Jon Duplantier

Duplantier’s changeup comes in eight ticks slower than his sinker. The pitch has similar movement to his sinker and hit the zone 56.5% of the time. He allowed a .313 BAA on the pitch, which begs the question of whether he would be better off throwing the pitch so it falls out of the bottom of the zone.

Duplantier uses his knuckle-curve as his chase pitch, getting a 15.3% SwStr% while hitting the zone just 29.4% of the time. The pitch had a 50% K rate and gave up a .185 wOBA.

Duplantier throws a four-seamer and a sinker, with the four-seamer typically staying high in the zone and the sinker staying low. The sinker did its job by producing a 55.3% GB rate. However, thanks to a .405 BABIP, the pitch allowed a .413 wOBA. The four-seamer, on the other hand, got very lucky, allowing a .259 BAA with a 52.9% line drive rate.

Duplantier managed to throw his slider in the zone 48.9% of the time, and when batters did make contact, he kept the damage to a minimum, allowing a 24.1% line drive rate and a .245 wOBA.

Well that one had some zip on it. Duplantier’s 2-seamer has a lot of life and runs a high groundball rate. Good! He just needs to make sure that he is controlling it properly. If he throws one to many to a righty, watch out.

Nice frame job, John Ryan Murphy! Duplantier’s 4-seamer is really nice. So far, it has a zone rate of 54% and a SwStr% of 8%. Pretty good! if he can continue to use this pitch down in the zone (with his 2-seamer) to generate grounders, we could be looking at an outstanding 1-2 foundation.

This pitch is not as good as the slider, but it can get the job done as a get-me-over curve or one that he buries down in 2 strike counts.

I love the late snap on Duplantier’s slider. It doesn’t feature a massive amount of movement, so the fact that a good one breaks late makes this an effective pitch. This (along with the curveball) will be Duplantier’s putaway weapon.

At this point in the season this was the only changeup that Duplantier had thrown. His first 4 weapons will be featured much more heavily than the change, although this pitch (at first glance) has some promise.