Brandon Pfaadt’s professional baseball career has been a whirlwind to this point. He was picked in the last round of the truncated 2020 MLB draft out of a small university that was promoted to D1 while he played there. He made his professional debut in 2021 due to the nonexistent 2020 MiLB schedule, but after his second year, he had built substantial hype, going from unranked in his own team’s system to placing on multiple Top 100 Prospect lists going into the 2023 season.
He got the call in May, and his debut didn’t go particularly well. He showcased the command and walk avoidance that had propelled him through the lower levels. However, his aggression in the zone and lack of truly marquee stuff got him burned often, and he got knocked around. This season has been one of ups and downs for Pfaadt, now and then he seems to put it all together, but never for more than a few starts at a time. It doesn’t have to be this way though. Pfaadt has a really strong arsenal of pitches, he just needs to make a few tweaks.
The Stuff
Pfaadt’s 4-seam fastball is his arsenal’s weak link. However, it’s not all bad. Despite mediocre movement for his release point, it has a chance to play up. For one, it spins on a nearly identical axis as his sinker, and with the disparity in their movement, they can play off of each other if executed well. Another bonus for Pfaadt’s 4-seam is created by his funky arm action. He delivers the ball in a way that’s kind of odd to look at, but the shape of his fastball isn’t exactly what hitters would expect to see from his estimated arm angle at 61°. He cuts his fastball from a low slot to create this straight-ish rising shape. While the vertical movement from his release point is unimpressive, the uniqueness of it coming from his arm slot could create enough deception that his fastball plays better than its metrics if protected and used with the rest of his arsenal well.
Pfaadt’s sweeper is awesome. Rising sweepers aren’t the most common breaking ball as it tends to be difficult for most pitchers to achieve the shape. Pfaadt however has no trouble ripping off mid-80s breaking balls with a foot of horizontal and substantial ride. This unique shape puzzles hitters who struggle to follow the ball along its path and then struggle to hit it well, or even make contact. This is an excellent pitch that further benefits from the movement direction being so far removed from the spin direction.
Pfaadt’s sinker is a perfectly fine fastball. It’s a bit generic but it’s got enough depth and arm-side run to induce ground balls and weak contact alike. As mentioned with the 4-seam, it has the potential to play up when used in tandem with the other fastball. A sinker under a righty’s elbows looks a lot like a high 4-seam that can be turned on until it runs in.
Pfaadt’s changeup is painfully underutilized. It’s his second-most used pitch against lefties but it’s not getting much more than the sweeper or sinker which to me is just not the right way to be doing things. Pfaadt’s sweeper more than most can play against opposite-handed hitters, but it’s like he doesn’t know what he has in his changeup. It’s possible that getting burned by it being left in the zone last season has scared him off of using it, but his command of the pitch has improved. He doesn’t throw it in the zone very often but is still eliciting chases at a good clip. It has excellent movement separation from his 4-seam on both planes and spins on a similar axis as his 4-seam getting its depth via SSW. It’s a great changeup and he should be using it more. Obviously, changeups in the zone are playing with fire. It hurt him last year, but reducing the usage of a great pitch is not the answer.
His sweepy curveball is a decent breaking ball but nothing special. He does an excellent job of zoning it and gets a lot of called strikes, but it’s been hammered on contact this season. Throwing pitches with a lot of horizontal movement toward an opposite-handed hitter is a dangerous game at times. If he can continue to locate it his luck should turn around, but it’s still more of a back pocket pitch.
So, Pfaadt did something odd a couple of months ago. On June 19th against the Nationals he completely ditched his changeup to throw a splitter that he hadn’t used before and hasn’t been seen since. I don’t think they were misreads, the spin rates and movement shapes were entirely different from his changeup. I decided not to include it in the table because I couldn’t get VAAAA or spin direction data for it. It seems to be an anomaly. It was a weird pitch with bizarre movement even by splitter standards.
Adjustments To Make
The easier tweak that I’ve already covered and could substantially elevate his game lies in simply throwing his changeup more. In limited usage, it has seen excellent results, and I think it could maintain similar numbers with increased use.
More notably, I think Pfaadt would benefit from a pitch philosophy change. Throwing a ton of strikes and filling the zone were what fueled his rise but I don’t know that he has the stuff to throw in the zone quite as much as he does. As much as I think his 4-seam can perform due to its context in his arsenal, it is still a hittable fastball when left in bad spots. Pfaadt needs to be elevating it more, and accept that aiming higher will lead to higher misses. It could hurt his walk rate but that’s never been his problem. Making a conscious choice to walk more hitters rather than let them get good pitches to hit is very different from just not having command.
Asking a pitcher to learn a new pitch as an outside observer is a tough thing to do sometimes, it can be hard to know exactly what a pitcher’s aptitudes are just based on his data without actually being able to work with the guy. That said, the addition of a horizontally neutral pitch, a gyro cutter, or a gyro slider would be a massive addition to his arsenal. Despite leading with his 4-seam, Pfaadt seems to be an east-west supinator in disguise. He cuts his fastball to try to create a more traditional fastball shape and add some verticality to his arsenal, but he could use a pitch that lies between his sinker and sweeper.
Having a bridge between those could further help with righties, and if it has enough vertical depth, it could be a whiff pitch against lefties. That’s been his real problem this season, he’s getting crushed in platoon matchups. If I’m Pfaadt or his pitching coach, that is my number one focus this offseason, finding a gyro pitch grip and cue that works for him that he can comfortably use and command. It’s a tall order but it would unlock an entirely new level for Pfaadt.
This isn’t to say Pfaadt needs to add a pitch, I think he has improved performance ahead of him by just throwing his changeup more. Nonetheless, it’s unsurprisingly the bigger ask that would lead to bigger changes. I’m very excited to see how Pfaadt continues to evolve. He’s a very talented pitcher, probably more so than most people realize. All that’s left is to see if he can make the changes needed to take the next step.