Image peak Kyle Hendricks. He didn’t blow hitters away, however he positive recorded loads of outs, deceiving hitters with a flurry of cutters, sinkers, and changeups. All of these pitches traveled in an identical tunnel; hitters couldn’t assist however hit the ball with the skinny a part of their bat. Even late-period Hendricks manages to take a seat atop the hard-hit price leaderboards despite a 87-mph fastball. His means to take action is a operate of his arsenal, which is designed to maintain hitters off steadiness and off barrel.
They’re the identical age, however Nick Martinez simply spun up a peak Hendricks season, reliably producing yucky contact on balls in play. These outcomes earned him a qualifying provide of $21.05 million from the Reds, which he reportedly accepted on Sunday.
When the Reds initially proffered Martinez a QO, I noticed a hefty serving to of each consternation and skepticism round that call, however I believe it holds up nicely. Certain, Martinez doesn’t strike out a ton of batters. However who wants strikeouts once you’ve obtained routine fly balls?
To suppose Martinez is unlikely to ship $21 million of worth for his membership within the 2025 season, you need to imagine that the flexibility to generate weak contact is fluky, topic to the vicissitudes of randomness. However that perception is likely to be misplaced.
As Eno Sarris and Derek Van Riper mentioned on a current Charges and Barrels episode, defensive unbiased pitching statistics concept, or DIPS concept, is likely to be heading to its grave. DIPS held that pitchers lacked management over batted ball outcomes, resulting in statistics like FIP, which internet sites like FanGraphs use to outline pitcher worth. However analyses early within the Statcast period discovered there to be some predictability in managing contact, and current advances in pitch modeling recommend that sure pitch shapes are strongly related to batted ball outcomes. DIPS won’t be useless but, however on the entire, it seems that particular person pitchers are accountable for excess of their walks, house runs, and strikeouts.
For anecdotal proof, look no additional than Martinez’s 2024 season. Title a statistic that measures onerous contact suppression, and Martinez ranked close to the highest. He ranked within the 96th percentile in hard-hit price and the 94th percentile in common exit velocity. His infield fly ball price was tenth amongst all pitchers with not less than 100 innings pitched. I additionally invented some area of interest contact suppression statistics, and Martinez ranked among the many greatest in these too. He induced the third-most “mishits,” which I outlined as non-bunted batted balls with an exit velocity beneath 65 mph. And by way of innocent “donut gap” fly balls, no one did higher than Martinez. No one allowed extra fly balls with a launch angle between 22 and 28 levels and an exit velocity between 80 mph and 92 mph, often known as the place the place fly balls go to die:
Mishit Inducers
SOURCE: Baseball Savant
Share of batted balls allowed below 65 mph exit velocity excluding bunts. Minimal 300 balls in play.
Was it luck? It’s unlikely. Martinez’s arsenal is designed to supply these outcomes in a few other ways. A method to take a look at it’s by every pitch in isolation. He throws six separate pitches, and every of them works to supply weak contact from each left-handed and right-handed hitters.
There’s the cutter in on the fingers of lefties, for instance, which he executed to perfection on this 0-1 pitch to Jake Cronenworth. (Sadly, Jonathan India’s execution was not pretty much as good):
There may be the sinker he can run in on the fingers of right-handed hitters, as we see right here in opposition to Andrew McCutchen:
And his greatest pitch, the changeup, can get each righties and lefties to open up means too early, forcing them to only throw their bat on the ball. That is Martinez’s primary whiff pitch, however it additionally works as an emergency swing generator, as we see right here in opposition to Anthony Volpe:
Even his four-seam fastball will get hitters swinging means beneath, owing to all of the backspin he generates with that over-the-top arm angle, as seen right here in opposition to Alec Burleson:
Every of those pitches works to suppress onerous contact individually, however there’s additionally a multiplicative deception impact produced by the interplay between these pitches. Martinez’s three fastballs and changeup journey by way of comparable tunnels, and he throws all of them with nearly an identical frequency. A 2D plot of Martinez’s choices illustrates the similarity of the pitches’ actions:
These pitches additionally transfer on comparable trajectories in three-dimensional area. There are nascent methods to measure this impact — as I talked about in a earlier article, earlier this yr Driveline’s Jack Lambert and Marek Ramilo debuted Match+, which measures the extent to which a pitcher’s arsenal travels on an identical trajectory, and Baseball Prospectus‘ Stephen Sutton-Brown will quickly introduce an replace to their pitch fashions that comes with an identical logic.
My strategies are cruder, however once I checked out this just a few months in the past, no pitcher in baseball overlapped their launch angles like Martinez does. His curveball pops out of his hand at an upward angle as most curveballs do, however all his different pitches emerge from an identical spot, sowing confusion within the thoughts of the batter:
As a result of Martinez runs a below-average strikeout price and sits 92 mph along with his fastball, it’s tempting to wave him off, dismissing his season as a run of unsustainable BABIP luck. Are you able to rely on a pitcher who can’t blow batters away? And strikeouts are nice, to be truthful. The xwOBA on a strikeout is roughly zero, in spite of everything. However the xwOBA on a fly ball struck between 80 mph and 92 mph with a launch angle above 22 levels isn’t that far above zero, and Martinez confirmed final season that he can generate these forms of batted balls higher than almost anybody.
The massive elephant within the room pertains to Martinez’s command. As I discussed in his blurb for our current Prime 50 Free Agent rankings, his 3.2% stroll price was a whole outlier relative to his profession norms. Along with what I discussed there — that some proof factors to command bettering as a pitcher ages — I imagine you’d be justified in believing that Martinez can maintain operating low stroll charges within the 2025 season.
George Kirby is the quintessential instance of a man who doesn’t stroll anybody due to his means to bully hitters with the fastball. He throws warmth on the corners, which works nice as a problem pitch. Martinez doesn’t have that very same luxurious, however he does have the flexibility to throw any kind of pitch for a strike at any given time. It isn’t the standard definition of aggressiveness, however whether or not Martinez is forward or behind within the rely, he’s prepared to go together with any of his six choices.
Baseball Savant has a software that exhibits pitch choice on every rely for any given pitcher. Try Martinez’s division of pitches in counts like 2-1 or 3-2 — it really appears like a random quantity generator. When the pitch out of the hand could possibly be any pitch, it permits Martinez to assault the zone like somebody with a killer fastball:
Martinez doesn’t have ace stuff. However there’s good cause to imagine that he’ll proceed to frustrate hitters along with his grab-bag mixture of pitches, one thing within the fashion of 2024 Seth Lugo. Don’t be shocked he obtained the biggest pitcher wage in Reds historical past — there’s extra to Martinez than meets the attention.
