Neftali Feliz and his success with the Pirates this season

Neftali Feliz has quickly become one of the more consistent pitchers to come out of the Pittsburgh bullpen in 2016. After struggling last season, what is causing his success this year?

When the Pittsburgh Pirates signed Neftali Feliz to a one-year, $3.9 million contract on January 6th, most fans of the team probably were not surprised. Feliz fit the mold of what the Pirates have looked for in recent years when it comes to bullpen reclamation projects: he is a powerful pitcher who was dominant at one point in his career, but for some reason or another began to struggle. Besides enrolling in Ray Searage’s School for Broken Pitchers, what are some other things that are turning Feliz into a fantastic middle inning option for the Pirates?

For starters, let’s take a look at some of Feliz’s numbers that can be found on his player page on Fangraphs.com. Before coming to Pittsburgh, the best K/9 rate that Feliz accumulated in a season was 11.32, and that was in 2009 in 31 innings of work with the Texas Rangers. This year, he has a K/9 rate of 11.34 in 16.2 innings. Not only is he striking more hitters out, but he has been able to lower his BB/9 rate as well. His career best was 2.32, which also came during his 2009 rookie season. So far in 2016 that number is down to 1.62.

Feliz’s PITCHf/x Plate Discipline data gives us an idea as to why he is having his best season since his rookie campaign. O-Swing percent, which is the percent that a hitter swings at pitches outside the strike zone, sits at 36.2% this year for Feliz, the highest mark of his career. For Z-Swing percent, which calculates the same thing as O-Swing percent except inside the strike zone, iFeliz sits at 76.2 percent, which is also a career best. So not only is Feliz getting hitters to swing at a lot of pitches in the strike zone, but he is also getting them to go after over a third of the pitches he throws out of the strike zone. Overall, hitters are swinging at 57.1 percent of the pitches he has thrown this season, and considering that prior to 2015 he never did better than 50 percent, that’s quite an improvement at this stage of his career.

PITCHf/x Plate Discipline data can also tell us how successful hitters are against Feliz when it comes to making contact against him. So far in 2016, Feliz’s O-Contact percent (percentage of pitches a hitter makes contact with that are thrown outside the strike zone) is 53.2 percent, the second best mark of his career (in 2013 it was an even 50 percent). For Z-Contact percent (percentage of pitches a hitter makes contact with that are in the strike zone) sits at 79.5 percent, only trailing the 77.8 percent he compiled back in 2011. In general hitters are only making contact on 71.7 percent of the pitches they swing at when Feliz is on the mound.

Finally, another reason that Feliz may be finding success in Pittsburgh is that he is relying on his heater more than he did over the last few seasons. This year he is throwing a combination of different fastballs (more four-seam than two-seam) 70.7 percent of the time, whereas last year he only throw them 63.8 percent of the time. He has always relied heavily on his fastball arsenal throughout his career, but so far this season the percentage of the time he throws sliders and change-ups have dropped since 2015.

So it looks like after a little bump in the road during the 2015 season, the 28-year-old has found his groove in Pittsburgh. He may not be saving games like he has in the past, but if he can continue to pitch this well the rest of the season, he could put himself in position to return to a closing role for a major league team in 2017.

Image Credit – Daniel Decker Photography

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