Thor Needs to Start Bringing The Hammer

Courtesy of The Cycle

   I would love to talk about about how Noah Syndergaard just went on the DL with of all things, a hand mouth & foot infection (it still sounds made up), but there's not much that hasn't already been said. What I can say is that there are some adjustments I think the self-proclaimed Thor can make in order to fully tap into his ace potential.

   I don't think I'm spewing a hot take when I say that the big 6'6 righty is one of the most talented pitchers not only currently, but of the last several years. However, he can stand to improve in certain areas. One area in particular is the fastball.

   For a guy that has been in the top three hardest throwing starters the past few seasons, his fastball quite frankly stinks. This season in particular, the pitch has been brutal. What gives?

   Well, he has a low spin rate of 2187 RPM on the pitch, which would rank at the 29.5th percentile. Spin is not always the end all be all though, especially when you can throw in the high 90s with ease. One issue he has is the height of his fastball.

   Syndergaard's average fastball height is 2.44 feet, good for the 59th lowest placed fastball among the 315 pitchers who threw more than 150 fastballs. To put this into perspective, here is his fastball placement:

   The obvious suggestion here, is for him to throw the fastball higher. This of course, is not the suggestion I'd give to every pitcher who struggle with their fastballs, but it's just thrown so dang hard that it will still generate whiffs despite the spin.

   One pitcher that does this is Stephen Strasburg. He is a great example for how Thor can place his fastball due to the fact that they both throw a hard fastball with low spin.

   The former first overall pick in Strasburg generates a whiff rate of 20.4% on his fastball, good for 52nd percentile among pitchers with at least 50 fastballs thrown. It's of course not a great rate, but even that would be better than the 13.7% Thor has (a brutal 15.5th percentile).

   What's funny is that Strasburg has a blazing fastball at 95.3 MPH, but is slower and even has less spin than Syndergaard. So how does he generate more whiffs? Well, that's simply exhibit A on how Thor can get more whiffs, higher placed fastballs.

   Strasburg locates his fastball at an average pitch height of 2.63 feet. His results with the pitch haven't been good at all, but the point remains that Syndergaard would be getting the most use of his fastball if he threw it higher in the zone. This would get more whiffs, and with his elite velocity, it would put a stop to it getting knocked around as much as it does.

   The next thing the big man can toy around with a bit is perhaps throwing the fastball a tad bit less in favor of more breaking and offspeed pitches. I say this because with the results he gets from his offspeed and breaking ball pitches, there's not a compelling reason to NOT throw them more often.

Pitch	wRC+	wOBA	xBA	ISO	Whiff%	Whiff Percentile Rank
Slider	36	0.205	0.203	0.031	49.6	91st
Curve	75	0.258	0.209	0	41.5	85th
Changeup	69	0.266	0.169	0.060	42.6	90.5th

  Stats are courtesy of Baseball Savant and Fangraphs

   As you can see, he has been ridiculous when he throws his slider, curveball or changeup. The problem of course, is that he is throwing each pitch 19.5%, 9.8% and 16.5% of the time, respectively this season. In fact, his slider usage is at its lowest since 2015, while his curve is at the second lowest rate in a season of his young career.

   Syndergaard would be best off throwing these three pitches more than the 45.8 combined percent he is currently throwing them at. It appears as if throwing them around 50-55% of the time would be a highly effective usage rate, as he can still throw the fastball (remember, a high 90's fastball will always be effective to a degree, especially when it plays off excellent breaking pitches).

   I am well aware that he also throws a sinker, but my theory is that it gets registered in as a sinker due to the natural movement his pitches have (his fastball included). There is very little speed variation between the fastball and sinker (98.2 and 98 MPH on average, respectively). Because of that, I basically have lumped the two together as one pitch.

   One other thing I noticed is his inability to get hitters out early in the count. For example, hitters are hitting .395 off him before the second pitch of an at bat (when the counts either 0-0, 1-0 or 0-1). This would rank near the bottom 20 out of 200 pitchers, and has a wOBA of .439 (and his .381 xWOBA suggests that even if his luck was neutralized, he'd still have problems in these counts).

   My theory is that he is easy for hitters to predict once he gets into one of these three counts. He throws his fastball (four seam or sinker) 57.5% of the time. Among the 289 pitchers with 300 fastballs thrown in these counts, he would rank in the 76th percentile. That doesn't appear as extreme as the percentile ranks I was throwing out before, but it appears as if hitters know what is coming. Take a look at how they perform against his pitches in said counts:

Pitch	BA	xBA	wOBA	xWOBA	ISO
Fastballs	0.396	0.346	0.494	0.424	0.375
Curve Change Slider	0.393	0.290	0.346	0.307	0.036

Data Courtesy of Statcast

   It's funny because this is yet another problem caused by his fastball usage. The moral of the story here is that you can blow hitters away with not so high heat at most levels of play, but since the Majors is comprised of the best hitters in the world, they will make adjustments to pound opposing pitchers. That's why I think it's time for Thor to adjust back, and wield his dominant hammer more often.

All Stats and Information are accurate as of July 26th, and are courtesy of Fangraphs, Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball