What is Yovani Gallardo?

Milwaukee Brewers starting pitcher Yovani Gallardo struck out over 200 opposing hitters each year from 2009-2012.  The only other pitchers to accomplish the same feat in that time frame were Justin Verlander and Felix Hernandez.  You’ve probably heard of those two, and each has a Cy Young award hanging in his locker.  But Gallardo was never mentioned in the same breath as those guys, only received votes for the Cy Young award once, managing just a 7th place finish.  But here’s the kicker: he has since lost the strikeout touch.  At 28, he sports the lowest strikeout rate of his career, and has an 8-10 record.  Nonetheless, Yovani Gallardo has continued to be effective.

Gallardo has pitched 180 innings this year and boasts a 3.59 ERA and a 2.0 WAR.  He’s been an above average pitcher for a team that is still fighting for a playoff spot.  This post is not going to be about how good Gallardo has been.  (He hasn’t been all that good.  He’s just been slightly above average, but that has value.)

My question, instead, is what is he?  Gallardo went from being an underrated strikeout pitcher to an average contact pitcher, and somehow his core stats remained relatively unchanged.  Even when he was striking all those guys out, his ERA was never below 3.50.

This is the part where I would normally talk about how a 28 year old starting pitcher has reinvented himself after losing velocity–but that hasn’t happened.  Then I suppose it’s the part where I’ll to talk about how Gallardo is throwing more strikes than ever before–but he’s throwing strikes at exactly the same rate (61% in 2014, 61% for his career).  Maybe he’s in BABIP heaven and we should expect regression?  Nope.

Maybe the secret is that his sinker has stopped sinking quite as much, and the swing and misses that led to strikeouts are now weak groundballs?  This might be it.  Gallardo currently sports a 51% groundball rate in 2014, is both his career high and among the top 20 for starters.  But his fastball is still moving the same and traveling the same speed.

So what else is there?  The secret could be in the usage of his two seam fastball.  Gallardo has essentially swapped its role with that of his four seamer.  The change coincide with a significantly lower walk rate (2.60 vs 3.29), perhaps suggesting that Yovani can more comfortably control the two seamer.  But a lower walk rate alone does not a productive season make, especially with the increased contact rates and decreased strikeout rates that Gallardo’s seen. This chart hints at another explanation: groundballs.

So what does all this tell us?  Not a whole lot, other than that Gallardo has become a slightly more boring pitcher the past two years, even as the game is seeing a meteoric rise in strikeouts.  But at the end of the season, does it really matter that Gallardo is throwing his two seam fastball about 10% more frequently than he ever has before?  Good pitchers get hitters out, and Yovani Gallardo is proving to  be a good pitcher, again, just in a different way.  I’m not quite willing to bet Gallardo can keep this up, but if you are you should probably check out MLB betting at William Hill.

-Sean Morash