Ben Brown Moving to Short(er) Relief Offers Biggest Upgrade Left for Cubs Pitching Staff

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © David Banks-Imagn Images

Although he made one mistake too many and gave up a back-breaking three-run home run Tuesday night, Javier Assad looked much the way he has for most of his big-league career. That was encouraging, because although he does it in a style somewhat nervous-making and uncommon in the modern game—scattering hits and walks even when he's having success, keeping runners off of home plate but not always off of any of the other bases—Assad has been a very effective pitcher over the years. Assad is up to 298 career innings, with a 3.47 ERA.

On the other hand, the man who relieved him in the Cubs' series-opening loss to the Blue Jays has a 5.04 ERA, in barely half as much big-league time. It's too soon to give up on Ben Brown (who, after all, pitched four innings of one-run ball in relief of Assad), but not too early to start planning his move to short relief. In fact, with Jameson Taillon slated to return either this weekend or during next week's five-game, four-day fight with the division-leading Brewers, Brown should be ticketed for that role as soon as possible.

It's not just that he has only two reliable pitches. That's never ideal, for a starter, and Brown's changeup has been so lousy that he truly is a two-pitch guy, but other pitchers do survive with that particular limitation. Rather, the problem with Brown—the reason he's been crushed this season, and why he needs to move away from starting games and pacing himself—is that his two-pitch combo only plays up when they're each thrown in the upper ends of the velocity ranges he can reach with them.

Against the knuckle-curve Brown throws at an average of 87 miles per hour, opponents have a .410 weighted on-base average (wOBA) when the pitch is below 87 and a .240 when it's above 87. Against his fastball (which averages 95.8 mph), they have a .393 wOBA when it's below 97 and a .362 when it's above it. Even the latter differential, which sounds small, is really quite large. Because he's thrown few four-seamers over 97 while working as a starter this year, the sample size there is small, and some batted-ball luck is getting the better of him. He's much better at missing bats when he gets up to 97 or higher, and all 10 of the home runs he's allowed on heaters this year came on pitches under 97.

Part of the issue is that Brown has a relatively straight fastball, so every tick takes on disproportionate importance. Even a pitch without very good movement can avoid getting hit hard if it's in the upper 90s, but anything close to average velocity will get hammered because it's just not visually fooling hitters and they have time to get the barrel to it. However, another factor is location. Here's where the fastballs on which Brown has given up hard contact this year have been located.

That probably doesn't surprise you. Middle-middle fastballs tend to get hit hard, and overwhelmingly, when he's getting hit hard, it's because he's throwing the ball there.

Now, here's where he gets whiffs with the fastball.

Again, nothing counterintuitive, but there was at least a bit of a factor you couldn't guess in advance. High fastballs miss bats, but for some pitchers, it's the ability to locate that high heater to the glove side that makes it work. Not Brown. His whiffs cluster in and above the top, arm-side corner of the zone, on the inner part of the plate to a righty and the outer part to a lefty. To be his best self, he needs to consistently land the fastball there.

Here's where Brown throws his heaters at less than 95 mph this year.

You can easily imagine why these pitches are getting blasted. He's on the right side of the plate more often than not, but a little lower than you'd want. More troublingly, he's also over on the glove side of the dish almost as often, and never above the belly button when he is. That's not going to work, at the lower end of Brown's velocity register. He doesn't have the wiggle or the hop on his heat to live there.

Here's where Brown throws fastballs at 95-96.

The command is a lot better in this range. It seems as though, when you see Brown dip below 95, he's tired and likely to be misfiring altogether, whereas if he's in this 95-96 band, he's merely pacing himself. The location won't make up for the shortcomings in movement, but at least he's not leaving the ball out over the plate.

What about when he's between 96 and 97?

I'm not showing you movement, just location, but it's in this band (when he's starting) where he tends to get the liveliest movement on his heater. That's good, but the inability to stay out of the middle of the plate is bad. In his current role, this is the sweet spot, but you want something more from him—something that combines being hard to hit on a raw stuff basis and landing where he needs it to, in order to get whiffs and avoid barrels.

How about when he's throwing 97 and above?

It's not just velocity that protects his fastball when it's sizzling. The way his arm works when he cuts loose at that level also tends to send the ball sailing a bit, riding and staying on the outer edge to a lefty, and the inner one to a righty.

I'm not even going to waste time showing you where he has the most success and the most trouble with his curve. It's what you'd expect: down and away from a righty good, middle of the plate bad. Here's where his curves land when he throws that pitch less than 87 mph.

And here's where they go when he throws harder than 87.

Night and day.

Now, a couple of factors deserve to be mentioned, so they can also be considered. Firstly, there are reasons why a pitcher might add or subtract consciously, based on intended location, especially with the breaking ball. If you want to steal a strike with a curve when a hitter is hunching on the fastball, bigger (and slower) can be better, for instance. Second, what 97 and above look like from Brown when he's throwing 80 pitches in an outing might be totally different than what they look like when he's throwing 18 of them. His heater might really straighten out on him, in a bad way, when he gets up to 98 or 99.

However, these heatmaps show us something: When Brown works with conviction and finds his best velocity, his pitches tend to end up in favorable places, as well as having more sheer stuff to them. That makes him a superb candidate for the transition to short relief—especially because he hasn't found the success the team was hoping for in his work as a starter.

Shota Imanaga, Matthew Boyd and (when he does re-join the roster) Taillon are locked in as starters for this Cubs team. Assad, Colin Rea and Cade Horton (the latter constrained not by the quality of his appearances but by the fact that the team will manage his workload down the stretch) are all in line for starts, too. Losing Michael Soroka almost right away hurt, but the Cubs still have enough starter options to move Brown to the bullpen for good—a luxury they didn't enjoy until now. Not every struggling starter is a good candidate for the big boosts we sometimes see when pitchers pivot to short relief, but Brown's strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies make him an exceptional one. Given the way his stuff works (and the specific ways it works better when he can crank things up to maximum effort), Brown should be an integral part of the team's bullpen by the time their Wild Card Series matchup rolls around.

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