Good pitching development looks like Daniel Lynch

Daniel Lynch is changing his pitch mix and has upgraded a couple of them, which is leading to success.

I have had trouble holding back from writing multiple gushing articles about the development of some of the pitchers for the Royals this year. It is not quite extreme enough, nor is it a massive sample, but I finally feel like the organization is moving in the right direction. One of the recent examples of this is Daniel Lynch.

At one point Lynch was an acclaimed prospect, but since then he has struggled to find consistent success at the majors or even the high minors. Most of this year seemed to be just another data point showing that he was never going to reach the potential that we all had hoped he could attain.

But since returning to the big leagues on August 26, Lynch has thrown 11 innings across seven relief appearances without giving up a single run. He has only allowed three hits and three walks, way under a 1 WHIP, and struck out 12. Is there some BABIP luck in there? Sure, but he still has a 1.81 FIP and 2.77 xFIP in that time. So, how is he doing it? That’s the important part. It looks like he is genuinely better not just getting lucky.

The first change is his pitch mix. He has never really had a good four-seam fastball, but he has also relied on that pitch quite a lot. Throwing a bad pitch often is not the best way to find success, but when your secondary stuff is mediocre it is hard to move away from the fastball. Through June his four-seamer always made up at least 38.9% of his pitches in a game and went as high as 76.5%. Since returning, his fastball usage has been mostly in the 20-35% range. It has also ticked up a couple of miles an hour on average, and has seen higher spin rates which have led to less vertical drop, like you want from a four-seam fastball. It’s still not a great pitch, but it is better and he isn’t using it as much.

As he has decreased the use of that pitch, he has also basically stopped throwing the sinker. Instead he is shifting to more knuckle curves and changeups. Meanwhile sliders have been used seemingly based on the situation. Some games he is still going slider-heavy, but in his last outing he barely threw it at all.

The changeup is the one pitch that it looks like they significantly tweaked in the minors, and now is maybe his go-to pitch. The spin rate has stayed consistent in the 1,550 to 1,700 rpm range, but the speed has gone from sitting 83-85 up to 84-87. That has made the vertical break more consistent, and you want vertical break on your change. It is still capping out around 38 inches of downward movement, but it is always in the 30s now instead of dipping at times into the mid-20s. Flat changeups get hammered. It also has less horizontal movement, so whatever they were working on in the minors has shifted the shape of the pitch a lot and gotten much better results.

The aforementioned knuckle curve was not something he threw much before. In his last game he featured it heavily for the first time. It looks like something they have shifted for Daniel as well. He seems to have slowed it down a tick, which has reduced the spin rates and allowed for more downward break. Also, the difference in speed between it and the fastball is quite a bit bigger due to one increasing in velo and the other getting slower. That should make it easier to get batters out ahead of the curve if he can tunnel them well.

Before all of this, every one of Lynch’s pitches graded out below-average by Stuff+ and PitchingBot. Now it looks like some of those are going to be at least average pitches. The sample size is still so small on some of them, I am not sure I should report the numbers yet. Stuff+ stabilizes quickly, but he has only thrown 12 knuckle curves for instance, so I am not ready to trust it just yet. The results are great so far, and there look to be real changes. That makes me optimistic, though it has mostly been in very low-leverage situations.

It is not just Lynch though. Look at all the Royals pitchers this year and there is a decent list of players who have substantially improved under this regime:

Alec Marsh, Kris Bubic, Sam Long, Chandler Champlain, Ben Kudrna, Carlos Hernandez (recently). There are nits to pick about some of these for sure, but there were also real strides taken by each of them. Development is not a straight line. There are always bumps and hiccups, take a look at Bobby Witt Jr. if you don’t believe me. They won’t reach every player, and maybe they never become as good at pitching development as Cleveland or Tampa Bay, but I think there are enough signals to start getting optimistic that they can start building something more sustainable. That’s before we talk about some of their amazing acquisitions - Cole Ragans, Seth Lugo, Michael Wacha, Lucas Erceg. If the Royals continue to show an aptitude for acquiring the right guys, off-season bullpen acquisitions excepted, then there are multiple paths to building out the pitching staff with free agency, trades, and drafting.

This organization has desperately needed to modernize their pitching development, and a lot of their recent moves have at least seemed like they were trying to do just that. Now we have enough pitchers actually looking better to think those moves are starting to pay off. The future of the Royals looks very different if they can start consistently bringing new talent into the pitching staff like they seem to be doing now.