Article: The Best Bullpen Version of Javier Assad

[Matthew Trueblood]

One of the best and most intriguing stories to emerge from the Cubs’ spring was the emergence of Javier Assad as a potential bullpen weapon. That experiment got off to a rough start on Saturday, but it can still end well. The young righty just needs to make some adjustments.

Having seen him add velocity in successive seasons via diligent training, the Cubs know that Javier Assad has the raw stuff to be a solid big-league pitcher. Assad showed poise and tenacity in his appearances for México in the World Baseball Classic, too, so there’s little question that he can handle the big moment. What must happen next, whether the transition is permanent or not, is for Assad to trade in the junkballing starter’s arsenal he’s used over the majority of his career for one befitting his new level and role.

Here’s Assad’s pitch usage against left-handed batters since arriving in the majors. The 2023 data points aren’t just Saturday’s game; they also include his WBC work.

That cutter is his favorite toy, and not without reason. It’s picked up 1.5 miles per hour of velocity this year, and now frequently reaches the 90s. With much more cut than its spin direction implies to the hitter and the ability to stay mostly on plane with his fastball, it really can be a great pitch for inducing weak contact.

The trouble with the above chart is in the pitches he uses less often–because there are too many of them, and none that he uses enough. Even if the Cubs want to use Assad in a multi-inning relief role and keep him ready to move back to the rotation, his five-pitch approach doesn’t make sense. None of the offerings are good enough to justify trying to juggle so many of them. 

Before talking about how he should prune that particular tree, though, we need to look at how he approaches right-handed hitters, as well.

Obviously, the same problem presents itself, in some measure. He uses five pitches against same-handed batters, too. He just swaps out his changeup for the slider. That’s a sensible substitution, but it’s lost in a pleonasm of stuff he’s trying. Let’s figure out what really needs to be done here.

The first thing to decide is whether Assad can command both his sinker and his fastball, even if they’re used very sparingly. If so, then he should keep both, but they each need to be siloed. The sinker should be his fastball against righties, but never show up when he faces lefties. Against them, it’s not a useful pitch in any way. The four-seamer could work against righties, too, but not as part of the best arsenal we can build for him when facing them. Obviously, then, if Assad can’t sustain fastball command for both pitches, he should just junk the sinker and evolve into a four-seam guy.

The cutter is as unhelpful a pitch for him against righties as the sinker is against lefties. The hard-hit Brian Anderson single that started the rolling snowball on Saturday came on a cutter that badly missed its target and ended up thigh-high on the inner third. There’s too much risk of mistakes just like that one with the cutter, and too little upside, especially because Assad has a slider now that is a much better fit.

The rightmost dot on this scatter plot shows the increased horizontal (and vertical) movement on the slider Assad has shown this year. With that much depth on that pitch, it should become his secondary weapon against righties, whether he sticks with the sinker or focuses on the four-seam heat. Both fastballs better set up the slider than the cutter to a righty.

That goes double for however long Assad is a reliever, be it a one-inning guy or a long man. His attempt to bring this varied repertoire with him to the bullpen misses a crucial fact of relief work, which is that the replacement level for strikeout rate there is higher. The stakes are higher, too, so a little bit of mediocre contact can kill you–as it did, in part, on Saturday, when Jesse Winker’s single found its way to the outfield and tied the score. 

In order to be a valuable reliever in the modern game, one needs to strike out at least 25 percent of opponents. The best way for Assad to do that is to go with his sinker and slider against righties (occasionally breaking out his four-seamer to attack the top of the zone with two strikes, if he can hone his control to that target), and to mix his four-seamer, cutter, and changeup against lefties, with a curveball every now and then to change their eye level and disrupt their timing. 

These are subtle changes. The most extreme would be throwing the slider as much as he should against righties, and even that would just be in replacement of the cutter. Assad has done the big things already. To cross the line between fringy arm and serious contributor, though, he has to get the small things right. 

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[Bertz]

Yeah Assad definitely needs to do some pruning, which should hopefully help whatever pitches he keeps.

It'll be interesting to see where his pitches net out with the newfound velocity.  Last year the pitch modeling data at Fangraphs said that he had 5 below average but playable pitches, and then a garbage change up.  The very preliminary data on Saturday likes the slider and sinker as above average pitches now, but gave everything else only a modest bump.  This data breaks out of the small sample size shackles really quickly, but I'd still probably like to see him get 10ish innings under his belt before making any sweeping judgements.  My inkling though is to dump the cutter and the change.

[Hairyducked Idiot]

It's just one game, but what I saw was a guy who had no idea where his pitches were going.  Even in the clean inning, he left some balls over the plate and put some pitches nowhere near where the glove was set up.

You can give him some time because the stuff was downright unfair, but he needs to figure it out before being given high-leverage innings.