In 2014, Brad Boxberger emerged as one of the better backend relievers, posting excellent numbers across the board in almost every category, with the exception HR/FB ratio ― a category that can be largely attributed to luck. Boxberger became the de facto closer at the start of the season while Jake McGee mended from elbow surgery, a tacit status he maintained even after the return of the fastball throwing lefty. While the righty has been dependable overall ― collecting saves 27 in 29 opportunities ― Boxberger has been a touch shaky of late.
Over the last few months I’ve attempted to write an analytical piece on Boxberger, yet something has always gotten in the way ― life has a way of doing that. Thankfully Jason Hanselman (The Process Report) stepped up to the plate and knocked it out of the park with his recent piece, titled Getting Brad Boxberger Back on the Beaten Path.
In short, The Process Report is one of my favorite blogs, and I wanted to share with you some of Hanselman’s findings.
Hanselman writes that we can see he (Boxberger) was very good early, then pretty bad, before pitching close to league average and his own expectations over the most recent period. Clearly, he hasn’t been good, but can we attempt to figure out what is going wrong?
Based on his assertion, Hanselman used pitch f/x data courtesy of the excellent Baseball Savant to break down Bxoberger’s performance, both good and bad.
He found a few glaring differences between this year and last,
Boxberger was throwing his (fastball and change-up) combo in the zone a TON more last year. He hadn’t shown the ability to throw it for strikes coming into last year and it looks like he’s back in that similar range of being around 30% pitches in the zone. He’s still getting the chases, especially early this year and most recently, but it would appear that batters are showing a propensity to spit on the pitch. When batters were loathe to swing at the change he started filling up the zone with taken called strikes. I think he needs to make that similar adjustment this year. Get batters swing happy again and I think you will see better results, which can only help the fastball:
Continuing with,
Up until recently batters were showing an eerie ability to swing about as often as he was in the zone. Then he stopped throwing it in the zone. Having a fastball strike percentage of 30 – 35% is, umm, not good. This leads me to believe that he needs to start throwing both of his pitches for strikes more, which I’m sure everyone still reading is nodding along with after last night’s walkoff. This kind of ties together the previous two images plus the breaking balls that aren’t worth exploring:
The chases are nice, but he’s going to have to get back in the zone as he did in 2014 in order to become a dominant force again. Lastly, I wanted to show the Run Value trends for each pitch just to further hammer this point home:
And finally concluding,
His fastball was disgusting last year and it sure would be nice to have that back. Hopefully he can get back to throwing four-seamers up in the zone for strikes instead of two-seamers running off the plate for balls. Get that batters eye-level looking upstairs and then wipe him out with that very good change.
It’s a well thought out piece that’s well worth your time. It’s also linked above, so give it a once over in its entirety! I’ll eventually finish my original piece down the road, in the interim this stands as an excellent jump off as a means to better understand Brad Boxberger.
Noteworthiness
― Interesting. Per Mike Bates (MLB Daily Dish) Tampa Bay Rays’ fans aren’t 100% sold on Matt Silverman, yet they’re happier with him than the average fan base is with their GM.