What Went Wrong For Ryan Pressly?

In April, following a bad stretch of appearances, Pressly tried to assess his issues. In his eyes, he was nitpicking, failing to attack the strike zone. His manager believed it was possible he was “overthrowing”. Both may be true but there is another issue at play and that is the notion that Pressly has fallen into a predictability pattern. The right-hander, who has one of the better breaking balls in the game, refuses to turn to it until there are two strikes in the count. This means hitters can eliminate that pitch from his arsenal in certain counts -- specifically early in the count -- and just hunt speed.

Rehabbing pitcher Trevor May talked at length this spring about the need to alter the hitter’s ability to eliminate pitches. May discussed the idea of throwing more of his secondary pitches in counts he did not regularly do so in order to give opponents something to think about. Almost every pitcher falls into patterns, he said, such as leaning on one particular pitch type in certain situations. If, for example, a hitter knows he will not see any offspeed pitches in a 1-1 count, he might swing from the heels at the fastball.

“If they can never eliminate them you are going to have a leg up every single time because it is much more luck on their part,” May said. “That’s the goal.”

In Pressly’s case, teams have likely circulated scouting reports which inform their hitters to look for a fastball in those counts above because they will rarely see anything else. They can eliminate Pressly’s best pitch, his curveball, right away and one of the reasons why they are having success in those particular counts.

There does not seem to be a clear explanation for why Pressly doesn’t mix in his curveball in those counts. When he does decide to throw something other than a fastball early in the count, it is usually his slider/hard cutter. It is possible that Pressly, who has not been consistently throwing his bender in the zone this year, may shy away from using it early in counts because he is afraid of falling behind. The logic could be that curveball drops out of the zone so fast, hitters may refrain from chasing after it and thus put him in another 1-0 hole. Still, if hitters are not expecting a curveball and are actively hunting fastballs, it would stand to reason that they might be fooled by the curve and swing over it or beating it into the ground for an easy out.

The fact of the matter is his curveball -- the big, slow, time-and-space altering curveball -- is bar none his best pitch. In his five seasons at the major league level, Pressly’s curveball has had a .183 batting average against. Over the last two years he has maintained a swinging strike rate of over 20 percent. What’s more, as Sports Illustrated’s Tom Verducci pointed out this month, smart teams have learned that one of the quickest avenue to pitching success is by throwing your best pitch most often.

Spin is highly influential in the results when it comes to curveballs and Pressly’s uncle charlie rotates at one of the highest rates in all of baseball. At over 2,900 RPM on average, Pressly’s pitch had the 11th highest spin rate according to StatCast data. This number is significant because curveballs with that type of data generate low batting averages (as seen above), low exit velocity (Pressly’s is at a low 83.5 MPH vs 86.3 MPH league average), and high swing-and-miss rate (32% miss rate). With these types of returns, Pressly should be spinning his curveball every chance he gets. As Red Sox manager John Farrell told Verducci, “The data is showing, if the curveball is your best pitch, use it more often.”

Pressly is blessed with one of the best pitches in the game and, to his detriment, he has not been using it to its fullest potential. For the sake of the Twins’ bullpen, it is a shame that someone as gifted as Pressly has not be able to elevate to the status of lockdown reliever. Perhaps time in Rochester will help him regain some confidence in the pitch as well as give him an opportunity to break off a few snappers in counts he normally would have avoided.