Article: Ben Brown's Fastball is Unique. Is That Good?

[Matthew Trueblood]

Yesterday, we discussed whether the man the Cubs acquired in the David Robertson trade back in 2022 could play an important role out of the team's bullpen in 2024. Today, let's dig a bit deeper into his stuff, to better anchor that conversation to reality.

Image courtesy of © Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

The good news is that Ben Brown has a genuinely unique fastball. The lanky righthander has a high release point, good velocity, and plenty of movement, and it's particularly unusual to see the combination of the three that he sports. He marries that heater with a bevy of other offerings, including two or three different breaking balls (which ones they are depends on who you ask and when you take your measurements) and a rudimentary changeup.

The bad news, in a sense, is that Brown has a genuinely unique fastball. There are some reasons why most pitchers don't have the combination of characteristics that Brown has on the pitch, and they're not all matters of genetics. In 2023, fewer than half of the fastballs Brown threw were in the strike zone, which would have been in the lowest 16 percent of MLB for fastball zone rate. It's easy to dismiss that as more of an item to check off his developmental checklist--firm up fastball command--than a problem with the way he throws, but realistically, those characteristics help drive the difficulty he has with landing the pitch in the zone. 

Brown releases the ball from about 6.75 feet above the ground, even coming down the mound as he delivers. Only a fistful of pitchers release their fastball higher, and doing so creates some problems for the hitter. By general acclaim, Jordan Montgomery's similarly high release point is part of what makes him so tough to pick up. The same is true of Blake Snell, Pete Fairbanks, and Justin Verlander. However, throwing from that high forces a pitcher to steer the ball downhill rather steeply. Teams have fallen in love with Vertical Approach Angle (VAA) over the last few years as a way of better evaluating fastball movement. Those who prize that often prefer lower release points, because they tend to lead to flatter fastballs at the top of the zone. Guys like Paul Sewald and Jose Cuas miss more bats with their fastballs because their arm angles scream sink, so their riding fastballs seem to hop over swings.

Operating at extremes is a good thing, in this regard. It's ok that Brown's VAA will never be especially impressive, because by using such a high release, he produces a different, harder-to-quantify but equally real source of deception. The problem is that that release point also creates a related but separate issue: it's hard to throw strikes with a pitch that wants to rise and run, from that high off the ground. Hence Brown's difficulty filling up the zone with the heater, and his inflated walk totals in Iowa last year.

Then there's the matter of the movement he generates, itself. Most hurlers with such high release points stay behind the ball and spin it so well that it resists gravity more en route to the plate than Brown's does. Of those with similar slots, the only ones whose movement numbers are similar to Brown's are lefties who don't throw nearly as hard as he does: Austin Gomber, Will Smith, and Brandon Williamson. Brown's height plays into this. He gets more armside movement on his pitch, for instance, because throwing from that height doesn't require him to come over the top as much as it does for others. His arm slot isn't quite as high as you'd think, given the raw release point. Again, that makes him unique, and uniqueness is good.

It'll only matter, though, if he can harness that uniqueness and operationalize it for use at the highest level of the sport. He got whiffs on an encouraging percentage of swings with the fastball in Triple A in 2023, but translating that to MLB requires him to keep working hard to improve. He has to be in the zone more, so that he can get the same whiff rate on swings while inducing more swings, and being in the zone will be vital to getting the chases he needs to make the breaking stuff play up the way it should. 

All of the above makes using him as an MLB reliever in 2024 even more interesting. First of all, because this unique fastball gives him some funk that should lend him effectiveness in a limited role, he can contribute there while he works on polishing his game. Secondly, working with Tommy Hottovy and the team's big-league coaching staff throughout the year is likely to give him the best possible chance to solve this riddle. Thirdly, the (likely tough) feedback provided by big-league hitters might help him understand the depth of needed adjustments. Finally, though, he could also make sure that whatever changes he does make are friendly to the effectiveness of the rest of his repertoire. 

Brown might be limited to a bullpen role forever, because of this unique but problematic fastball. His best chance to avoid that fate, though, is probably to get some time as an apprentice in relief, the better to figure out how he could work as a starter before facing the real challenge of doing that at the highest level.

Let's kick this subject around some more. Let us know what you've seen from Brown's fastball, or just weigh in on his rightful place in a much more crowded Cubs pitching hierarchy than we've been accustomed to in the last half-decade or so.

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[Jason Ross]

Yeah, unlike Cade Horton, I like the BP to SP route for Ben Brown. I want to see him continue to work as a SP in AAA to start the season (injuries happen and having him stretched won't be bad). But perhaps come around TDL, final two months, adding him to the MLB bullpen would be a good thing. You let him work on the fastball at the MLB level in short stints; creates positive feedback loops with less time for it to go off the rails. His fastball-breaking ball (you're spot on, his breaking balls, between his curve and his slider just don't have a ton of separation at times, which is both almost a good thing and a bad thing because he can mess around with it's shape as he pleases but also they're not clearly identifiably different from a velocity standpoint) would work great in the pen, as well.

I like Brown as a 2025 SP option, where as Horton should be in the MLB rotation at some point mid-summer at the very least.

[craig]

Brown and Hodge are both fascinating.  I'd like to keep them both and see if they can improve.  Two guys with stuff that could be mainstays in Cubs pitching group over their team-controlled years. 

I'd assume they'd have appeal in trade.  In hypothetical Tampa/Glasnow talks, for example, Tampa is supposedly interested in young pitching.  I suspect other smart organizations see Cubs wildmen and figure they can get more control out of them than can the Cubs development system?  Cubs infrastructure has shown no capacity to help control, but I assume some better systems are confident they have developmental ideas for control-refinement that the Cubs just don't know how to do?  Might be a  kindness by the Cubs to trade kids to somewhere else that can better help them?   

Brown's BB-rate spiked up from 3.2 and 3.4 in A+/AA to 6.3 at Iowa.  I'd like to think the jump reflects some random flukiness, and that perhaps coming back with a reset and a rested healthy arm, that it won't stay so bad?  The delivery probably does make make fastball-command harder than average, but his walk rates below AAA don't seem hopelessly bad.   

Hodge has jumped from 4.7 (Myrtle) to 3.6 (South Bend) to 5.5 (Tennessee).  Obviously it only went from bad to worse in relief, and was worse at end-of-season than at beginning, so the relief thing didn't show any hint of reducing the control problems.  (A theory is that in relief a guy will sometimes improve his control by just throwing his best 2-3 pitches, rather than working on his worst and wildest pitches.).  At South Bend, his control wasn't awful; lots of guys who had 3.6 in A-ball improve and aren't wildmen in the majors.  We shall see.  But yeah, perhaps some other team can see ways to help him that the Cubs can't see or do, and he'd be better off in a new place with some fresh ideas? 

Hopefully just some regression to the mean, some improved focus, perhaps some mechanical tweaks will help him to get past the control problems and he'll have a strong season and strong career moving forward.  

 

[craig]

With Breslow out, I wonder if the Cubs have added any new coaches to the pitching?  Or if Jacobsen has any new ideas to implement that Breslow maybe didn't prioritize?  

Obviously part of the walk thing is just decision as to how willing you are to throw more strikes and allow more contact. Every pitcher (and coach) is always deciding between challenge-and-nibble.  If you can't throw fastballs for strikes, obviously that's trouble.  But I wonder if Brown and Hodge might need to adjust a little bit in the "challenge" direction?