, mlb best sinker, sinkerballer, groundball, groundball pitcher, mlb groundball, pitching to contact, zack britton, zack greinke, mlb, baseball, baseball bits, foolish baseball, foolish bailey, MLB's Weirdest Pitcher Doesn't Need Strikeouts | Baseball Bits

Id: avpxsR2wH7s

Length: 12min 20sec (740 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 13 2021