Article: How Much of a Two-Pitch Pitcher Is Justin Steele, Exactly?

[Matthew Trueblood]

The ace of the 2023 Chicago Cubs makes just his second start of 2024 (and, hopefully, his first full one) Monday night. Will we see him use his full arsenal? And what, exactly, does answering that question entail?

Image courtesy of © Lily Smith/The Register / USA TODAY NETWORK

By and large, Justin Steele is a two-pitch pitcher. He has a fastball (a cutter, really, but some sources label it as a four-seamer), and he has a slider, and those two offerings account for nearly 97 percent of all the pitches he throws. The tendency, when analyzing pitchers who lean so heavily on a set of offerings, is to dismiss the remainders as inconsequential. In some senses, it's a reasonable stance.

In his rehab outing at Triple-A Iowa Wednesday, though, Steele threw three sinkers and five changeups. That would have qualified as heavy usage of those pitches in any start for him last year. Maybe we should pause for a moment and take a harder look at how he uses those two pitches, to figure out when, why, and whether they matter more than we think.

We're still setting aside Steele's curveball, here. He only threw that pitch 18 times last year, and it's not a good one. Nor does it have any clear utility. As it turns out, though, the same can't be said of the sinker and change. Though those appear rarely, when they do, it's clear what Steele is trying to do with them--and they work pretty well, all things considered.

In total, Steele threw 48 sinkers and 28 changeups last season. Of the changeups, he threw three to each of the following: Nolan Arenado, Paul Goldschmidt, and Bryan Reynolds. Of the sinkers, he threw two to Bryce Harper, three to Luis Arraez, four to Christian Yelich, and five to Corbin Carroll. Those are cherrypicked names, but not the only examples. Steele disproportionately throws these two pitches to good hitters. 

All three of the sinkers Arraez saw were in Steele's start against the Marlins last May 5, the second straight turn in which he faced that team. Later in the season, when he also faced the Diamondbacks on a second consecutive turn, he threw a total of seven sinkers and changeups.

We can start to articulate a theory of usage for these ancillary offerings, based on the above. Steele almost never shows an average or worse hitter either of these pitches; he feels he can beat them with the cutter and the slider. Occasionally, if he thinks they've picked up on something or they've just had a lot of looks at him in a short period, he'll slip those pitches in against such a hitter, but he mostly reserves them for very good hitters whom he needs to catch by surprise, or whose bat paths spell danger for his main offerings.

Twenty-four of the 28 changeups he threw came the second, third, or fourth time through the lineup. The sinker usage was more balanced in this regard. Unlike the changeup, which is all about just forcing the hitter to see and adjust to something new, the sinker is also about getting inside, where Steele is more comfortable pitching.

As you'd expect of offerings that are designed to catch hitters by surprise (but in which Steele doesn't actually have very much confidence), he uses them mostly early in counts, although late in games.

Over two-thirds of the sinkers and changes he threw were in 0-0, 0-1, or 1-1 counts. Steele was rarely trying to put anyone away with the sinker or the change. What he wanted was either weak, early contact or a stolen strike, plus the small but nonzero value of putting another pitch in the hitter's mind. He doesn't throw these enough to have hitters thinking about them in most situations, and they aren't good enough offerings to dominate in a vacuum, but they can create some situation-specific uncertainty.

Given these parameters--he mostly threw the offerings against good hitters, the second and third time through the order or when they'd seen him less than a week before, in neutral counts--the results against them are pretty respectable. Batters hit .294/.333/.353 against his changeup and sinker, when plate appearances ended on them. Overall, he got 24 strikes that weren't balls in play, threw 37 balls, and allowed 15 batted balls. The average launch angle on those 15 batted balls was -7 degrees, and only five of the 15 were hit at least 95 miles per hour. In context, that counts as success.

I think it's fair to say that, while Steele still relies on two pitches, there's more to his repertoire than that. In tough situations, when the circumstances make it unlikely that he can continue dominating with the cutter and the slider, he does turn to those marginal extras, and it works well enough to get some key outs. It might be more important than we realized to have the odd trick in one's back pocket, for such moments, even if the pitches aren't good enough to be bigger parts of a hurler's mix. As Steele returns to the Cubs rotation, keep an eye out for his third and fourth pitches as contests unfold.

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