Joe Ryan's September Surge: A Sign of Things to Come? (Free Preview)

[Parker Hageman]

What changed at the end of the year for Joe Ryan, and was his September performance a sign of a breakout for 2023?

Image courtesy of Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

Joe Ryan seems like a cerebral individual, especially regarding the art and science of pitching. 

"I love talking pitching," Ryan told Fangraphs.com's David Laurilia in April. "I love messing around with the baseball, manipulating it in the dugout, just getting that feel. Then I get back on the mound with all of that. It's a good time."

"Messing around with the baseball" makes it sound like his pitches happen by a cosmic accident, but as you can glean from his back and forth with Laurilia, Ryan's approach is far from accidental. He cites vertical approach angle and horizontal break, reviewing video of his recent outings and those of his high school days when he pitched from a higher arm slot (he tried to emulate Tim Lincecum). While there is some experimentation in pitching, Ryan's practice is very much deliberate. 

Ryan was a unicorn in that his fastball, while thrown at a very average velocity, piled up swinging strikes at the rate of a much harder thrower. As I detailed after he arrived in 2021, Ryan's low arm slot and riding fastball were thrown at the upper third of the strike zone, turning hitters into pretzels. 

Since the dawn of baseball, hitters have minced fastballs thrown inside the zone. If you look at all the right-handed pitchers who made ten or more starts last year, Joe Ryan's fastball had a 16.8% swinging strike rate inside the strike zone. Ryan is out on the mound chucking very average velo fastballs and getting professional hitters to miss at a very high clip (10% is league average). He was 8th overall in that category – outpaced by names like Jacob DeGrom, Spencer Strider, and Hunter Greene but ahead of fastball luminaries like Gerrit Cole and Max Scherzer.

Unicorn fastball, indeed. 

Ryan's biggest challenge was pairing an equally impressive secondary pitch to keep hitters from solving his fastball. Through his minor league experience, he was lauded for his fastball and curveball while his slider and changeup were considered incomplete. The Twins, however, have embraced the slider and have outfitted or improved many of those offerings in recent years. 

When describing his slider's profile early in the 2022 season, Ryan told Laurilia that he thinks "more cutter with it [as opposed to] creating a slider" as he throws it.

Cutter movement is beneficial because it is thrown firm and has later movement. MLB's average horizontal cutter movement is 3.0 inches (-3.0 for right-handed pitchers). That's what Ryan's slider was for the majority of the season.

But suddenly, in September, it was not. 

The shape or Ryan's slider change, and one can see that both statistically and on pitching break charts, and he had some other important changes, too. We would love for you to become a Caretaker so you can dive into that detail here. We can't pay writers enough to do that kind of deep dive just using ad revenue, so we reserve it for the Caretakers that support it.  

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[Blyleven2011]

Joe Ryan has the MOJO presence on the mound  ...

I'll still need 3 seasons to evaluate what Joe will be as a pitcher  ...

His rookie year had its ups and downs , winning against poorer teams and not winning against better teams , did he make adjustments in Sept,  we will see  ...

Go Joe and twins  ...

[The Mad King]

I still see his season as three parts.

Pre-covid

Covid

Post-covid

 

The covid part includes the first month or two that he came back. That was his crappy part. 

[puckstopper1]

Really looking forward to what Joe does this season.  The Twins need him to be solid and healthy given some of the other question marks in the rotation.

[saviking]

I love this guy .. We always talk about having an ace but having three number two's work. I think we have three two's, maybe a three and a four. with Ryan slotting in as one of the three two's. 

I prefer to look at it that way than just lining up five pitchers and slotting them as 1-5. 

[NotAboutWinning]

1 hour ago, The Mad King said:

I still see his season as three parts.

Pre-covid

Covid

Post-covid

 

The covid part includes the first month or two that he came back. That was his crappy part. 

There doesn't seem to have been a lot of mention of the affect Covid has had on players. They may be back playing after a couple of weeks, but many seem to take months to return to form. I think it had something to do with CC4's slow first half last year as well.

[Minny505]

This will be a big season for Joe. If he can maintain or improve, he is the real deal.

But with a full season of scouting reports, it will be interesting to see if hitters can adjust to the unique pitch plane.

If hitters cannot adjust their swing to go the other way against the shift, which they see against many pitchers, I find it hard to believe they will be able to adjust their swing to hit one individual pitcher they only see a couple ABs a season.

[HrbieFan]

Do Caretakers not have to put up with pop ups? 

[twinstalker]

14 hours ago, NotAboutWinning said:

There doesn't seem to have been a lot of mention of the affect Covid has had on players. They may be back playing after a couple of weeks, but many seem to take months to return to form. I think it had something to do with CC4's slow first half last year as well.

If only there were something they could do to help keep Covid from having a big effect.  Aw, let's cost the team money and games instead!

[twinstalker]

Well, signs are pointing to Twins Daily no longer being available to me.  I'm unlikely to pay for anything new (tough times), and for whatever reason all ads and the videos here I can't unblock.  It seems easy.  I follow the instructions, but my computer is so well protected, so many layers, I can't seem to be successful.  Not just here but anywhere that asks me to unblock ads for their site.  I go into my Chrome and do what they say.  I go into my Kaspersky security and allow whatever site to show ads.  Haven't gotten sites with ads to show still.  Googled the hell out of it to no avail.  Any extra suggestions?

[NotAboutWinning]

2 hours ago, twinstalker said:

If only there were something they could do to help keep Covid from having a big effect.  Aw, let's cost the team money and games instead!

And putting their own careers in jeopardy!

[wabene]

4 hours ago, twinstalker said:

Well, signs are pointing to Twins Daily no longer being available to me.  I'm unlikely to pay for anything new (tough times), and for whatever reason all ads and the videos here I can't unblock.  It seems easy.  I follow the instructions, but my computer is so well protected, so many layers, I can't seem to be successful.  Not just here but anywhere that asks me to unblock ads for their site.  I go into my Chrome and do what they say.  I go into my Kaspersky security and allow whatever site to show ads.  Haven't gotten sites with ads to show still.  Googled the hell out of it to no avail.  Any extra suggestions?

My two cents is to ditch any security or protection software. All it does is slow down your computer. Run completely unprotected, allow cookies, only go to reputable sites and dump your cookies often. That's worked for me since I briefly tried McCaffey back in '98, lol. There is nothing to fear.