Making the Case for Dylan Bundy

Earlier this week, I started writing an article about my favorite late-round starting pitchers for draft-and-hold formats and found myself digging into Dylan Bundy. I wasn't really expecting to find much that would make me want to draft him anywhere, but I was intrigued enough by the projection systems giving him consistent innings in Minnesota that I decided to take a look.

Shockingly, I actually found quite a few things in his profile that intrigued me, and my two-paragraph blurb on why Bundy might be a solid target at the end of draft-and-holds became the article that you're about to read (hopefully). I'm still working through my exact thoughts on where I'll rank Bundy, and my stance on him will no doubt be impacted by actually seeing him pitch in Spring Training and taking note of the changes, if any, that he makes with his new team.

However, for now, let's dive into the changes in 2021 that took Dylan Bundy from a career year in 2020 to utter disappointment and see where there might be optimism for a return to form.

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Dylan Bundy, Minnesota Twins

NFBC ADP: 447

Technically, Bundy missed the cut-off for my late-round starting pitchers list by three picks on his ADP, but I cheated because I wanted to discuss him in more detail. Most people seem to be writing Bundy off after a disastrous 90 inning sample last year with the Angels where he finished with a 6.06 ERA, 1.36 WHIP, and career-low 12.6% K-BB ratio. This is just one year after a 65 inning sample that saw him produce a career-best 3.29 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, and 20.6% K-BB ratio. So which is the real Bundy?

The truth likely lies somewhere in between, but here is why I like Bundy late. For starters, he's currently penciled in as the Twins' ace with Kenta Maeda likely out for the season, and it's hard to see him being pushed out of the rotation unless he faceplants again. You'll see that most projections have him down for 145+ innings, which is a pretty strong number this late in drafts.

The other reason I'm drafting Bundy this late is because there were some clear changes to his slider usage in 2021 that made it a less effective pitch. Since the pitch still had a strong 15.6% swinging-strike rate (SwStr%) and 39.1% called strike plus whiff rate (CSW), it remains an elite pitch that could be even better. When we look at Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard from 2021, we can see those metrics I just discussed and can also see that he also threw the pitch over the heart of the plate 27.5% of the time, which seems high for a put-away breaking pitch and only wasted it 11.9% of the time. Both of which indicate that he was often not burying it when ahead in the counts to either get the hitter to chase or cause them to adjust eye levels down and/or away.

Compare that to his 2020 season and a couple of things stand out.

For starters, we can see that Bundy threw the slider in the zone less and over the heart of the plate far less - over 10% less. This is likely part of the reason Bundy also saw a 6% increase in contact on his slider in 2021 despite hitters actually swinging at the pitch less overall, meaning they were likely finding it easier to lay off the pitches outside of the zone and focus on when he threw the pitch for a strike. We can also see that he threw the pitch over the corners of the plate (the shadow) more often in 2020 and wasted the pitch way more often as well. That may seem counter-intuitive to waste a pitch more but with a slider as good as Bundy's, a pitch that registers as a "waste" pitch can actually get swings out of the zone.

We can see this potentially bearing fruit with Bundy having a 17% higher Putaway rate in 2020, which registers how often a pitch is used to strike out a hitter, usually when a pitcher is ahead in counts. Considering Bundy also had a higher SwStr% on the slider in 2020 and a lower called strike rate, it was clear that the pitch was being used outside of the zone more and achieved way more success.

For visual learners, here is Bundy's strike zone heat map on the slider. The left is 2021 and the right is 2020.

You can see that he is burying the pitch way more successfully in 2020 when he had his career-best season. In fact, Bundy has always been a pitcher that had good success in the shadow portion of the strike zone, and he seemed to lose that entirely in 2021.

Even in his down years in Baltimore, he was never this poor in the strike zone, both over the heart of the plate and on the edges. To me, that's another reason to believe that 2021 was not a new normal for Bundy but simply a lost season where nothing seemed to go right. Getting back that success in the shadow portion of the strike zone, likely led by the slider, will be a key for him in 2022.

Recapturing the location on his slider will also impact the rest of his arsenal as well. As we can see from the Pitch Leaderboard image above, Bundy also threw his fastball more for strikes in 2020 and get more called strikes on it. That would make sense if Bundy was burying his slider outside of the zone more. Right-handed hitters are then leaning over the plate to protect against the slider and fastballs inside and/or high would likely freeze them, resulting in the higher called strike rates you see in 2020.

This is also born out by the heatmaps, with 2021 on the left and 2020 on the right:

You can see that, in 2020, the darkest part of the heat map is up in the zone and inside to right-handed hitters. This tracks with what I was saying above about using the fastball up and in with the slider off the plate away. However, in 2021, the fastball command seems a bit more all over the place. In particular, the darkest red is now over the middle of the plate, which is certainly not what you want to see in general and also doesn't work as well off of the slider.

The last thing that makes me slightly optimistic about Bundy is my hope that the Twins do away with his sinker. In 2020, Bundy threw the sinker only 8.3% of the time, probably not coincidentally because it allowed a .346 average and .423 slugging against (with a .562 xSLG). It also didn't miss any bats (11.1% whiff rate) so it got hit often and hard. However, in 2021, he threw the sinker 17.3% of the time, and the pitch still got hit often (11.8% whiff rate) and hard, with a .275 average against and .609 slugging percentage allowed. Meanwhile, he reduced the usage of a changeup that was successful for him in 2020 with a 17.1% SwStr% and .220 batting average against.

Again, the heatmaps tell a story here, with 2021 on the left and 2020 on the right:

It's pretty clear that in 2020, he was able to control the changeup better low and on the corner of the strike zone, whereas 2021 sees the darkest part of the heatmap in the middle of the zone but off the plate away. If you keep changeups in the middle of the zone, even if they are off the plate, they will be hit hard. I suspect that Bundy lost the feel for his changeup and stopped using it, opting for the sinker instead. This is born out when you look at his Statcast page since the changeup went from 18.7% usage prior to June to 6.8% from June on while the Sinker went from 17.3% usage prior to June to 26.4% from June on.

We'll end with one intriguing tidbit that might work against Bundy but is entirely speculative. We've already discussed how the location and feel for the slider and changeup are crucial to Bundy's success. We also discussed how the change in his repertoire really happened in the middle of June which perhaps not coincidentally is when the MLB cracked down on sticky substances. I hadn't expected it to be an issue with Bundy, and perhaps it's not, but two things did jump out at me.

For starters, his slider was being thrown around 81 mph in April and May with whiff rates of 42% and 30.3%, respectively. Yet, in July, he was throwing the pitch 78.8 mph, and by August, he was throwing it 77.7 mph and the whiff rates had fallen to 23.1% and 21.4%. A nearly four mph drop-off in one season is certainly something to note and the pieces seem to fit together to suggest that Bundy might not have been able to grip his slider as tightly, which caused him to not be able to throw it as hard, which, in turn, caused him to not be able to bury it as effectively, which led to fewer whiffs and more contact.

The same would apply for the changeup, which we know Bundy was throwing more earlier in the season. Early on, Bundy was throwing the changeup 84.1 mph and had a 30.2% whiff rate in April and a 28.6% rate in May. By July, he was throwing the pitch 81.8 mph and barely throwing it - only 26 total changeups in July and August combined.

Prior to June 5th, Bundy also had an 18.7% SwStr% on his slider and 17.6% SwStr on his changeup. After June, those numbers dropped to 11.6% SwStr on the slider and 11.4% SwStr on the changeup. The changeup also went from a 4.7% BB% to a 12.5% BB%, while the zone rate on the slider only fell 2%. And, in reality, Bundy wasn't really a bad pitcher prior to June. In April, he had a 4.20 ERA and 21% K-BB ratio across 30 innings and while May was rough, he also had four starts that month against the Dodgers, Red Sox, Giants, and Athletics, so it's possible he just got hit by four strong lineups. His walk rate was still 7.1% then so I'm not sure command was the issue, but his second-half walk rate of 11.6% and K-BB rate of 8.4% suggest an entirely different pitcher from what we saw in April.

Again, it's important to stress that I'm speculating that the sticky substance crackdown could have had anything to do with this. It's rare that a pitcher loses velocity and effectiveness on two pitches in the middle of the same season, but it could have just been mechanical. Even if it was based on a sticky substance crackdown, Bundy would have had all offseason to adjust his grips and re-work his pitches, so there is no reason to suspect the June through September numbers to remain.

If the Twins are able to help Bundy fix the location on his slider and recapture the feel of his changeup, then he can likely dial back on the usage of his sinker and have a pitch mix that is far less designed to pitch to contact. Pitching to contact obviously didn't work for Bundy in 2021 as he had the highest barrel rate and exit velocity allowed of his career. So while there is obviously work to be done, I see no reason why Bundy can't rebound to be a low 4.00-ERA pitcher who will throw 150+ innings, which is a great value this late in drafts. For fantasy managers that are waiting until Spring Training starts up, you'll be able to look specifically at his early use of slider and changeup to see which version of Bundy we are likely to get.

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