The Epitome of Effectively Wild, Javier Assad Has Proved His Skill Set Legit

[Matthew Trueblood]

Though he can't be a frontline hurler for a team with serious October aspirations, the Cubs' most unconventional starter is finishing his third big-league season with style, and he's carving himself a place in next year's rotation.

Image courtesy of © Rafael Suanes-Imagn Images

We live in much too strikeout- and walk-obsessed a world for Javier Assad to be a star. He's only fanned 19.6% of the batters he's faced this year, and he's walked 9.9% of them. Those numbers are both markedly worse than the league average. In strikeout rate minus walk rate (an increasingly popular oversimplification of the task of pitching), Assad ranks 110th of the 127 pitchers who have thrown at least 90 innings this year. He's gotten all 26 turns he's been healthy enough to take in the Cubs rotation this year, but part of that is just a product of other players getting hurt--from Jameson Taillon and Justin Steele to Ben Brown and top prospect Cade Horton.

Last year, by contrast, only 10 of Assad's 32 appearances were starts. It took until this spring for the team to figure out that they should even stick with him as a starter, and had they been less afflicted with injuries, they might not have even given him an unfettered start then.

Make no mistake, though: Assad is a legitimate, valuable fourth starter on a good team, or a third-best one on a more stretched unit. His numbers look unsustainable to the saber-trained casual observer, but three partial seasons into his big-league career, he's shown a number of ways to outperform those peripheral stats on an ongoing basis.

How? In short, you could say that Assad is the embodiment of the effectively wild hurler--although in a way that defies stereotypes. When we think of that term, we tend to envision Nolan Ryan, and similar pitchers with so much power on their fastball that they couldn't reliably throw the ball over the plate. Hitters also couldn't figure out where or when to expect the ball, though, so their ample walks and hit batters didn't cost them much.

In the modern game, it's hard to be that kind of effectively wild. To be sure, Assad isn't. He sits mostly in the low 90s with his fastball, though he certainly can touch higher. Rather, he's just an assiduous junkballer non pareil. He doesn't give in, and he doesn't throw anything over the middle unless he feels confident that the opponent is unprepared for it. He works the edges of the zone, and hitters are happy to wait him out, too. Of all pitchers with 60 or more innings pitched this year, Assad ranks second-lowest in opponent swing rate. 

Yet, when hitters do swing, they're not really squaring Assad up--at least not often enough to make up for the number of called strikes they're taking. They only swing at 42.2% of his pitches, but 35.3% of their takes go for strikes looking. The only other pitchers with opponent swing rates under 43.9% and above-average called strike rates are relievers Dylan Floro and David Robertson. Then, they swing, and hitters foul the ball off at a high rate, racking up even more strikes for Assad.

Because he misses so few bats, Assad doesn't convert many of these called strikes or fouls into strikeouts. He does, however, take advantage of hitters' defensiveness once they get behind in the count. He also ratchets up the hitter's frustration.

This is the third year in a row in which Assad is running an ERA just over 3.00 in MLB, albeit in samples of various sizes and in varying roles. Just as importantly, though, his ERA is telling a true tale about his run prevention. Teammates Steele and Shota Imanaga make instructive comparison points. Assad's unearned run average (UERA) is well below average, and has been throughout his career. Steele's is well above average, and has been throughout his career. Imanaga, too, has given up a lot of unearned runs in his first Stateside campaign.

Obviously, the two things are not equal in their impact or predictive value, but if you just add them together and take run average per nine innings, Assad has been one of the 15 best pitchers in baseball this year.

Again, his lack of a typical modern skill set makes everyone prone to doubting him. Assad's FIP is about 1.5 runs worse than his ERA, and many people dismiss him as a swingman or a nice-to-have extra arm, expecting him to come back to that level. Yet, he persistently avoids that. On Saturday, he handled the imposing stars in the Yankees lineup ably, without so much as a blink. It was the kind of start in which some fans keep waiting to see him implode... but he never does. Four starters who have made at least 15 starts this year have yet to have one in which they allow five runs in the first four innings. Assad has done it, but only once in his 26 starts, making him the fifth-least combustible starter in the game.

Now, the chart above also serves as a reminder of one of the two reasons why Assad isn't a No. 1 or No. 2 starter, even if every bit of the hit and run prevention he does with runners on base and his other magic holds up: He doesn't dominate. There aren't days when Assad takes his team out of the game, but there also aren't many in which he takes control of the whole proceeding, getting at least 16 outs and allowing two or fewer runs.

Yet, as the season has unfolded, Assad has earned more of his manager's trust, and begun working deeper into games. One reason is that, as it turns out, hitters don't gain very much from seeing Assad a second or third time. He's one of the best hurlers in the game, in fact, at getting outs with the same efficacy as the lineup card turns over. 

It's really a combination of stuff, command (occasionally at the expense of control; he emphasizes execution over location) and deception that hitters can't cope with. The depth of Assad's arsenal makes him hard to outguess, and his delivery has just enough unpredictability to it to mess with timing. It's why hitters don't swing as much as they should against him, and why they're still figuring him out the third time they see him.

Then, he throws even more wrinkles at them. For most of the season, Assad started on the right side of the pitching rubber, from the pitcher's perspective--closer to third base.

In his last five starts, though, he's slid all the way over to the other side, giving hitters a new look and himself a new angle with which to attack the zone.

He's never going to run a FIP as good as his career ERA to date. His ERA, itself, might swell a bit if he's a full-time starter next year. As unorthodox as he is, though, Assad is a delightful throwback, and a very valuable arm for the Cubs. He's the kind of pitcher you can win with, as long as he's not an indispensable part of the starting plan.

We should get, then, to the other reason why he can't be a frontline starter--and no, it's not the lack of a 26% strikeout rate. Rather, it's the same thing that holds Justin Steele back from the same status. The most important ability in pitching is availability. Assad has had to miss time two years in a row with a balky forearm. He has ways to sustain this seemingly improbable success across a full season of starting work, little though some might be inclined to buy into it. What he doesn't have is the durability to do it over 160 or 180 innings. Instead, he looks likely to consistently contribute 120-140 strong frames. That's helpful, and the Cubs should happily pencil him into their 2025 starting rotation, alongside Steele. However, they also have to figure out how they'll find a player capable of the same or better performances across an extra 50 innings. That's a tall order, and an expensive one to fill, but the team can take some solace in knowing that Assad's presence will compound the value of any ace-level newcomer, just as Steele's and Imanaga's do.

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