Rafael Montero

Montero’s changeup was his most used pitch with two strikes, 61 out of 131, and rightfully so, since it had the highest whiff rate of all his pitches at whopping 39%. It also had the lowest batting average and wOBA at .152 and .185, respectively. Now this is what we call an elite pitch.

While his fastball was a high velocity pitch with a good batting average against at .229, Montero did have some trouble with it towards the end of the season. He allowed four home runs on eight hits with his fastball, with three of those coming towards the end of the season when his zone% started to dip a lot. He had trouble keeping the ball down in the strike zone on counts where he was behind or neutral, which is something he will need to improve on next year since it will help set up his very good changeup.

Montero’s slider was a go-big-or-go-home pitch, generating five strikeouts on 15 at-bats while also allowing six hits, including one homerun. The pitch does show some promise, so increasing its usage could definitely be beneficial to him.

Montero got his four-seamer over the plate at a decent 54.8% clip, but he gave up too many line drives on it at 29.1%. He mixed in a two-seamer about a third of the time but still allowed a .958 OPS on the ground-ball offering. The results weren’t pretty in either case, as he posted negative pVals on each: a minus-2.4 on the sinker and minus-6.4 on the four-seamer.

His only breaking ball isn’t much to look at and was barely serviceable as an out pitch, with boring swinging-strike and chase rates adding up to a 1.0 pVal.

Montero’s changeup sits about 5.5 mph off his fastball, and despite an elite O-swing of 43.9 percent and a .079 ISO allowed, it couldn’t do enough on its own to keep hitters off his heater.