Ryan Pressly, Houston Astros
Pressly’s 2018 season was going just fine with the Minnesota Twins — he owned a 3.40 ERA, 33.2% strikeout rate, and 9.1% walk rate through 47.2 innings — but he went into another gear after landing in Houston.
The 29-year-old threw just 23.1 frames for the Astros, yet accumulated more fWAR (1.1) than he did in Minnesota (0.8). He accomplished this thanks to a sparkling 0.77 ERA, 38.1% strikeout rate, and 3.6% walk rate. One would think there’s some regression coming after looking at his BABIP allowed (.213) and strand rate (95.6%) during this run, but this is still remarkable.
Not surprisingly, this move brought a shift in pitch mix. After throwing his fastball at a 48.5% clip in Minnesota, that dropped to 34.6% in Houston. That difference mostly went to his curveball usage (24.5% to 34.7%), which greatly improved in FanGraphs’ pitch value per 100 pitches from one stop (-1.64) to the next (4.70).
About Matt Musico
Matt Musico currently manages Chin Music Baseball and contributes to The Sports Daily. His past work has been featured at numberFire, Yahoo! Sports and Bleacher Report. He’s also written a book about how to become a sports blogger. You can sign up for his email newsletter here.
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