MMV #076: How Tarik Skubal is Dominating MLB Hitters

TMVP #014: How to Handle Injuries

In this episode, Josh and I cover:

• Personal injury stories
• MLB player overcoming injuries
• What coaches can do to help prevent them
• The mental side of returning from an injury

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Tarik Skubal of the Detroit Tigers is one of the best pitchers in baseball.

He ranks in the top 10 in MLB for:

• ERA
•  FIP
• K%
• BB%
• FPS
• E+A

With a fastball that reaches 100 mph, it's clear the stuff is good.

Today I want to walk through exactly what he throws, how he uses it, and where he locates it.

Let's begin.

Pitch Arsenal

Skubal features a fastball, sinker, slider, curveball, and changeup.

The image below shows his movement plot.

If you are not familiar with a movement plot, the y-axis is showing induced vertical movement and the x-axis is showing horizontal movement.

Induced vertical break is measuring the height difference between where the pitch crosses the front of home plate and a ball thrown with only gravity acting with the same release angle and velocity.

Horizontal break is calculated by measuring the difference between the ball going in a straight line from release and where the actual location side is.

Skubal is what we would call a north/south pitcher for the most part.

Meaning his pitches general move up and down more than they move side to side.

 An easy way to think about this, is in relationship to his fastball, his off speed pitches have more vertical separation than they do horizontal.

His best pitch overall is the changeup. It's getting swung and missed at 44% of the time and has a .230 xWOBA!

Truthfully, all of his pitches are performing well with the highest xWOBA being .276 on the slider.

Pitch Usage

While Skubal is generally a north/south pitcher, he does change his approach versus lefties and righties.

As you can see, against righties he is primarily throwing fastball and changeup while mixing in slider, sinker, and the occasional curveball.

Against lefties he is primarily using sinker and slider, while mixing in his slider and fastball.

This is an optimal way for him to use his stuff.

Against opposite handed hitters it is more advantageous to attack north/south, while against same sided hitters it is more advantageous to attack east/west.

Skubal does exactly that. He could probably throw more curveballs to righties, but if it isn't broke, don't fix it!

Pitch Locations

Let's start with right handed batters. What's interesting is there are a lot of pitches over the middle of the plate. 

Yes there is a general direction, but I wouldn't say this is super fine.

The pitch that is in the tightest location is the sinker in and a little up.

I love this because glove side sinkers play extremely well!

It makes sense why he has an xWOBA of only .237 on the pitch.

Moving onto left handed batters.

Sinker is primarily middle-in while the slider is a mix of up and down/away.

My guess is the higher ones are earlier in the count and the down/away ones are with 2 strikes.

In Summary

Skubal has elite stuff and pairs that with pounding the strike zone.

He's not trying to be cute, he's going right after batters.

If you liked this newsletter, you might be interested in my new course, Pitch Design "U".

It was just released today!

Analytics like this are covered in one of the modules.

Along with that I dive into pitch movement fundamentals and how to throw every pitch type (in great detail).

3+ hours of video content here.

That's all for today.

See you next week!

Whenever you are ready, there are 3 ways I can help you: 

1. Remote Training: a personalized throwing and lifting program built for you and your goals.

2. In-Person Training: Work with me in Phoenix, Arizona. Personalized training program to help you reach your goals. Trackman and edgertronic for bullpen sessions.

3. Trackman and Edgertronic camera bullpen: Get objective feedback on how your pitches are moving. I'll send you video and movement report after bullpen.