A Way Too Early Look at Lucas Sims Stuff

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One of my favorite parts of new players making their debuts is being able to look at their performances in brand new ways. Because of the technology it takes, several of tools or metrics we use to evaluate players are only available at the major league level. When guys come up, we get to measure what they can do

So when Lucas Sims came up Tuesday and made his debut I, being the nerd that I am, was not only excited about the game itself but the next day when I could look at a bunch of new metrics on how he's doing. Of course, this is the part where I throw in the obligatory small sample size qualifier and the warning about drawing any conclusions too fast and whatever whatever. You get how this works.

The first thing I usually look at for fastball/curveball guys is spin rates. I like spin rate because it’s something that’s hard to fluke and stabilizes pretty quickly. If you were around a few weeks ago I wrote about Sean Newcomb and his curveball, and even as we sit here today, the spin rate numbers from that piece are still accurate today.

So here are Sims' early spin numbers*:

4-Seam Fastball	2314 rpms
Curveball	2844 rpms

*data courtesy of Baseball Savant 

What jumps out first is that's some super impressive spin on his curveball. If you want to know why spinning a curveball is important, click on that Sean Newcomb link above. 

For context, here are some other RH pitchers who spin a curveball similarly:

Sonny Gray	2903 rpms
Aaron Sanchez	2856 rpms
Lucas Sims	2844 rpms
Justin Verlander	2795 rpms
Stephen Strasburg	2786 rpms

Yeah, so those are good names. Lucas isn’t on the same level of pitching as those guys but that is the level of natural talent he’s working with when throwing his curveball, and hey, having the talent is better than not. And having your curveball move that aggressively downward in the zone can be a tremendous weapon if you learn how to use it.

The other thing that jumped out at me was how low spinning his fastball was. This is one game worth of data so we aren’t going to read too much into this but fly ball pitchers, which Lucas has the reputation of being, usually spin their fastball a lot faster than 2300 rpms. For those of you who don’t know the faster you spin the ball the harder it goes in the direction it’s spinning. So fastballs have backspin when you throw them obviously, so the harder you spin it, the longer it repels gravity and stays up. That’s why high spinning fastballs are usually found in fly ball pitchers.

Here’s a table of the guys who spin their fastballs around 2300 rpms with their groundball rates:

Name	FB Spin Rate	Groundball Rate
Zack Wheeler	2326 rpms	48%
Aaron Sanchez	2326 rpms	48%
Lucas Sims	2314 rpms	34%*
Marcus Stroman	2304 rpms	63%
Jimmy Nelson	2294 rpms	50%

*Used Sims’ 2017 AAA groundball rates.

So again, these spin rates from Lucas represent one game so let’s not conclude anything yet but in game 1 he spun his fastball more like a groundball heavy guy than a fly ball heavy guy. It also needs to be pointed out spin rate isn’t the only variable that decides the type of batted ball profile you carry. Which of your pitches you throw most frequently has a big impact as well as where you most regularly pitch in the zone.

For instance, here’s Stroman’s zone heatmap:

 Now for comparison, here's Sims' from Tuesday:

As you can see Stroman is able to consistently keep the ball down in the zone while Sims left more than his share of pitches up. Controlling spin is great but it doesn't mean much without being able to locate and that's where Sims can see the biggest gains.

Obviously we're going to monitor all of this the rest of the year and, hopefully that's 9 or 10 starts worth of data. At that point we really can start to some trends and make some more definitive statements. This today is more of a first glimpse. But Sims clearly has tools. Velocity is good, looks like his spin rate is better than I would've guessed based on his reputation. Good frame, good size. He just has to learn how to command it better. Like about a billion pitchers before him.

Sean Newcomb, Rich Hill, and Spin Rates

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As we’ve entered the Statcast era of baseball analytics, we now have the ability to look at specific parts of the game with much more clarity. We can quantify how hard a player hits the ball, what angle the ball comes off the bat, how many feet a center-fielder covers to make a play, how quick his first step was and on and on and on. Among these new tools is one metric that’s changed how we measure pitchers and the effectiveness of their pitches: spin rate.

If you were paying attention last year, you know one of the best stories of 2016 was Rich Hill. He tore through the NL last year for a few reasons but there were two main ones; he had a great curveball and he threw it a ton. Hill led all of baseball last year throwing his curve a whopping 42% of the time with an average spin rate of 2837 RPMs which was good for 3^rd among all LH starters, per Baseball Savant.

So just out of interest, I wanted to see how he was doing in 2017 and sure enough once again he leads all LH starters with a CB spin rate of 2792 RPMs. 

But what was interesting was who was sitting there in second place: Sean Newcomb. Newcomb is spinning his CB at 2791 RPMs, almost identical to Hill’s.

Ok. I knew it was a good curveball but Rich Hill good? Ok.

For those of you still new to the spin rate concept, the faster you can spin the ball, the harder the ball will move in the direction it’s spinning. For instance, a fastball has back spin when you throw it so the more spin you put on a FB the longer it repels gravity and stays up. Curveballs, of course, have front spin as the ball rolls over the index finger so the faster you can spin it, the harder it’s going to move downward.

And these concepts are confirmed by their resulting batted ball data. High spinning fastballs stay up longer and therefore result in more fly balls while low spinning FB succumb to gravity faster resulting in more groundballs.

With curveballs, it’s the exact opposite. High spinning CBs move downward a greater rate and therefore result in more groundballs while low spinning CBs, or hangers, lead to more fly balls. And as evidence from the “elevate and celebrate” revolution taking over baseball right now, pitchers want groundballs. Well they want no contact at all but the next best thing is getting grounders. You get it.

Overall, Newcomb is only posting slightly above average groundball rates right now, around 45% but a big reason for that is his high fastball usage. Newcomb throws his fastball almost 64% of the time, per Brooks Baseball and when hitters put it in play, they hit it on the ground 41% of the time. So that’s going to hurt his overall groundball rate.

But when hitters put his curveball into play, that’s when we see that spin rate effect. When batters make contact with Newcomb’s CB, which he throws 24% of the time, they put it on the ground 58% of the time and only have .200 batting average against. Hitters, in generals, just aren't making optimal contact against it.

It’s not just ground balls either. Newcomb gets swing-and-misses on almost 16% of his curveballs compared to 10% with his fastball. (It’s 20% with his change-up but that’s another post for another day)

The biggest difference I see with Hill and Newcomb's curveball is Hill is able to control his better at this point in their careers. It makes sense, Hill is much older and has thrown thousands more CBs in his career, but that's where Sean can see the most gains with his. Being able to drop it in for a strike or bounce it in the dirt on command will force hitters to respect it at a greater level than they do now. But that just comes with repetition. He'll get there.

You didn’t need me or this post to tell you Newcomb has a good curveball, but it wasn’t until I dove into the data that I realized how good it actually was. This is the part of the post where I feel compelled to remind everyone, and myself, that we're still dealing with relatively small samples and the prudent thing to is wait and see.

But it's hard to have fluky spin rates. You either have the ability or you don't.

Like many of you, I’ve wondered when Sean is going to start featuring his change-up and slider more in games, especially against good teams. But perhaps that’s the wrong question. Perhaps the question we should be asking is when is Newcomb going to make his curveball his featured weapon.

Hey, it worked for Rich Hill.