Analyzing Jose Berrios’ Major League Debut

Jose Berrios made his debut Wednesday night and there were both positives and negative takeaways beyond his final line.

I moved around some plans I had last night so I could catch Jose Berrios‘ first start in the Major Leagues. Many expected and wished the Minnesota Twins had called up Berrios late last season to help the team in their push for a postseason spot. While Berrios’ start didn’t yield the same results as Blake Snell did in his debut, there was a lot to like and a lot for Berrios to improve on; and if I’m being honest, these Berrios were a little more salty than sweet.

THE SWEET

I love the movement that Jose Berrios showed on his change up. Looking at the leaderboards, he already shows a change up with some great horizontal movement. In fact, his change closely mirrors one of the best in the game, Felix Hernandez. There is a lot more too King Felix’s pitch than H-Movement and V-Movement, but it’s nice to see these metrics so similar.

However, take that with a grain of salt. While the metrics are similar, visually, the pitches are very different. Felix gets massive drop on his change-up and it just falls off the table complete. However, Berrios will throw his change up so that it mirrors his two seamer to keep hitters off-balance. His -8.6 H-Movement on his two-seamer and his -7.8 H-Movement on his changeup are close enough to keep hitters off balance when throw with a nine MPH difference.

His fastball shows late life. When thrown to lefties, it can tail off the outside portion of the plate. When thrown to righties, it can quickly catch the outside part of the plate for strikeouts. His fastball used in tandem with that change up will yield devastating results for pitchers. PitcherList has a great breakdown of his fastball.

While his curveball needs to most work, it had some great movement to it. His 10.5 H-Movement is 5th overall in baseball. He just needs to develop more up and down movement for that pitch to be truly plus-plus. Some of the best curveballs in the game — Clayton Kershaw, Adam Wainwright — will have some serious vertical movement. Take Wainwright for example; this year that have nearly identical horizontal movement, but Wainwright also pairs that with a -9.7 drop. Berrios curveball is more compact. Berrios can make that pitch one of his best if he can control and harness some late bite, a la Noah Syndergaard.

THE SALTY

I’ll be honest, I was expecting a bit better performance from Jose Berrios even though I loved his stuff. I’ll concede that maybe I expected too much given Snell’s fantastic debut against the Yankees, but I thought it was a good matchup for Berrios. After all, the Twins have the fourth most strikeouts in the league (while the Yankees have the third fewest), and Berrios has a reputation for being a command guy. But jitters can affect anyone on their first major league start.

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One of the big worries I had from his start is that I think Berrios is tipping his change up. Now, Berrios isn’t holding a sign above his head or anything but a slight tip can still effect his success going forward. Over at Pitcher List, there is an incredible breakdown with GIFs of his change, fastball, and curveball. In the game last night, I was able to tell with 99% accuracy when Berrios was throwing his change up.

Arm Action: It is very slight but his arm action is a lot more fluid on his change up than his fastball. This is a tell to hitters of what is coming, even if it’s split seconds.

Body Movement: In the first two GIFs at Pitcher’s List, you can see that he tails off the mound when throwing his fastball. He does this almost every time except for when he is taking a little off his fastball. The last fastball GIF shows him throwing a pitch in at 91 MPH and he stays how on the mound. However, when throwing the change up, he never falls off the mound, letting hitters know he is locating a change up.

These may not be huge issues as are there are a multitude of reasons why Jose Berrios had differences in his delivery. The biggest reasoning is Berrios was seemingly overthrowing all night, causing him to fall off the side of the mound which caused the ball to come out arm-side. And both of those are another reason his start wasn’t as effective.

Berrios overthrowing meant we didn’t quite see the control that Berrios was touted to have in the minors; last season at AAA, he walked just 1.67 per nine. Looking at Berrios pitch heat map, we can see that a lot of pitches were left in the middle outside part of the plate to lefty hitters. For comparison, here is a Syndergaard heatmap (just a visual comparison, I don’t expect him to be Thor in his first start).

And as you can see, because Berrios was overthrowing and the control was off, he was releasing pitches a little early causing him to paint the outside part of the plate in the fourth and fifth inning. As you can see, 22 pitches that Berrios throwing were hitting the top outside corner of the plate to lefties. Once again, first start jitters are at play here but control is a calling card of Berrios and you’d like him to highlight that going forward.

And leaving pitches up last night could have been Berrios’ undoing earlier than it was. He threw 71% of pitches in the zone in the middle or up. While it’s nice to see pop ups and swings-and-misses from an elevated fastball, in general this is not a good thing for a pitcher. Once again for comparison sake, Syndergaard only throws 23% of his pitches up when in the zone while Berrios threw 37% up in the zone.

OVERALL

I’m going to trust Jose  in the fact that his big struggles were tied to his control and we know Jose Berrios is a good control pitcher. This is a very good sign that going forward we are going to see better results. What we really wanted to see from Berrios last night was action on his fastball — we got it — and his secondary arsenal. He has the goods, now it just needs a bit more polish.

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Like last night, Jose Berrios gets a great matchup against the Houston Astros next time up in the rotation. The Astros are a team that have struck out more than any of ball club in the league. But if Berrios keeps elevating his pitches, we could see batting practice home runs for the young righty. Shake the nerves out, kid, and you’ll do just fine.