How do you define an ace? Is it as simple as the pitcher at the top of the team’s rotation who gets the nod on Opening Day? Is it a pitcher who’s universally seen as great, and you should expect his team to win any time he’s on the mound? Something else? Maybe the label should be given to pitchers who exemplify fearlessness on the mound; the will to challenge any hitter they face and the skill to set them down. We’ve all likely heard someone say that that’s the signature quality, that unflinching mindset. Fittingly, no one embodies it better than MLB’s most dominant pitcher at present, Tarik Skubal. Let’s break down how Skubal pitches and try to put numbers to vibes and explain the “bulldog mentality” scouts covet so much.
A Relentless and Calculated Approach
Let’s start with the basics. The easiest way to identify a pitcher’s aggression and willingness to challenge hitters starts with how often they’re throwing strikes, especially in specific scenarios. On the whole, Skubal lives in the zone. He’s got the third-highest zone rate of any pitcher with at least 250 batters faced so far this season. That’s not enough, though. The two guys above him are Jake Irvin and Miles Mikolas. Throwing pitches in the zone at a high frequency in general doesn’t signify on its own what we’re looking for. It doesn’t account for times where it makes far more sense to throw out of the zone, or the ability to throw in the zone when it would be supremely advantageous to.
Something more telling would be Skubal’s 71.4% first pitch strike rate, good for second in the league behind only Logan Webb. It’s the fifth-highest rate for any season of as many innings as Skubal has so far of the last 10 years, as well. Getting ahead of hitters early is a surefire strategy for success, and Skubal is more than happy to challenge hitters and jockey for leverage. His zone rate on the first pitch of matchups (66.4%) is the highest among starters this year.
Even though he’s perfectly capable of getting hitters to swing out of the zone, he doesn’t always need to. That’s the horrifying thing about him. He has no issue beating hitters no matter where he’s throwing the ball. Keeping the same 250 batters faced qualification, nobody has a higher zone whiff percentage than Skubal this year. It’s not even all that close; his 26.0% mark is comfortably ahead of Zack Wheeler’s 23.9%. Furthermore, they’re the only two above 23%. It takes lowering the qualification to find the only starter with a higher rate, Logan Gilbert at 26.6%, but he’s faced less than half as many batters as Skubal has this season.
Due in part to Skubal’s unyielding attack on the strike zone, hitters are put into swing mode almost from the moment they step into the box. His arsenal also happens to be well-structured to draw chases, and he locates out of the zone better than most with his three main pitches. This all combines for him to lead the league in chase rate as well. There’s no winning against him. He’s going to throw you strikes, so you can’t just sit back and wait for your pitch. He spends more time ahead in the count than any other starter; 39.1% of all of his pitches have come in counts with more strikes than balls. If by some miracle you find yourself ahead in the count (unlikely, he also has the lowest percentage of pitches in counts with more balls than strikes), odds are he’s going to be working to rectify that. In those counts, Skubal throws his next pitch in the zone 65.6% (T-7th among starters) of the time.
Again, to set the scenario: these are pitches that hitters are likely geared up to swing at. These are their best opportunities to get something to hit. His whiff rate on these pitches in the zone in counts he’s fallen behind in is higher than his overall zone whiff rate. Not only that, even if a hitter does make contact, they don’t do anything with it. He’s allowed just one lonely barrel on all of those pitches. Adding to this is that he doesn’t seem to suffer pitch decay as at-bats go on longer and hitters see more of him. That one aforementioned barrel in a 3-1 count is the only time he’s allowed one any later than the third pitch into a matchup. Maybe the only chance a hitter stands against him is with an ambush. Getting ahead in the count doesn’t seem to do anything for them anyway.
If being an ace is defined by throwing your best stuff regardless of the count and trusting that it will get the job done, Skubal fits the categorization perfectly. The mindset is great, but without the skill to go with it, it could get you in more trouble than anything else. I frequently preach that pitchers should be less aggressive, that they aren’t as good as they think they are. Throwing pitches out of the zone for chases is less risky than giving hitters something they can work with. This general philosophy does not apply to Skubal, despite his arsenal not being traditionally oriented toward contact management, the more common reason to ignore it. Let’s talk a bit about why it works for him anyway.
A Blistering Mix
Probably the first thing that stands out about Skubal when you watch him pitch (after his wild high kick windup) is how hard he throws. There aren’t many lefties that throw that hard as starters, or in general. High velocity from lefties tends to play up better than it does for righties, mostly on account of it being uncommon and hitters being less used to it. What works even more in Skubal’s favor is that his 4-seam shape is solid. It’s not elite movement, but it’s not bad either. At that velocity, an average shape is more than enough to singe the eyebrows off a hitter as it goes by. He improved his fastball shape from last season as well. Along with throwing harder, he started cutting it a bit, getting more vertical movement by pushing it in a direction further up the axis.
His changeup is his most-used pitch, and it might be the single-most dominant pitch in the game right now. With 9 mph of velocity separation, 10” of IVB separation, and a spin axis within 60 minutes of the 4-seam, it meets several qualifiers I have for what makes a good changeup. They aren’t hard and fast rules, but generally speaking, the more of them I can check off, the better the pitch is. The shape of his changeup is devastating, and his being a lefty pushes it into a category where it doesn’t matter that he doesn’t sell it perfectly with his release. Even with his high zone rate with this pitch, it’s untouchable. It has more than double the SwStr% of the average starter’s changeup. It gets more swings than takes when it’s out of the zone. There is nothing a hitter can do when he throws this pitch beyond hope for the best.
Skubal’s sinker is a bit of an oddity. Its shape, in a vacuum, is terrible. Even from his high slot and release, a sinker with just a foot of horizontal movement and more vertical than horizontal should not work anywhere as near as well as his does. It survives mostly on its velocity, and it looking like the 4-seam out of his hand. It only has 3.3” of IVB separation from the 4-seam, which is kind of awful. Honestly, it feels weird to be saying anything negative about Skubal as a pitcher. I’m pleased to report that I can stop doing that now. The sinker performs like a much better-looking pitch. It doesn’t always get ground balls like you would expect a sinker to, but it does draw non-threatening contact. Also, because it’s a 97.3 mph fastball from a lefty that doesn’t sink like you’d expect from the name, it still runs solid whiff rates. It has a higher SwStr% than the average starter’s 4-seamer.
Skubal’s slider makes me chuckle a bit when I look at its data. On paper, it’s got a great shape. It’s thrown hard at 89.6 mph, with solid depth from a high release, and straight gyro movement. For most pitchers, this would be an at-bat-ending weapon. Skubal doesn’t have the best command of it, though, so he zones it as much as he can and goes for called strikes. Yes, the 88-92 mph nasty gyro slider he throws is something he tosses in sometimes to steal a strike. That’s something you can do when everything in your arsenal is hard to hit.
Lastly, he has a low-80s gyro curve that’s entirely a once-in-a-blue-moon pitch against righties who will buckle at the sight of a pitch less than 85 mph, given everything else they’re seeing. It’s mostly an afterthought.
You wouldn’t normally expect a pitcher who throws a 4-seam and changeup as 58% of his pitches to be good at suppressing contact. I think it’s fair to say Skubal isn’t elite at this one facet of pitching, but he’s still quite good at it. His ICR, hard hit, and barrel rates are all better than average. It’s funny, he even manages to avoid a high Pull Air% despite being a flyball pitcher because he throws so hard and keeps the changeup on the outer half. Batters have a hard time not hitting the ball the other way or up the middle. You can’t pull what you can’t get the bat out in front of.
Combining Why and How
You likely didn’t need me to tell you in 700+ words that Skubal has nasty stuff. But it’s how he’s nasty that makes him unique among pitchers who similarly attack hitters. Note some of the names from earlier, Webb’s found his stride with strikeouts this year, but he’s still regarded more as a guy who eats innings by pitching efficiently and throwing sinkers that don’t leave the infield. Wheeler gets strikeouts as well, but he’s also been one of the league’s premier contact managers since he broke out with the Phillies five years ago.
Of course, this is a partial season, but it’s astonishing that he’s put together such dominance with this approach. The ability to challenge hitters so brazenly and still get whiffs whenever he wants/needs is a rare, rare thing. I think that’s what defines his aura better than anything else. It feels like the next hitter is out before he leaves the on-deck circle. It comes as a surprise any time someone reaches base. He will go after any and every hitter he faces. Every so often, a pitcher comes along that we see and believe to be unbeatable. It seems fitting that when I went looking for similar seasons and stretches by the metrics I called upon to explain this phenomenon, the results that most closely matched Skubal over the last season and a half came from absolute titans with their Cooperstown plaques all but pre-ordered.
After all this though, I imagine anyone still reading has had about enough of me trying to use stats and metrics to make sense of something that is sensed more than it’s read. Realistically, all I’ve outlined is his strategy and skill. If I could turn the whole thing into a metric and call it Aura+ (might have to work on that), I would’ve. But even when we break down the core components of what he’s doing as a pitcher, and try to give explanations as to what it is specifically that induces what you feel when you watch him pitch, does that really capture the magic of it? Probably not, but it was fun to try.
