Josiah Gray has another bad outing. It's only two and 8 innings total but everything but the Ks are off. He's shown bad control, been incredibly hittable and given up homers. This rotation in 2024 can't sustain a pitcher like this, and more importantly their plans for the future cannot either.
This pitching is reminiscent of his August from last year (8.84 ERA). If his periods of greatness were unhittable then you might accept it but he's merely ok when on and terrible when off. The combination is a 5th starter at best.
It's pretty fascinating because he was one of the Dodgers top prospects, rising to #2 in a deep organization list. In 2019 he dominated having a very high strikeout rate with control, while being hard to hit and hard to homer off of. Simply put he did everything right. In 2021 he looked in AAA that he hadn't lost anything doing almost the same over 4 appearances, with only the homer issue rearing it's head. It didn't seem like he would be terrible in the majors, but he has been.
The fancy stats say for the most part he pitched the same way in 2021 and 2022 and there was a consitency in his stats over those two years. K-rate was good, hit-rate fine, but control and homers out of whack. He changed up in 2023, swapping in a cutter for his change and mixing up his pitches more. That brought the homers under control but the K-rate dropped and the walk rate went up. Essentially he became a luck pitcher - guys got on base and got hits but if they didn't do it in the right order he could do allright. In the first half they didn't, in the second half they did. He's added back in a change this year to try to improve but results have been poor.
The strikeout rate suggest his stuff is still there so what is going on? Is he simply an AAAA pitcher? Did the Nats, not known for developing pitchers, mess him up? Is he hurt?
I'm leaning toward something like AAAA. I think that the early walk rates in the majors are the product of trying to avoid home runs. One doesn't usually suddenly lose command of the strike zone, and his early games in 2021 had far fewer walks. So I think naturally he could probably keep walks and hits down and strike out a bunch... while giving up the most homers in the majors. I think that's Gray's natural position. Is that usable? I don't know, we've never tried it.
His fastball is not good. That's a tough truth to swallow but
it is the truth. It just isn't, but it was necessary to set up effective
sliders and curves. But adding in a middling cutter at a speed closer to the sliders and curves, he's hurt that
balance.
Trying to make him a new pitcher doesn't seem to be working with only a lucky start to 2023 making people think otherwise. He isn't a better pitcher when avoiding homers with pitch mixing, because he can't control all those pitches well. He puts too many men on and can't finish others off. So let him go back to who he was. Let him throw and give up 45 homers and see if that puts him at a 4.50 ERA or a 6.00 ERA so you can decide what to do. You have to get him comfortable with that idea though. You are going to give up homers. That's fine as long as you aren't walking guys. It may be hard. But I'm thinking that's the best path forward for him
4 comments:
Joshua Gray. Opening Day Starter!!!!
I almost wonder if he has too many pitches. It seems like he knows his fastball isn't great, so he's opted to just have a kitchen sink arsenal, with the end result being "jack of all trades, master of none". I feel like he'd benefit from reducing the number of pitch types and working to improve his slider, curveball, and fastball. We know he has control, so even if his fastball is flat, if he can get better at placing it on the black to setup his better secondary pitches, he can turn into a more Maddux type pitcher (obviously not at the level of Maddux)
Adding on, looking at pitch f/x, his spin rate almost across the board has been dropping year over year. That seems like a mechanics issue that the Nationals should be trying to fix
I think it's certainly time to worry about Gray, but I'm not sure we were ever not worrying. The important context has always been "is he a pitcher we're comfortable starting a playoff game?" and the answer has never been a confident yes. So, worry away.
But I don't think you want to throw out the prepared plan for this season based on 2 starts. I mean, the team should 100% be working on the mechanical stuff like CP mentions. But you spent the offseason with a theory of the case, and you need to give it a chance before you move on. To me that's at least 6 starts, maybe even 8 or 10.
Baseball is weird. Don't overreact to short term results.
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