Sometimes when a player is called up they find instant success like Jared Jones. And others, despite a great track record, experience a few growing pains as they adjust to the MLB level. Gavin Stone was shelled early and often during 2023 in his first taste of the majors despite finishing 2022 as the Dodgers’ Minor League Pitcher of the Year; that dream season across AA/AAA he finished with a sub-2.00 ERA and a 12+ K/9. He was at the peak of minor league success and then in 2023 got the call-up to the majors that brought him back to reality.
It did not go as planned. He battled through spot starts and long relief in a troubled 2023 that led to 9.00 ERA and a lackluster 1.69 K/BB ratio. A key reason for his struggle was that his fastball wasn’t fooling anyone, and his trademark 70-grade changeup didn’t have the surprise factor that carried him in the minors. He needed to adjust his approach for major league hitters to keep them honest, and off-balance.
Midway through the season while down at OKC he began to develop a cutter and refocus on locating his pitches and eventually dialed in the command of it throughout the offseason. Working this into his repertoire, did he finally find the formula for success? Let’s check in.
| Season | IP | K/9 | BB/9 | HR/9 | BABIP | LOB% | ERA | WHIP | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | 31 | 6.39 | 3.77 | 2.32 | 0.355 | 58.2% | 9.00 | 1.90 | 6.64 |
| 2024 | 50 | 6.12 | 3.06 | 0.72 | 0.286 | 75.8% | 3.60 | 1.30 | 3.84 |
This season he’s found much more success limiting runs via hard contact and, specifically, reducing the home run ball. The season as a whole though, doesn’t tell the full picture. That’s because prior to last night’s start, he had allowed only 1 run in each of his last 4 starts. Gavin Stone is finally learning to put it together. What is working for him this year?
Despite the addition of the cutter, as we have seen with other pitchers, it’s more of a concert approach with net value. What the heck do I mean by that? It’s not exactly a direct effect of this one pitch making a difference, but the presence of it in the mind of hitters together with rest of his pitch mix making him less predictable in both movement and location. Take a look at the chart above, Gavin Stone is now throwing his two-seam fastball evenly split with his four-seamer roughly 23.5% of the time. This with addition of the cutter, is keeping hitters off-balance and unable to sit on his “straight” four-seamer.
Over 2/3 of the time he’s throwing the two-seamer in on hands of righties, and the cutter in on the hands of lefties. This then sets up the slider/changeup down and away to the respective-handed hitters. He’s learning better sequencing and pairing of his pitches while choosing better locations outside of the middle zone.
Here is his cutter location since that first 4/26 start:
And here is his sinker/two-seamer this season now that he’s locating it better:
The key to Gavin Stone’s success is found in his ability to locate these pitches, which in turn makes his change-up and fastball that much better. Let’s compare the pitch results:
| Season | Pitch | % | HR | K | BA | SLG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | Changeup | 27.6 | 1 | 13 | 0.156 | 0.267 |
| 2024 | Sinker | 23.6 | 1 | 3 | 0.279 | 0.419 |
| 2024 | Four Seamer | 23.3 | 1 | 8 | 0.286 | 0.457 |
| 2024 | Slider | 11.9 | 0 | 4 | 0.222 | 0.222 |
| 2024 | Cutter | 9.1 | 0 | 1 | 0.333 | 0.333 |
| 2024 | Curveball | 4.4 | 0 | 0 | 0.167 | 0.167 |
| 2023 | Changeup | 34.2 | 2 | 11 | 0.240 | 0.480 |
| 2023 | Four Seamer | 28 | 3 | 1 | 0.552 | 0.966 |
| 2023 | Cutter | 16.8 | 3 | 4 | 0.409 | 0.909 |
| 2023 | Sinker | 14.3 | 0 | 3 | 0.182 | 0.227 |
| 2023 | Slider | 6.4 | 0 | 3 | 0.385 | 0.385 |
| 2023 | Curveball | 0.4 | — | — | — | — |
This season his changeup has nearly doubled its effectiveness, reducing batter SLG from .480 to .267 and limiting hits with a stellar .156 average. His four-seamer is also not getting crushed like last year going from an insane .552 average to .286, nearly cutting that SLG in half as well. The big thing here is that he’s only given up 1 HR so far on his fastball compared to 3 last year in much less time. And then… there’s the 8 Ks with his four-seamer.
Despite the less-than-ideal results from yesterday, there was a bright spot. All of Gavin Stone’s 5 Ks from last night came on the fastball with 4 of them coming on high fastballs. All of last year, he only got 1 strikeout via the fastball. If he can continue to master the fastball up in the zone and his sequencing of the two-seamer/cutter, it will make his changeup all the more better leading him to make that next big step forward. Pitching on the Dodgers affords you a lot of room for error and it should continue to put him in a position to collect wins. I see him continuing to grow into a strong #3 for their rotation and developing into a Urias-like template that is able to minimize contact at an above-average rate.
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Photo Credit: Chris Yarzab
Awesome deep dive into Stone’s pitch development. I’ve been a Stone faithful since his call up last year (when he almost single handedly destroyed my pitching), and this year (when he has mostly helped). I don’t think we’ll ever see the same kind of stellar strikeout ratios he posted in AAA, but as far as his ERA/WHIP is concerned, I can see him developing into a Max Fried type of starter if things go right, with the floor of say , this year’s version of Tanner Bibbee. From the stars you provided it looks like his curve has been working well, I’d be interested to see the results he’d get if he increased its usage by 5-7 percent.
Thanks! Yeah, the curve has such a low usage rate that I didn’t go into details on it because it has been almost disappeared that last few starts. I think he mostly just uses it as a “different look” and not really weapon. I agree he’s not going to be a K-machine, as he simply doesn’t have the lights-out stuff for the big league level despite a great change, but agree that his 5% outcome would be peak Urias or Fried etc.
Good piece Cool. They rushed this kid to the bigs. He’s actually handled it better than could be expected!
Thanks man, I’m not entirely sure they rushed him at first, but probably should have pivoted sooner and sent him down to develop adjustments earlier. Yep he’s rebounded well!