What a bizarre season it has been for Lance Lynn.
In March, Lynn represented Team USA at the World Baseball Classic, where serving as the de facto ace on the roster, he picked up a group win over Canada and started the quarterfinal game against Venezuela. All in all, he looked fine. The velocity was there, the control was decent, and he looked like the Lynn we’ve been accustomed to seeing throughout his career.
Nothing could have prepared us for the career-worst season he has produced so far in 2023. With an ERA north of six and the most home runs allowed among qualified pitchers, Lynn has been a painfully unreliable option for the White Sox every fifth day. As a fantasy manager who drafted Lynn as an SP3 on a shared NFBC team, my co-managers and I have been pulling our hair out all season watching our ratios implode.
Yet behind the awful surface stats, there lies some hope for optimism that he is still some semblance of the pitcher who finished third in Cy Young voting a mere three seasons ago. Let’s dive into this unfortunate 2023 season and dissect what has gone sideways for the big right-hander.
Tale of Two Pitchers
The most fascinating aspect of Lynn’s performance this year is how he has oscillated between two extremes. Sometimes, it looks like two completely different pitchers out there. There have been outings where he has looked indomitable, and other times, flat-out abominable. His good outings have been tremendous and his bad outings have been dreadful. Here are his three best starts this season compared to his three worst ones:
This Jekyll-and-Hyde act has made it difficult to pinpoint what exactly is ailing the veteran pitcher. A cursory look at his peripherals paints an unclear picture. Despite bottom-of-the-league numbers in certain stats, Lynn ranks in the upper echelon of others.
Lynn had a start this season where he punched out 16(!) batters while racking up 33 swinging strikes. Those 33 whiffs are tied for the second-most ever in a single game since 2008. It’s not easy to just write off the absurdity of that stat as a fluke because his strikeout rate on the season is the highest mark in his entire 12-year career.
On the flip side, three starts before this gem, Lynn suffered a three homer, eight earned run debacle where he gave up barrels on 20% of all batted balls and a 34.8% Hard Contact rate overall. Somehow, Lynn has managed to juggle this weird dichotomy of missing bats like never before, while simultaneously giving up loud contact like never before.
The dual personalities don’t even wait between starts to show up. Take for instance his most recent start against the Angels. His final line was 6 IP, 5 ER, 8 Hits, 2 BBs, 7 Ks, 24 Whiffs, and a 31.4 CSW%. Seeing the strikeouts and whiffs is cool, but then the ratios appear. That’s like eating a cake with delicious frosting, only to realize the inside is made of dirt. He induced 24 whiffs while giving up three home runs in the same game. On the season, Lynn is second only to Spencer Strider in total swing & misses. He also stands alone at the top in total home runs allowed. How is it possible to look dominant against teams while also getting hammered by them? It’s a curious case, but maybe the answer lies in the stuff and execution.
Stuff Minus Execution
Throughout his career, Lynn has always been something of an anomaly in terms of pitch repertoire. In a world where many pitchers are adopting more breaking ball-heavy approaches, Lynn has stubbornly held fast to an 85-90% fastball approach with his three fastball shapes. For many years, it’s worked fabulously, so there’s been no need to reinvent the wheel. But could it be finally time to admit that the heater can no longer do all the heavy lifting? Lynn’s PLV chart suggests that his stuff as been just about passable this year. It’s also worth nothing that Lynn has never really been a PLV darling, as his 2023 pitch quality is not too far off from his past couple of seasons.
There are some red flags, though. His velocity didn’t precipitously drop off this year, but it has been on a slow and gradual decline for awhile. The four-seamer dropped from 94.0 mph in 2021 to 92.9 mph in 2022, and this season is down to 92.4 mph. The sinker is down a tick as well, from 92.2 to 91.1 mph.
Lynn’s success has always been centered around his ability to throw a lot of strikes, putting hitters on the defensive by getting ahead of the count, and using the upper third of the zone to get whiffs. This year, he really hasn’t strayed too far from that game plan. But what has happened with more frequency this year is uncharacteristic bad command rearing its ugly head. Lynn’s location mistakes have been very conspicuous and hitters have punished them at every opportunity. To exhibit this, let’s look at a pitch sequence to Michael Conforto back in April against the Giants.
With runners at second and third, Lynn finds himself pitching out of a jam early here in the first inning. Catcher Seby Zavala sets the target away here to try to steal a strike on the outside, but Lynn misses the four-seamer arm side by about a foot. Lynn immediately looks down at his feet, so it’s possible he slipped here. Either way, this is an inauspicious start to the at-bat and highlights the issue with four-seamer command this season for Lynn.
Now we get a vintage Lynn cutter here. This is a gorgeous pitch and easily the best one he throws in this entire sequence. Lynn’s effective tunneling between his four-seam and cutter is on full display here. The pitch starts over the middle of the plate and ends up breaking down to the inside corner. Conforto doesn’t pick it up and gets tied up badly, swinging right over the top of the ball. These are the whiffs that Lynn gets when he’s on. Now the count is even 1-1.
Here’s a good example of result good, process bad. While this is a called strike, it’s an even worse miss than the first ball. Lynn doubles up on the cutter and it backs up on him. The catcher’s target is on the inside, but the pitch ends up in the opposite batter’s box. Ultimately, the umpire gives Lynn a little help here as he decides the cutter did find the back door. So it ends up being a good mistake that puts Lynn ahead of the count and in the driver’s seat.
Welp, never mind. The game plan was sound. But the execution is less than ideal. The catcher’s target is on the inside again, as they try to induce a similar swing as the first strike. Except this time, the pitch hangs out lazily over the heart of the plate and Conforto turns it around 405 feet up into the right-field bleachers for a 3-run shot. It’s tough to defend this type of miss on a two-strike count.
This entire at-bat is a microcosm of Lynn’s season. He looks like the best version of himself for stretches. Then the command fails him in crucial situations, particularly with runners on, and the hitters simply aren’t missing these mistakes.
Bad Luck Bears
Despite all of Lynn’s self-inflicted struggles on the mound, a fair amount of the results haven’t been deserved either. He’s underperforming his FIP by 1.6 runs and his xERA by nearly two runs. His BABIP has bloated to a career-high .340, which is similar to the mark posted in his forgettable 2018 season when he limped to a 4.77 ERA.
A large culprit of this is the White Sox’s leaky team defense. This year, the White Sox have posted a shambolic -30 defensive runs saved, good for 29th in the league. When Lynn is on the mound, his teammates have posted a -4 OAA, making him one of the unluckiest pitchers in the league.
There are other metrics that also point to brighter days ahead for Lynn. He currently holds a stunning 20.0% HR/FB rate (career average: 10.7%). In other words, one out of every five flyballs hit against Lynn has turned into a home run this year. His left-on-base percentage is also a career-worst 61.9% (career average: 74.8%). Those numbers are unsustainable in the long run, even in a hitter-friendly home ballpark like Guaranteed Rate Field.
There are recent examples of good pitchers who’ve experiences an undeserved down year, only to bounce back quickly. Eduardo Rodriguez’s 2021 saw him post a mediocre 4.74 ERA fueled by a .363 BABIP, despite having career-best strikeout numbers and a FIP that was a whole run and a half lower. Fast forward to 2023 and Rodriguez was leading the Tigers with a 2.13 ERA before hitting the injured list last month.
Similarly, Aaron Nola struggled to a 4.63 ERA in 2021 after giving up 26 home runs in 180 innings pitched. Behind those messy surface stats was a sparkling strikeout-to-walk ratio and a 3.35 FIP. Naturally, he bounced back the next season with a 3.25 ERA, giving up seven fewer homers while pitching 25 more total innings on the season.
Granted, both those pitchers were significantly younger than Lynn with a lot less mileage on their arms. But the point remains: every season is subject to variance. Tris Speaker once said, “Luck is the great stabilizer in baseball.” This season happens to be unlucky to the extreme for Lynn, so his results should hopefully normalize going forward.
The End of the Line?
Is it fair to say that the Lance Lynn of old is still there and he’s just had a remarkably unfortunate year? Yes and no. It’s true he has been victimized by the poor defense behind him and shocking amount of flyballs carrying out of the park. But for his part, he has been unable to pitch out of trouble and prevent innings from snowballing.
The contact quality metrics against him are genuinely concerning and cannot be explained away by flukiness. It’s safe to say he is no longer the pitcher he once was. With that said, reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated. His ability to still miss bats at an elite pace suggests the skillset remains intact. Unless there are underlying mechanical or health concerns, this dreadful season should not portend the end of the line for Lynn.
Even so, there’s no sugarcoating how unplayable the bad version of Lynn has been this year. As such, he has been tough to trust on a start-to-start basis, because the negatives have largely outweighed the positives. So unless the truth comes out that his evil twin Vance Vynn was assuming his identity during those bad starts, we just have to wait for more consistency out of Lynn in the second half. Hopefully, he can make some adjustments and return to being everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed, K-strutting pitcher. That’s the version we all want to see.