Article: Tonight, Ben Brown Brings His Death Ball to the Starting Rotation

[Matthew Trueblood]

With two of the veterans on whom they were relying heavily to bear the innings load in the starting rotation shelved, the Chicago Cubs turn to a rookie Tuesday night in need of something great. With a lively fastball and a newfangled Death Ball, he's ready to answer that call.

Image courtesy of © David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

In his first big-league appearance, Ben Brown wasn't quite ready for the robustness of the Texas Rangers, and to spare the rest of the Cubs' bullpen, Craig Counsell had to let his rookie wear it. Brown got his revenge in his sensational stint against the Rockies Wednesday night, though, and now, he'll be asked to take a full-fledged start against the San Diego Padres. That offense is closer to being the Rangers than it is to being the Rockies, and he'll be pitching in front of a hostile crowd again, but Brown's stuff is good enough to give Cubs fans some reason for optimism, anyway. Let's talk about it a little bit.

Firstly, Brown throws hard, and he uses his tall, lanky frame well. His heater sits 96 and touches 98, and his extension lets both those figures play up a tick when he's going well. His delivery is more downhill than the low-release, flat-vertical approach angle (VAA) mixture that makes (for instance) Shota Imanaga's heater special, but he still gets good enough carry and a bit of armside run on it to make it more than a mere exercise in arm strength. 

It's Brown's curveball, though, that makes him fascinating, and that gives him upside as either a mid-rotation starter or a downright dominant reliever this season. Almost no one in baseball throws a harder curveball than Brown, but he doesn't have exceptional raw movement or a high spin rate on the pitch. How, then, did he get 10 whiffs on 18 swings and five more called strikes on 35 total curves thrown in his first two big-league games?

Fastballs are, in part, about VAA. Curveballs, more often, are about VRA: vertical release angle. Brown's is special, and it's what makes his curve work. If you've heard anything this spring about the Death Ball (a definitely not new but somewhat reimagined short, overhand curve becoming popular among high-arm slot pitchers who don't supinate well enough for more traditional breaking balls to work well), what you've been hearing about is what Brown is throwing.

Vertical release angle is what it sounds like. When the ball comes off a pitcher's fingertips, is it rising, falling, or going straight? Much of this is a function of pitch type, because how you release the ball depends on which pitch you're throwing: how you've gripped it, how you're turning your fingers, wrist, and/or forearm as you reach the release point, and where you want it to end up. Perhaps counterintuitively, most curveballs have a positive (that is, upward) VRA, because when most pitchers throw a curve, they're getting around the ball and trying to create topspin. To do that, they often hump it up a little, rolling it over their fingers. This is why you hear batters talk about looking for the hump of a curve. They can recognize it, sometimes, by noticing when the ball goes up slightly out of the hand, more so than it does when a pitcher throws a fastball (wherein the fingers stay behind the ball to create backspin).

Last month at Brewer Fanatic, I wrote about Trevor Megill, a one-time Cub who has found success after landing in the Milwaukee bullpen. Part of what makes him special is that his curveball has a negative VRA. In other words, he gets over the top of it and steers the ball downhill, without creating that hump out of the hand. It adds to the deception of that pitch, and Megill (like Brown) doesn't need much more than that, because he throws so hard that he compresses the time the batter might otherwise have to recognize the pitch and make a decision about whether and/or how to swing at it.

The key statistical takeaway is a simple one: VRA correlates pretty strongly (and negatively) with whiff rate on the curveball. If you want batters to whiff on your hook, make it go downward right out of your hand. No one in baseball--no one--does that better than Brown.

I've highlighted Brown here, but also three other pitchers, because comparing him to each of them will help us better understand his curveball--and perhaps, curves in general. To do so, let's take a look at them one at a time. Using Statcast data from Baseball Savant, we can look at the flight path of all of a hurler's pitches from any given outing, from a variety of angles. For ease of comparison and power of illustration, I've chosen the third-base side view, and I've selected the option to show estimated "recognition" and "commitment" points for the batter. Those are the positions the ball reaches in flight at which the batter can first easily recognize a pitch and at which he has to have committed to his swing, respectively. 

First, let's look at Jordan Montgomery, whom the Cubs should have signed this winter, but who instead signed a bargain-basement deal with the Diamondbacks on the eve of Opening Day. He's the face you see blown up nearest to Montgomery; he throws the trendy new Death Ball. This is his start against those same Arizona batters, in the World Series last fall.

There are mild complications here, because Montgomery (like each of the other pitchers to whom we'll compare Brown, but unlike Brown himself, at this stage of his development) has more than two pitches that are essential to his arsenal, but we can safely paint in broad strokes here. The single green cluster is, of course, Montgomery's release points. The white clusters a bit to their right are the positions of those pitches at the batter's recognition point. As you'd intuit, the fastballs are the ones closer to the plate. His changeup is the lower portion of the cluster closer to the mound. The pitch is on plane with his fastball at that stage, but behind it, because it's moving slower.

The commitment points are the looser pink clusters nearer to home, and here, you have to think backward. The decision point is calculated not in time since release by the pitcher, but in time until the ball reaches the plate, so the fastballs are now the cluster farthest from home and the curves are the ones closest to it. His changeups are the strip in the middle of the two. Positionally, the fastball and curve still aren't consistently distinct, and the batter has only been able to tell one from another if he's spotted a difference in either spin or angle.

Montgomery's curve works because of that deception. Neither its movement nor its spin are exceptional; it just looks a lot like the fastball.

Ok, let's study someone who uses their curve to great effect, but gets there very differently. Here's Yoshinobu Yamamoto's start against the Cubs this weekend.

There's considerably more separation, in terms of vertical position, between Yamamoto's fastball and his curveball when they reach the recognition point. It persists even through the commitment point. That's a key part of his curve's effectiveness, though, because unlike those of Montgomery and Brown, he has a curve with sub-80 MPH velocity and a ton of spin, generating downward movement. By the time it reaches the plate, the curve bends below the path of most of his fastballs, but that movement comes late. It's the way it forces the batter to adjust to such a steep entry to the zone (and the attendant velocity separation) that makes his curve work.

Alec Marsh, of the Royals, has a curveball that doesn't really work, and that's because it doesn't possess either exceptional spin and movement or especially good deception. Here's his latest outing, against the White Sox.

The tight clustering at each measurement point might seem like it would generate deception, but there's not enough of a separation there for the deception to matter. Marsh doesn't throw as hard as Yamamoto (let alone Brown), and his fastball doesn't have as much carry as Brown's does. Also, though we can't read well it from this angle, there's a huge horizontal differential between his fastball and his hook. His curve is a two-plane operation, which is sometimes good, but which works better if it's either thrown harder than his is or has that match of VRA to the fastball. At that point, it's more slider than curve. The Death Ball and the Yamamoto big breaker work by achieving extremes. Marsh's is in the unhappy medium.

Ok, enough faffing around. Here's Brown himself, on the night when he flummoxed the Rockies.

The downward angle of the curve out of his hand makes it look like it's on the same plane as the fastball, even though most of his curves are still a bit higher than his fastballs when they reach that recognition point and enter the decision zone. By the point when a batter has to commit, they have virtually no hints based on location, as you can see by the way those pink clusters align with each other. They have no hints based on spin or tilt, either. Again, it's hidden from us, but the verticality of Brown's curve makes it much harder to see a difference from the fastball.

He mirrors the spin of the fastball with the curve--that is, one pitch spins almost exactly the opposite way as the other, on the same axis, and hitters see the seams form the same blur pattern in either case. This is Montgomery, but at 96+, rather than 93. He doesn't generate the same depth with the curve or have great spin on it like Yamamoto. He has a slider-like gap between fastball velocity and curveball velocity, without the slider's horizontal sweep. Yet, the pitch is devastating. It's all about deception, just as it is for Montgomery, but this helping of deception comes with extra spice.

Now, Brown has yet to show command commensurate to Montgomery's. He doesn't have the third and fourth pitch that let Montgomery utilize his stuff so well. He's not as good as Montgomery is, at this moment. With electric heat and a Death Ball every bit as devastating as Montgomery's, though, he has major upside in any role, in the short term. Starting Tuesday night, Cubs fans will get to find out whether he can make it work as a starter, continuing to fool hitters with the fastball and the Death Ball as he goes a second and third time through the order.

Research assistance provided by TruMedia.

View full article

[BigbadB]

Why is it a hostile crowd? 

[We Got The Whole 9]

Great pick by Busch 

[Guest234]

Deathball? - this might be excessive hype.