Starting Pitcher Standouts: MLB's Best Pitch Arsenals

May 14, 2022

Jon Anderson identifies starting pitcher breakouts, dominating with multiple pitches. These SP studs could be fantasy baseball risers and standouts in 2022.

After watching Shane McClanahan just absolutely dominate with all four of his pitches on Wednesday night, I got to thinking. I wanted to take a look at the full-pitch arsenals that the leagues' starting pitchers are throwing and try to identify the players that are doing the most to dominate hitters with multiple offerings.

It's important to note that it is far from a prerequisite for success to have a deep pitch arsenal. A starter can do just fine with three pitches, generally providing that a couple of them are very good. It is pretty rare to find a pitcher putting up gaudy numbers with more than a pair of pitches, so it's not something we should really be looking for all the time because we just won't find it - and it's not necessary to be a fantasy ace.

The main reason I look at pitch arsenal depth is not to predict which pitchers will have the best seasons, there are better metrics to look at for that. The thing that I think a deep pitch arsenal helps most with is avoiding those disastrous starts. Pitching is a feel game, and sometimes a guy just won't have the grip or the feel on a certain pitch. If that pitch happens to be the one you rely on for 40% usage and you have no good options to fall back on - you're in a tough spot against Major League hitters. The advantage of a deep arsenal is that it allows you to scrape the pitch that isn't working that given day in favor of other options, giving the pitcher, I think, a bit of a higher floor start-to-start.

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The Analysis

For every individual pitch type that a pitcher has thrown more than 50 times, I retrieved the CSW% rate for the pitch and compared it to the rest of the league's pitches of the same type. I limited it to these pitch types:

• Four-seam fastball
• Sinker
• Cutter
• Changeup
• Slider
• Curveball

So I have a big data file with every starting pitcher that has made at least five starts thus far along with their CSW% percentile rank for each of their pitches (I didn't include splitters because so few pitchers use that pitch, so this hurts guys like Kevin Gausman, Frankie Montas, and Shohei Ohtani right off the bat).

I then looked to see which pitchers had the most pitches being in the top X percentiles. Let's show the results.

The Results

90th percentile or better

Only nine pitchers have two pitches in that top 10%. Here are the names with the given pitch types:

• Shane McClanahan (Slider, Changeup)
• Jesus Luzardo (Four-Seamer, Changeup)
• Garrett Whitlock (Sinker, Slider)
• Kyle Wright (Curveball, Changeup)
• Lucas Giolito (Four-Seamer, Changeup)
• Gerrit Cole (Four-Seamer, Slider)
• Eric Lauer (Four-Seamer, Curveball)
• Shohei Ohtani (Slider, Curveball)
• Bruce Zimmermann (Slider, Changeup)

A mix of expected and surprising names there. Zimmermann certainly stands out as someone that hasn't had a ton of success on the mound despite having some pretty solid pitches in the arsenal there. He has looked pretty good in terms of command this year with a strong 6% walk rate and a very low home run rate. The other standout name to me is Whitlock, who spent some time in a relief role but is now in the rotation, and things are certainly looking up for him as we move forward.

This also provides some further confidence in the Kyle Wright and Eric Lauer breakout seasons.

75th percentile or better

So now, we're looking at pitches in the top quarter of the league's CSW% for their pitch type.

Four Pitches

The lone man with CSW rates in the top quarter on FOUR different pitches is the aforementioned McClanahan, who has done this with his four pitches:

Unfair stuff from McClanahan who is looking like he wants a Cy Young award.

Three Pitches

A trio of pitchers have three pitches in the top quartile:

• Jesus Luzardo (Four-Seamer, Slider, Changeup)
• Joe Musgrove (Four-Seamer, Sinker, Changeup)
• Freddy Peralta (Four-Seamer, Curveball, Changeup)

Two Pitches

There are 23 pitchers on this list, so I'm just going to list the names here without the pitch types for space-saving purposes. If anybody wants the full data, hit me up on Twitter and I'll provide it.

Garrett Whitlock, Kyle Wright, Lucas Giolito, Gerrit Cole, Eric Lauer, Shohei Ohtani, Bruce Zimmermann, Jordan Montgomery, Chris Bassitt, Aaron Nola, Paul Blackburn, JT Brubaker, Brandon Woodruff, Luis Garcia, Nick Martinez, Pablo Lopez, Carlos Rodon, Josiah Gray, Marcus Stroman, Max Fried, Corbin Burnes, Max Scherzer, Chris Paddack

50th percentile or better

Four Pitches

• McClanahan (Four-Samer, Slider, Curveball, Changeup)
• Luzardo (Four-Seamer, Sinker, Curveball, Changeup)
• Musgrove (Four-Seamer, Slider, Curveball, Cutter)
• Bassitt (Four-Seamer, Sinker, Slider, Curveball)
• Blackburn (Sinker, Curveball, Cutter, Changeup)
• Scherzer (Sinker, Slider, Curveball, Cutter)
• Kelly (Four-Seamer, Sinker, Curveball, Changeup)

Three Pitches

Another very long list, here it is.

Freddy Peralta, Eric Lauer, Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Nola, JT Brubaker, Brandon Woodruff, Nick Martinez, Pablo Lopez, Marcus Stroman, Max Fried, Logan Webb, Steven Matz, Zach Thompson, Frankie Montas, Jameson Taillon, Carlos Carrasco, Kyle Gibson, Tarik Skubal, Daulton Jefferies, Alex Wood, Matt Brash

Deepest Arsenals Overall

This is just considering raw pitch counts, not looking at performance whatsoever. There are only 15 pitchers in the league that have thrown five different pitches 50+ times. Here's the list:

Joe Musgrove, Chris Bassitt, Max Scherzer, Merrill Kelly, Brandon Woodruff, Nick Martinez, Max Fried, Jameson Taillon, Daulton Jefferies, Gerrit Cole, Jordan Lyles, Michael Lorenzen, Kyle Freeland, Adrian Houser

None of this should be overreacted to because it does seem to turn out that arsenal depth is far less correlated with success than just the matter of quality of the pitches a guy does throw. But it is good information to be aware of, I think, and it should give us further confidence in the continued success of guys like McClanahan, Lauer, Wright, Ohtani, Peralta, and Luzardo. Thanks for reading!

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