Can the Atlanta Braves Fix Mike Foltynewicz

May 29, 2015; San Francisco, CA, USA; Atlanta Braves starting pitcher Mike Foltynewicz (48) throws to the San Francisco Giants in the first inning of their MLB baseball game at AT&T Park. Mandatory Credit: Lance Iversen-USA TODAY Sports.

What’s The Pitch

I’ve said all season long that the problem Folty has isn’t so much stuff as locating his pitches consistently. I’m going to run through a series of charts that show that.  My conclusions are that his four seam fastball is fine, his two seam fastball/sinker, slider and curve all all way to high and centrally located. If you’re fine with that you can skip to the section on movement.

I know these may be hard to read, double clicking the picture will enlarge it. The overlaid averages are from Books Baseball and the pitch plots from Texas Leaguers.

Four Seam Fastball

Here’s every four-seam fastball he threw in 2015.

And here are the batting averages in each zone, if there’s no notation in that area the BA is .000.

You’ll have to enlarge this to see properly that the red – high average – areas are low numbers of pitches. His fastball is fast enough that it isn’t hit well.

Sinker/Curve

I lumped these together because he threw so few curves and both suffer from being way to high in the zone.

The Astros decided in 2011 that Folty didn’t need a two seam fastball it was a waste of time for pitcher who threw a 95+ fastball. They also had him work exclusively on his curve a pitch the BA scouts said he should abandon completely.  Adapting to those changes resulted in another year in A ball and made him essentially a fastball/change pitcher as the curve that was never good to begin with didn’t improve. By 2013 he was simply a thrower, no minor league pitcher hit triple digits more often that year than Folty.

When the Braves got him in 2015 his two seam fastball had to be resurrected and although he had started to use a spike/knuckle curve prior to leaving Houston it was still a very raw pitch. As a result of these events he had a sinker and curve that finished up in the zone and those get often and hard.

I added the “good sinker/curve” line as a reference only.

Slider

As the 2014 season was getting underway, the Astros’ brain trust – and I use that collective loosely – decided that maybe the slider they previously trashed was a good idea after all . . . since the curve thing wasn’t working. He was still melting radar guns and the breaking pitch had evolved into something they called a slider but some also saw as a slurve. It was missing bats but bad mechanics and over use made elbow sore that spring and rather than fix the mechanics, the Astros decided again he should quit using it.

Folty didn’t throw many sliders and there’s a good reason for that, the one he threw were mostly very hittable