Are the Yankees actually good at player development? (Part 4)

19/04/2024 18:01

The final piece in our four-part series tackles pitch selection and sequencing.

It's hard to believe we're at the finish line of this four-part series assessing whether the Yankees are good at player development. It's sparked debates and thoughtful comments from our faithful readers, which I appreciate. But before we tackle the last part of this series, I think it'd be useful to recap what we've covered so far.

Regarding hitting development, the Yankees appear to help batters maximize their exit velocity on contact in the zone, though they tend to chase outside the zone without much success. And while their hitters usually enter the system with unoptimized launch angles, they're helping more hitters create loft where appropriate. I graded New York's hitting development somewhere near the top 10 or so in the sport. Alas, the Yankees lead MLB in WAR accrued by rookie position players since 2016. Of course, a giant (pun intended) part of that WAR calculation is thanks to Aaron Judge's ridiculous 2017 season. Even if you were to remove Judge's 2017 season, though, they're still seventh in that time frame.

The pitching, meanwhile, is a bit more muted. Under the same parameters, they're just 16th in pitching WAR from rookies since 2016. That's a bit misleading, however: they're seventh in IP/WAR, which means they have fewer innings to give rookies. This makes sense when you look back at previous rosters, as Yankees pitching staffs have always leaned towards the older side of the MLB age curve. For the innings they were afforded, the rookies have done quite well. Luis Severino is the last homegrown pitcher who I can say was both allowed to consistently pitch in the majors and performed at a high level, but there are lots of talented arms who never got the same chance. That doesn't mean the Yankees aren't good at developing pitching.

Also, WAR is an imperfect measure of calculating success, though it gives us a pretty good sense of where things stand. Look at both the links above and you'll see teams that are generally regarded as good player development organizations near the top of each respective list. What those tables don't account for are prospects who were traded away for established big-league talent. So while I understand the craving for data to support each of my theses, I urge you to consider factors that are hard to quantify. Throughout this series, I hope you've seen how I've assessed the underlying skills that teams have identified are most predictive of future success.

Last week, we looked at how the Yankees boast one of the best strength and conditioning programs in The Show for both hitters and pitchers. They place premiums on large-framed pitchers who can generate elite extension from a variety of arm slots. And even though they don't always draft or sign the largest guys, they have a clear developmental plan laid out for each pitcher upon them entering the organization — both in the majors and minors. Some of those plans include a trip to the pitching lab, which is a series of mounds equipped with the latest and greatest tech that helps coaches assess what is and isn't working for pitchers. It's in the pitching lab where guys such as Will Warren, Chase Hampton, and Drew Thorpe learned new pitches, which they've leaned on since.

So, you have a collection of pitches that has the pitching lab's seal of approval: congrats! Now, what do you do with those pitches? How do you sequence them? How do you determine which pitches to throw more than others? This is where game action becomes essential for pitchers. It's time to incorporate the gains they've made in the gym and lab onto a professional mound. The beauty of minor-league baseball is that the individual performances aren't heavily scrutinized like they are in the bigs. If Warren has a stinker like he did his first time out with Scranton this season, no biggie.

I like to think of the minor leagues as glorified spring training. Take Carlos Rodón, for instance: he tinkered with a new cutter in the spring that he's leveraged with some success in the regular season. He had to play around in the spring to see what counts it made sense for him to throw the pitch, and it led to very uneven results as recent as his last start of the spring. Luke Weaver used a new grip on his four-seamer, which generated more induced vertical break. He became acclimated with the pitch quicker than Rodón, but he still needed to learn how he should best leverage it.

The minor leagues are nothing more than a full season of spring training for prospects. I can't tell you how many times I saw a pitcher sequence one way in an outing and then sequence completely different in another. In my observations, the Yankees are very quick to help a pitcher make adjustments to what pitches they should throw more. They are especially adept at identifying which type of fastball a pitcher should throw.

The aforementioned Warren is a great example here. Warren came out of the lab with a good two-seamer and sweeper in 2022 that was getting lower minors hitters out with ease. As he climbed the ladder, though, he was getting hit harder and needed a pitch he could use up in the zone to keep hitters honest. He began experimenting with different four-seam grips midway through last season, found a grip he liked, and increased its usage in games as he found opportune times to use it. It turns out that not only is it a pitch that kept hitters honest, but it's also a plus pitch that generated an insane 42.7-percent whiff rate. From August onward last year — the time in which Warren began using his four-seamer with regularity — he sported a dazzling 2.10 ERA.

What I'm especially encouraged by is how the Yankees seem to be teaching sequencing depending on the handedness of the batter. Thanks to a piece from my Baseball Prospectus colleague Jarrett Seidler a few years back, I became enlightened about how pitchers should sequence depending on the handedness of the batter. It seems simple enough, but not every pitcher has a deep enough arsenal to alter their sequencing. Thus, I primarily look for starters to see if they sequence depending on the batter.

I believe there is some level of this playing out amongst Yankees prospects, though I think the development group still prefers that pitchers lean on their best stuff. So where appropriate, they sequence depending on the batter, but again as we've mentioned in previous parts of this series, they don't have a one-size-fits-all approach to anything. I can't emphasize how important the individuality of player development is, as believe it or not, there are still teams who think of player development like this.

So what does all this mean? Good pitching development breaks down into a few subsets: physical maturation, mechanics, pitch types & grips, and sequencing. As a pitcher naturally matures and partakes in a sound strength and conditioning program, they maximize their athleticism which can lead to optimized mechanics. When their mechanics are in sync, they can experiment with different pitch types that work best for them. As they learn these new pitches, the minor leagues serve as the perfect testing ground to see what works and doesn't work. The closer you get to the big leagues, the better a player development group can decipher whether a pitcher is likely to succeed or stumble.

If you factor in each of these components of pitching development, I believe the Yankees are one of the three or four best groups in baseball. Especially with the pitchers, you have to remember how many have been traded over the years (it's a lot), and you have to consider it a developmental win that another team thought enough of your prospects to choose them in a negotiation. Thorpe was a rousing success for the Yankees last season, but we likely won't ever see him in a Yankee uniform (unless he pulls a Tommy Kahnle and returns sometime far down the road).

Through it all, it's important to remember that player development is a non-linear process. Hitters and pitchers are human beings just like the rest of us. Injuries happen and life happens, but the Yankees have positioned themselves to get the most out of pitchers from the majors down to the Dominican Summer League. I thank each of you who've joined me in this series, and I hope you've learned something about how smart teams look at player development and where the Yankees fit in the equation.

For all four parts of this series on Yankees player development, click below:
Part 1; Part 2; Part 3;Part 4