Deep Impact: From Me To Yu

Yu Darvish has been a veritable enigma (double word of the day). He was horrible in most of the first half, then in mid-June started showing signs of life here and there. Now enter July, Darvish has strung together 3 positive starts and seems to be turning the corner. I watched his game this last Wednesday and felt like I was watching vintage Darvish 2016 and before. His mound presence was full of confidence and he was challenging batters with elite velocity up in the zone (several 97s), and then getting good hard bite on his 2Seamer, Slider, and Cutter. And most importantly, his command looked pretty solid which has been his biggest problem in the last few years. So that leads us into today’s deep dive…

Darvish throws 4 primary pitches: Fastball (4Seam), Sinker (I do and will call it a 2Seam based on his grip and metrics like… well… lack of sink and mostly run), Cutter, and Slider. Then he mixes in a Change and Splitter that are virtually the same, and a Curve. That makes 7 pitches… wow. Let’s look at his velocity. I’m skipping 2018 on all stats today since it was mostly a lost season with a small sample size compounded by injury, so moving on.

In July so far his velocity has jumped across the board. Most importantly, on the 3 power pitches bolded for your viewing pleasure. He’s a power pitcher, not a finesse one, so gaining back velocity is exceedingly valuable for him.

That’s the vertical movement table. His Fastball has been getting flatter (less percieved “rise”) each year since the end of 2016, along with a decreasing (increasing flatness?) bite with his Slider in the same timeframe (bolded). So his core complementary pitches have been losing eye level variation each season since 2016. This has been a large reason for his continuous decline. Pitches deceive batters with a mix of speed and movement, when you lose 1 of those its a lot easier adjust to the other. Now let’s break apart July from the rest of 2019.

In part, the velocity gains have helped Darvish get more rise back on his fastball and more bite back on his slider. Let’s look at the results.

As you see in early 2019, his fastballs were garbage and batters were teeing off them. Also, batters were hitting his slider at the highest clip of his career due to the lack of movement. Now, so far here in July, his power pitches are playing up and likewise, a slider with more bite is dominating due to the more imposing fastballs. This is also making his offspeed pitches more filthy. After a bit more searching for why I discovered THIS. He had been dropping his release the last few years, altering the spin, and thus losing the command and effectiveness of his pitches. His mechanics were a mess until the last month or so: he has raised his arm slot (on all pitches, but specifically the fastball and slider) closer to where it was in 2016 and before, making his pitches more effective (like they used to be).

In his last 2 starts (post-ASB), batters are hitting .000 off his 4Seamer and .063 off his Slider. That’s obviously not going to continue, but worth noting and keeping an eye on. This mechanical issue has been affecting the quality of his pitches and their command; let’s track those now.

This looks at 2019 as a whole (so his recent success is blended in with the bad). His BB/9 (2.78, 2.80, 4.73, 4.13) and HR/9 (1.08, 1.30, 1.58, 1.65) have been trending in the wrong direction each year since 2016. This speaks to him getting more wild, and losing command of pitches; more balls = more walks, more missed locations = more pitches floating to the middle of zone and getting crushed. So there’s a lot to take in here, first of which is you can see his eroding command the past few seasons, as his Edge% has continued to drop (pitches that have hit the edges of the zone). As high as his walk rate has been 50%+ Zone rate is high and to me that says a lot of edge pitches have drifted into the zone to get smashed more, and others further out for balls.

Now to the positives! His command seems to be improving. In his last 6 starts Darvish has pitched 36.2 innings with 45 Ks and only 6 BBs with a 3.44 ERA and 3.11 xFIP (caveat of a 5 ER bomb against the Braves). Take a look at the monthly splits:

He is getting a commanding command of his command. Not only is he commanding pitches better, but also his pitch usage rate has shifted as well to be more efficient. This season he’s throwing a career-low 27.7% Fastballs and a career-high 24.0% Cutters and 25.7% Sliders. Compare that the 2017/18 split of roughly 36%/14%/24% and his 2016 split of 42.3%/9.3%/17.0%. That’s nearly an even ratio of throwing his 3 primary pitches. I’m not prepared jusssst yet to say he’s “back” back, but it’s looking like he’s finding his way back (he still likes watching HRs; but then, so does Justin Verlander). I’ll call him a tentative buy for now, while advising to keep an eye on his walks and I’ll be watching his velocity and arm slot. In fact, I just picked him up where I could to see what happens. If he’s on the waiver, give him a run. Yu can do it.