Miguel Amaya Calls Fewer Breaking Balls Than Any Other Catcher in Baseball

[Matthew Trueblood]

Ben Brown spun seven no-hit innings Tuesday night in Milwaukee, with 10 strikeouts. His fastball and his sharp curve were both at their best, but he threw the fastball about two-thirds of the time. Why? For part of the answer, look behind the plate.

Image courtesy of © David Dermer-USA TODAY Sports

The Cubs are one of the most fastball-forward pitching staffs in baseball. That's been true for a while now, as the game tends toward the bends and sweeps of breaking balls and toward elite velocity. Sometimes to their benefit, and sometimes to their detriment, the Cubs have resisted that patterned evolution, preferring what can only be called an old-school approach--even as they embrace new-school ways to optimize pitcher development and performance.

Pitch selection is, of course, only partially the result of organizational prerogatives. It's also about what a pitcher actually throws, and is comfortable throwing in a particular situation. Organizations decide which pitchers to acquire, and what pitches to try to foster for them, and they provide gameplans and guidance based on scouting reports on the opposing team. At some point, though, the choice about which pitches to throw gets made by the men on the field, and specifically, it's often made by the catcher.

Some teams take such a firm hand in their gameplanning (and the execution thereof) that their catchers call more or less the same game, controlling for the pitcher and the opponent. In the Cubs' case, however, there's an interesting divergence. Yan Gomes isn't exactly starting every at-bat with the slider, but he's much more normal in his mix between fastball and breakers than is the team's younger, more frequent backstop, Miguel Amaya.

There's a natural distortion here, stemming from the fact that many of the Cubs' pitchers have an offspeed pitch (rather than a breaking ball) as their chief non-fastball offering. Shota Imanaga, Kyle Hendricks, Mark Leiter Jr., and Héctor Neris all lean on changeups or splitters for the same things most pitchers use breaking balls to do, so it makes sense that the Cubs' catchers would receive fewer breaking balls than anyone else in the league. The daylight between the two, however, indicates a real (if smallish) difference in the way they approach at-bats and utilize pitchers' arsenals.

Ben Brown's fastball was sizzling Tuesday night. Even against a Brewers offense that does great work against top-end velocity, he was overpowering, and Amaya made a pretty simple decision: they would ride that pitch all night. Brown threw 25 fastballs and nine curves the first time through the Milwaukee order. He threw 24 heaters and 11 curves the second time through. Only the third time did he shift to an even 12-12 mix of the two pitches, before leaving the game after 93 pitches in seven frames. The pattern was similar (though exaggerated in its deployment) to the one he used against the Mets back at the beginning of the month, before his sojourn in the bullpen. The strategy Amaya and Brown were deploying was the same as the one Gomes and Brown used then: keep the curveball in mind but out of sight, for the most part, the first two times. That way, the third time, the secondary pitch can have a greater effect when it gets ratcheted up.

Tellingly, though, Amaya was even more extreme in his execution of that plan than Amaya was. Again, they won't call radically different games, especially when working with pitchers like Brown, who have fairly limited arsenals. Yet, one or two calls that differ can both explain the difference between the two statistically--and matter a great deal. There's not a clearly right and wrong approach, between the two, but there are different implications to the choices they make, even if each of those choices feels small.

Getting a strikeout one pitch sooner, rather than having to deal with a foul ball and then exposing the opposing batter to the curve earlier than you wanted. Giving up a key hit because you went to the well with the heater one time too many. Each set of marginal choices comes with different potential costs and benefits, and Amaya and Gomes weigh those costs and benefits differently.

To speak generally, I think Amaya needs to call non-fastballs more often, including and especially breaking balls from pitchers who have good ones. If and when Cade Horton joins this team, he needs to be using his slider fairly frequently, for instance. Right now, the young backstop is doing a fine job of handling a pitching staff that is thriving, but he's pushing toward an extreme in catcher approach that comes with some unwelcome risks--like the fastball that catches too much of the zone in a hitter's count and gets swatted over the wall.

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[CandidCubs]

This is stark enough that this can't be execution of a gameplan. I would assume Amaya is not making such decisions in a vacuum in 2024, given his age and experience. However, things like this do worry me. If this is evident, then teams will pick up on this approach dependent on the pitcher. 

Also, interested if there is data for the Catchers in the Brewer's organization under Counsell that shows similar approach. Is this an organization shift brought by counsel, or is this catcher related?

[Transmogrified Tiger]

Out of curiosity, do we know what the spread between Gomes and Amaya was in 2023?