Braves’ Max Fried, Phillies’ Zack Wheeler Remain Sinker Royalty

The Super Bowl is behind us and spring training camps are opening, so it’s time to take a final look back at last season with my annual “Best Pitches” series.

Let’s continue to go pitch by pitch through the arsenals of all starting pitchers who threw 135 or more innings last season and determine the game’s best – and worst – offerings. The main inputs are pitchers’ bat-missing and contact management results. Each pitch is compared to league average swing-and-miss rates and pitch-specific Adjusted Contact Scores.

Adjusted Contact Score is, on a scale where 100 equals MLB average and the lower the number the better, the relative production a pitcher “should have” allowed based on the exit speed/launch angle mix of every batted ball yielded. An average pitch gets a “B’”, and a sliding scale is applied to each pitcher’s results to approximate a bell curve.

We’ve already covered changeups, curves, cutters, splitters and four-seam fastballs. Today, it’s sinkers. Next to its cousin, the four-seamer, the sinker is the least effective pitch in the game. Sinkers have the lowest pitch-specific whiff rate (5.6%) by far, and and are better than only four-seamers (115.4 Adjusted Contact Score) with regard to contact management (97.8). Pitchers who dominate with either their four-seamer or sinker, however, tend to have staying power. 50 pitchers qualified for this list, with six receiving either “A+” or “A” grades. The two pitchers noted in the headline above got “A+” sinker grades in both 2021 and 2022.

LHP Max Fried – A+ – (76 Adj. Contact Score, 9.1% Whiff Rate) – The Braves’ lefty excelled at both bat-missing and contact management with his sinker, finishing 3rd in both disciplines among qualifiers. Fried’s sinker was a prolific grounder generator – he posted a 62.5% grounder rate, well above the overall qualifier average of 48.3%.

Fried’s 2021 contact management (71 Adjusted Contact Score) and bat-missing (9.6%) measurables were almost identical to his 2022 marks, hence the repeat “A+” grade. His average sinker velocity (93.5 mph) was middle-of-the-pack, but its average spin rate (2036 rpm) and horizontal (6.2 in.) and vertical (4.8 in.) were all on the low end. Both his changeup and curve also received “A” grades, which may be a reason why he threw his sinker only 13.2% of the time.

RHP Zack Wheeler – A+ – (63 Adj. Contact Score, 8.7% Whiff Rate) – Talk about a track record – this was the fourth time in the last five seasons that Wheeler’s sinker received an “A+” grade. In 2019, it received a “B+”. It recorded the best pitch-specific contact management and 4th best bat-missing performance among sinkers in 2022. Over the years, he’s posted a sinker Adjusted Contact Score as low as 53 in 2018 and a whiff rate as high as 8.9% in 2021.

Like Fried, Wheeler induced a ton of grounders (56.4% grounder rate) with his sinker, and he also did an expert job of muffling fly ball authority (67 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score, best among qualifiers). Wheeler throws his sinker hard (95.6 mph) and with plenty of spin (2225 rpm) and horizontal (9.1 in.) movement. Also like Fried, Wheeler doesn’t throw his sinker all that often (17.6% usage rate).

The Other Star Pupils – Sean Manaea’s sinker receives an “A” and deserves special mention for a couple of reasons. First, he threw it an amazing 60.9% of the time, the most among all qualifiers. Second, he generates a fairly unique batted ball mix with the pitch. His pitch-specific grounder rate was very low at 31.8%, and his pop up rate very high at 16.3%, way above the qualifier average of 6.0%.

Our third “A+” grade recipient is Pablo Lopez, recently traded to the Twins. His 11.8% sinker whiff rate was best among qualifiers, and he generated a strong 55.4% grounder rate with the pitch while throwing it even less (8.1%) than either Fried or Wheeler. He also received an “A” grade for his sinker back in 2020.

The other two “A” grade recipients are Kyle Wright and Alek Manoah. Wright’s pitch-specific grounder rate of 60.0% was very high, and he managed fly ball authority (53 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score) quite well. But not as well as Manoah, whose 38 Adjusted Fly Ball Contact Score was the very best among qualifiers.

Just Missed: 9 more pitchers received “B+” grades for their four-seamers in 2022: Marcus Stroman, Chris Bassitt, Carlos Carrasco, Jordan Montgomery, Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Sandy Alcantara, Jameson Taillon and Miles Mikolas. Among that group, Carrasco, Montgomery and Darvish were the best bat-missers, Stroman, Bassitt, Musgrove, Alcantara, Taillon and Mikolas the best contact managers, and Stroman, Bassitt and Montgomery threw their sinkers most often.

The Worst Sinkers: Only two qualifying pitchers received grades below “C”; Chad Kuhl got a “D+” and Adam Wainwright a “D”. Kuhl’s 138 Adjusted Contact Score was second worst among all qualifiers, while Wainwright’s 139 Adjusted Contact Score (worst) and 2.5% whiff rate (second worst) were both at or near the bottom of the pile.

2021 “A” Grade Recipients: We’ve already discussed Wheeler, Fried and Alcantara. Jordan Lyles dropped from an “A” (75 Adjusted Contact Score, 7.5% whiff rate) in 2021 to a “B” (119, 7.7%) in 2022, and Lance Lynn did not pitch enough innings to qualify this past season.

Overall, the best 2022 sinkers (except for Sean Manaea’s) induced a whole bunch of grounders and generated a significant amount of horizontal movement while their average velocities and spin rates were varied. Here is a table with all of 2022 qualifiers’ sinker grades.

I’ll be off the grid for the balance of February but will return in early March to complete the Best Pitches series with sliders and Starting Pitcher Grade-Point Averages, which tie all of this together.