BRADENTON, Fla. -- It's a rotation of an undetermined amount of people being deployed in a not yet revealed amount of ways, but there is one thing we can take for certain about the Pirates’ 2022 staters: JT Brubaker is taking the ball first.
On Sunday, Derek Shelton announced that Brubaker will pitch the season opener Thursday in St. Louis. which Brubaker called “an awesome honor” not long after receiving the news and sharing it with his family.
If you look solely at the first couple months of last season, then it’s easy to see why Brubaker got the nod. He did struggle once the calendar turned to July, with fatigue being the most common theory after he barely pitched in 2019 and 2020 was an abbreviated campaign. The Pirates opted not to unplug him, though, wanting him to go through as much of the season as he could because they did not think it posed an injury threat.
It’s something they hope will be beneficial going forward.
“He’s been through that first full year,” pitching coach Oscar Marin told me. “He knows what it takes. He knows what adjustments he needs to make.”
That was the main focus for Brubaker this winter, to put himself in the best position for that 162-game grind. It’s something both he and Marin think he’s better equipped to deal with over 162. That included routine work, diet and how he prepares for games.
Holding up physically will be a key part of how successful Brubaker will be in 2022. Another part is also getting a change for this season: How he uses his stuff, notably the fastball.
Coming up through the minors, Brubaker was a traditional sinkerballer. Once he reached the majors, the four-seamer started coming into play more. As a rookie in 2020, about 70% of his fastballs were sinkers. In 2021, it was a 50-50 split between the two. While both fastballs had almost identical results overall (.344 wOBA, .350 xwOBA with the four-seamer, .353 wOBA, .354 xwOBA with the sinker), they played differently.
Through three spring outings, Brubaker has changed his mix, emphasizing the sinker more to right-handed hitters. That’s something that will carry over to the regular season.
“It’s things we’ve seen over time,” Marin explained, “and through [game planning and strategy coach] Radley Haddad's help, coming in and looking at his repertoire, looking at his uses, looking at what’s swing-and-miss, what’s not swing-and-miss, what's the run value between pitches, for him to understand, ‘Hey, this is probably who I need to be here.’ ”
There’s data to support the idea. Consider, for example, Brubaker’s results against right-handed hitters last year, depending on which fastball he threw:
FF RHH : .237 AVG, .553 SLG, .354 wOBA, .385 xwOBA, 88.9 mph Avg. Exit Velocity
SI RHH: .260 AVG, .325 SLG, .322 wOBA, .341 xwOBA, 86.9 mph Avg. Exit Velocity
With the exception of batting average, every other stat and batted ball peripheral strongly indicates that the sinker is the way to go. When it’s working to right-handers, he’s hammering it inside, challenging them to read some natural cut and sink to pull it. When hitters do pull it, it’s usually on the ground.
Here is a spray chart of where right-handed batters hit his sinker last year:
That’s a lot of baseballs to the defensively rock solid Ke’Bryan Hayes and Kevin Newman and not a whole lot to the outfielders. That’s not going to hurt at all.
That doesn’t mean Brubaker should go full sinkerballer again, though. This part wasn’t discussed with Marin, but interestingly enough, Brubaker has a similar split with left-handers, this time in favor of the four-seamer:
FF LHH: .244 AVG, .467 SLG, .337 wOBA, .321 xwOBA, 89.7 mph Avg. Exit Velocity
SI LHH: .270 AVG, .568 SLG, .386 wOBA, .368 xwOBA, 88.1 mph Avg. Exit Velocity
Hitters did have a better average exit velocity against four-seamers, but the increase in whiffs kept the slugging, wOBA and expected wOBA significantly lower.
He’s still working in the same area of the zone mostly, focusing on locating on his arm side to keep four-seamers from cutting to the inner half towards lefty swingers, but it also gets some rollovers to the pull side infielders in addition to those whiffs.
Brubaker has some good tools to work with, including a pair of high spin breaking pitches that he’ll throw often, but fastball usage and deployment is something that really wasn’t explored too much before he reached the majors. If last year was a year of discovery about how to navigate a full season, how he uses his pitches is a big part of that.
The goal for him should be to let the fastball play well enough so the slider and curve can be at their best. A different pitch mix based on the batter’s hand could help do that.