What's Left for Homer Bailey to Fix?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Homer Bailey made huge strides after a mid-July trade in 2019. To be as good in 2020, he needs to lock in a few adjustments, and make one or two more.The additions of Josh Donaldson and Kenta Maeda defined the Twins’ offseason, but if the season eventually goes forward, they might benefit as much from the earlier work they did to bolster their rotation. Homer Bailey is an under-the-radar addition to the pitching staff, but not an unimportant one. Under the tutelage of Wes Johnson, he could build upon his 2019 success in ways that go far beyond his increasingly famous splitter.

 

Read about Bailey’s bounceback campaign last year, and you’ll be inundated with talk of his splitter. It was the pitch that saved his career, and using it more often—including finding the courage to do so even against right-handed batters—certainly put him on the path toward the success that earned him a guaranteed deal this winter. However, in paying close attention to the remarks made by Twins brass when they signed Bailey, it becomes clear that it’s not just the splitter that intrigues them. They specifically took interest in Bailey’s adjustments in the second half, and his increased splitter usage began long before he was traded from the Royals to the Athletics, in mid-July.

 

One obvious adjustment Bailey made, beyond any tinkering with his pitch mix, was to slide over on the rubber. He went from being a slightly crossfire righty setting up on the third-base edge of the pitching rubber to using the middle of that rubber, changing the angles his pitches created for hitters and allowing him to take a more direct mechanical line to home plate. In so doing, he added heat to his fastball. His average velocity on the heater ticked up by about 0.3 miles per hour after the trade, according to Statcast, and so did his average perceived velocity—he lost no extension at release by making the mechanical tweak. His average spin rate rose, too, from 2,071 revolutions per minute (RPM) to 2,117.

 

None of those changes are large, but they matter. The biggest (apparent) change the A’s asked of him wasn’t to move over on the rubber, but to take that more direct line to the plate, and to raise his arm slot to match. Bailey did it, and the result was that everything he threw achieved more vertical plane. His curveball lost about an inch of lateral sweep, but no vertical depth, and since his fastball rose slightly more, the curve came to tunnel better off of the heater than it previously had. More importantly, as he leaned ever more heavily on the four-seamer and splitter, those two pitches could stay on the same plane for longer, with the fastball nipping the bottom of the strike zone, and the splitter diving out of it.

 

Download attachment: Brooksbaseball-Chart (5).jpeg

 

By starting that splitter at a higher point, Bailey allowed it to tumble freely, but end up slightly less far below the zone, tempting more hitters. He induced swings on 52 percent of his splitters before the trade to Oakland, and on 58.6 percent of them afterward. He was both throwing more strikes and getting hitters to chase more when he threw non-strikes. He also stayed out of danger zones more consistently. His fastball spin is below-average, so when he elevates the pitch, it tends to flatten out—and get hammered. In Kansas City, 25.7 percent of his heaters sailed to or above the top of the zone. In Oakland, that figure dropped to 20.6 percent.

 

The slide on the rubber and the change of arm angle are good signs that what Bailey did for the A’s down the stretch is partially sustainable. However, after running a very slight reverse platoon split in Kansas City, Bailey fell victim to a severe and scary one in Oakland:

• With Oakland, v. LHB: 156 PA, 37 K, 7 BB, 4 HR, .197/.237/.327 opponent batting line
• With Oakland, v. RHB: 151 PA, 31 K, 8 BB, 5 HR, .314/.353/.471 opponent batting line

We mustn’t draw overly confident conclusions from such small samples, but those results point to a fact of Bailey’s new fastball-splitter approach: that pitch pairing works best against opposite-handed batters. Bailey’s fastball has above-average armside run, which is why it mirrors the spin of the splitter and creates such a neat vertical tunnel with it, but as he raised his arm angle and changed the alignment of his delivery, he lost the ability to consistently move the ball horizontally, away from same-handed batters. There’s good news here, too, though: the Twins have the personnel to help Bailey adjust again.

 

One way in which the Twins (who are otherwise in lockstep with the industry leaders in advancing and modernizing pitching) still seem to hew toward the old school is their use of the sinker. Rather than cratering last year, as Johnson replaced Garvin Alston, the team’s sinker usage merely dipped, and they still threw them more often than all but six other teams. Bailey junked his sinker in 2019, but after moving over on the rubber and changing his mechanics, he’s now a good candidate to add the pitch back into his arsenal. A good sinker, running in on the hands of right-handed batters, could help him manage contact better, and he has more room to create that running action, thanks to the realignment.

 

The other thing a sinker might help do, against right-handers, is to set up a breaking ball. Neither of Bailey’s are especially good at this point in time, but his whiff rate on the slider spiked impressively in September. Here’s where, inevitably, we enter into something of a guessing game. In watching video of Bailey’s slider, from early in the season and from September, the only especially obvious changes are to his arm angle and delivery, about which we already know. He used the same grip early on as he did later, slightly flexing the index finger, laying the middle finger more flatly across the seams, and extending his thumb underneath the ball.

 

Using the publicly available video, I can’t say for sure, but there appears to be one small (but potentially important) change, despite the apparent sameness. In September, it appears that Bailey had altered the way the pitch comes out of his hand, very slightly. Instead of coming off the middle finger and index finger simultaneously, he seems to hold contact with the tip of his index finger for a millisecond longer, helping create more consistent action, down and away from a right-handed batter. The numbers show he achieved slightly more average movement in both dimensions in September, but the adjustment (if it exists) wasn’t Earth-shattering. Nonetheless, something he did with his slider near the end of the season worked, and worked well.

 

The Twins have access to better information than we do. There’s high-speed video of Bailey’s slider somewhere in their database, and if he did change the way he released the pitch, they know it. That could be the final thing the Twins believe they know about Bailey, and which we don’t know, and can’t know, except by asking. For what it’s worth, it’s also true that the Royals lag behind the industry in embracing the value of high-speed video, whereas the A’s use it more expansively, so they might well have helped Bailey in a way Kansas City could not. If that change is real, then it’s likely that Johnson will find a way to bring it along even further.

 

Bailey closely mirrors another right-handed starter the Twins acquired two years ago, who had a good four-seam fastball and a nasty splitter, but struggled with every other pitch in his arsenal. Jake Odorizzi became more mechanically efficient prior to his 2019 breakout, which improved both his velocity and his command. Johnson helped him along from there, tinkering with the action of his cutter and slider, and aiding him in developing the sinker into a weapon against fellow righties.

 

While Odorizzi’s seemingly intrinsic feel for spin is far superior to Bailey’s, there’s no reason to doubt that Bailey can be similarly effective given his track record, his veteran mindset, his demonstrated willingness to tinker, and the team’s proficiency in the skills on which he still needs to improve. If he can stay healthy, and if the season even takes place, Bailey could be a much better hurler than most Twins fans are expecting.

 

MORE FROM TWINS DAILY

— Latest Twins coverage from our writers

— Recent Twins discussion in our forums

— Follow Twins Daily via Twitter, Facebook or email

 

Click here to view the article

[071063]

Good article! Thank you! It was nice to read something about baseball again.

[Otwins]

Thanks for the article.  You put a lot of thought in to it. If Bailey is as good as Odorizzi and Maeda is as well. I sure hope we have a season this year.