Another pitch of Anderson’s that does not move much and is less than impressive. He locates it low and does not miss high much at all with it.
Anderson hasn’t used this pitch much, but he should start using it a lot more. It drops 5 inches above league average and could end up transforming his entire repitore.
Anderson’s fastball is the pitch he uses most and tends to use it to get strikes in the zone.
Anderson mixes his cutter with his fastball to add an element of break and speed change to his fairly straight fastball that typically ends up in the zone.
Anderson’s four-seamer got hit around quite a bit last year (145 wRC+). The pitch became straighter, and he threw it in the zone 4% more often (not a good equation when your home park is Coors Field). If Anderson can live on the edges a bit more that would go a long way to lowering his career-high 31.2% line-drive rate.
Anderson’s cutter continued to be a weapon for him, generating an 14.2% SwStr rate and a 40% O-swing. Those are numbers that you love to see for a pitch thrown nearly 30% of the time. If he can start manufacturing more ground balls, this pitch could quickly become dangerous.
At a 5.0 pVal, Anderson’s change was good to him last year. I would not expect this renaissance to continue. Much of the pitch location data remained similar, except two numbers: infield fly-ball rate (21.7% to 38.5%) and home run/fly-ball rate (26.1% to 7.7%). While they may not regress all the way back, Anderson will more than likely allow a few more homers and a generate a few less pop ups.
After not using it in 2017, Anderson reintroduced his sinker in 2018 to lackluster effect. When your sinker allows more line drives than ground balls, you have a problem. Hopefully, he irons out the kinks in spring training and shows us why he decided to bring this pitch back to life.
Anderson’s curveball is not a bad pitch, it’s just not a very good one, either. He made a large change to the pitch going into 2018, deciding to pull back the reins (lost nearly 5 mph). This gives his repertoire more range velocity wise, but Anderson will need to add some more snap to this looper to really see it become a weapon (the one in the GIF is gorgeous, though).
