The Adjustment that Took Joe Ryan to Another Level

It's suprising what a little thinking outside the box can do

After 2023 didn’t end as well as it began for Joe Ryan, it was time for some adjustments. The Twins budding star cruised to a 3.70 ERA and 124:18 K:BB ratio in 107 IP in the first half of the season, but the second half didn’t feature the same kind of smooth sailing. His post All Star Break (2nd half) ERA was 6.09, ending his season with more questions than answers. It was time to adjust to take the next step ahead of the 2024 season. Ryan did that and then some.

One of the main things that went wrong for him in 2023 was the high allowance of home runs, specifically on his heater. In 2023, Ryan gave up 19 home runs on his four seam fastball alone. In 2024, he only gave up 19 total home runs, his four seamer responsible for just eight of them.

Ryan shuffled his pitch mix around a bit from 2023 to 2024. Here are the changes in usage:

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-Slider +2.6%

-(New pitch) Sinker: +6% 

-Sweeper: +4.8%

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-Four Seam Fastball: -8.4%

-Splitter: -5%

His four seamer performed better, likely a byproduct of the incorporation of his newly minted sinker. Having multiple fastballs is important in today’s game, as most aces have a multi fastball arsenal.  Think Zach Wheeler, Luis Castillo, Pablo Lopez, George Kirby, all those guys have fastball variations to further complicate hitter’s at bats against them. Ryan’s approach will lead to a high number of batted balls in the air, so I don’t think the sinker serves much of a purpose outside of taking some pressure off his four seamer. It went above and beyond in doing so. The benefits were obvious for Ryan.

It’s starting to feel like a sinker and / or cutter is becoming a must have for most pitchers, whether they like it or not! Ryan is further evidence of that.

Because Ryan is a fly ball pitcher, he will run into some home run problems. His Brl % allowed has been above league average since he broke into the majors, and I don’t think he’ll ever fully overcome that. That does make Ryan more volatile than most groundball pitchers. 

The trade off is that fly ball pitchers utilize the top of the zone for whiffs, so they have a higher strikeout potential than groundball pitchers, who try to get weak contact, not avoid it all together. Ryan’s sinker doesn’t make him a ground ball pitcher, just a flyball pitcher trying to devise ways of becoming better at that. While not missing many bats, batters chased it outside of the zone 34% of the time, having trouble squaring up the elite movement. The pitch would have been a top 20 sinker in all of baseball in terms of Fangraphs stuff+, had he thrown it enough to qualify.

Overall, Ryan’s numbers were more impressive across the board. First pitch strike percentage up 3%, getting ahead more often. Hard hit rate down 5%, limiting hard contact and home runs. His entire slash line allowed is down. 

His improved splitter has something to do with this. 88.5 MPH was the new average velocity of his splitter, compared to 84 in 2023. This made the pitch automatically better, and the stuff+ score on the offering agrees, going up 10 points from 91 in 2023, to 101 in 2024. Then there’s the incorporation of the sinker. 

The pitch movement plot on Statcast shows how Ryan’s four seamer, sinker, and splitter can be a lot to handle. The fact that the pitches all have generally similar horizontal movement profiles show that they tunnel each other vertically.

Pictured is Joe Ryan’ pitch movement plot from Baseball Savant. Red is his four seamer, orange is his sinker, and blue is his splitter. The pitches tunnel eachother vertically, as you can see by the incrementally different amounts of vertical break.

The result of these three pitches shows a cascading relationship, with a correlated decrease of velocity at each step. Not a safe place for good timing and barrel placement.

His four seamer and splitter are the main pairing as far as tunneling. The sinker does its job of making it harder for the hitter to hit the fastball because there isn’t just one to watch out for. The pairing of his four seamer and sinker, in and of itself provides a blanket of security over them both. Ryan is no longer feeling forced to throw his four seamer early in counts.

Ryan’s sinker was impressively nasty as a righty weapon in 2024 considering it was the debut season for the offering. It had 15 inches of horizontal movement, breaking in on the hands of right handed hitters. Sinkers are hard to swing under, so they generally don’t get much whiffs. Ryan’s expectedly didn’t either, but its presence in the back of the hitter’s minds alone made his splitter/ four seam pairing better and gave him a formidable righty weapon. 

Let’s examine what the multi-fastball flexibility did to open up the inner half of the plate against right handed batters for Ryan, comparing 2023 to 2024:

In 2024, Joe Ryan threw 1157 pitches in the zone, and 945 pitches out of the zone. He threw his sinker to righties only. When he throws the sinker to righties, he wants to land it on the inner half to jam the hitter or get ahead with a safe strike. Here’s a look at this in video:

Randy Arozarena loves the first pitch, especially first pitch fastballs. If that were a four seamer, it may have been a homer. Instead its a foul ball, and Ryan gets to work ahead in the count 0-1. From here, he can go in a number of directions and is in control now that he know’s Arozarena is hunting a four seamer.

Ryan’s four seam fastball isn’t bad by any means. It’s a great pitch. It’s just the easiest pitch to hit, so he’s increasing its effectiveness by throwing it more selectively.

His four seamer approach to right handed hitters doesn’t vary much compared to his approach to lefties. He’s looking to throw it up and in and allow the strong vertical approach angle (vAA) to eat in the zone. As far as comparative L/R splits in 2024: lefties chased it about 5% more, and righties got better quality of contact (more damage) .368 to .426 xWOBACON difference. Adding the sinker was exactly what Ryan needed to do, and helped him avoid damage this season. 

Ryan is doing a good job making adjustments as they become necessary. This is allowing him to develop as a big leaguer overtime. I’m interested to see what other adjustments he’ll make this offseason, and as the years go on.