As a major league pitcher you can roll along in mediocrity for years but go to the right place, change a couple of things and presto, stardom.
Some teams are known for these sort of things. The Houston Astros, San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee Brewers. Sometimes you find it yourself somehow.
The Mets Sean Manaea is the latest example. At 32 years old and in his 9th season he was better than ever. With a career ERA of 4.10 and 100 ERA+ he was an average MLB pitcher.
Now he’s coming off a 12-6 season with a 3.47 ERA and sterling 1.08 Whip. He has carried that over to the post season with victories in all 3 of his starts in all 3 series so far. Tom Verduci explains at si.com
“At the end of July, after watching Chris Sale pitch, Manaea changed how he threw a baseball. He ditched his overhead windup and lowered his arm angle.He also changed the grip on his changeup, switching to a one-seam grip. Since the re-invention, Manaea is 7–2 with a 2.98 ERA in 14 starts”
The Brewers best example was Corbin Burnes. Now with Baltimore and soon to be a very rich free agent. In 2018 he got crushed to the tune of an 8.82 ERA as one of the league’s worst pitchers. He threw four seam fastballs or sliders 84% of the time.
The Brewers moved him from bullpen to starter. From the wind up to the stretch and as Joseph Koetters explains at medium.com. The final adjustment, and the biggest one, was a complete revamp of his arsenal.
“Burnes added a cutter to his pitch mix that he threw 52% of the time in 2021. The other 48% was a pretty even mix of curveball, slider, sinker and changeup. In 2021, Burnes’ cutter had the 5th best run value in the league at -22. For comparison, in 2019, Burnes’ fastball had the worst run value in all of baseball at +24”
Since then Burnes is 52-31, 2.88 ERA and a 1.02 WHIP. Including the NL Cy Young award in 2021.
Of course turning mediocrity to exellence means you often don’t get to keep the magic you’ve made. As the Brewers no longer have Burnes, same for the San Francisco Giants and Kevin Gausman.
He arrived there at 29 years old and like Manaea an average MLB starter with a career ERA+ of 99. As David Singh wrote for Sportsnet, Gausman leaned more on his top shelf forkball plus some advice:
“The Giants wanted him to throw even more fastballs up in the zone and showed him video of how fellow starters Trevor Bauer and Blake Snell benefitted from that approach. Gausman’s fastball and splitter are symbiotic in a sense, as they both use the same arm slot and release point, leaving the hitter with barely any time to decipher which one he’s seeing”
And since we mentioned Houston, we’ll serve up Charlie Morton, who arrived there at age 33, a below average career behind him. An 84+ career ERA of 4.54 and a 46-71 record. The turnaround has been miraculous and lucrative.
His age 33-39 years? 84-42 3.55 and an ERA+ of 119. As the story goes here from Tim Keown of ESPN – He can thank Astros pitching coach Brent Strom and Perry Husband, a freelance consultant who lives in Southern California:
“As soon as I got here, they wanted me to throw a lot more two-seamers down and away to righties,” Morton says. “I was like, ‘Hmm, I want to go in on righties — that’s what works for me. You know, get ’em to hit the ball on the ground.’ They were like, ‘Well, actually … we’d like to avoid the ball being in put in play altogether.'”
Now Manaea has won a game in the first 3 playoff series of 2024. He’d sure like to win one in a 4th. He’s never pitched in a world series.
