Ian Anderson pitching for the Atlanta Braves, CCed by Liscense 2.0
When it comes to witnessing successful teams in the MLB, I think most people would agree that one of the most important things to have is a good rotation. We witness time and time again that the teams that make it deep into the playoffs are those with a strong rotation. This year, we are seeing the same thing. All teams that are currently leading their division (as of August 5th) are in the top 11 in team ERA. Naturally, with this information, teams want to draft the best pitching prospects who will be a staple in their rotation for years to come. The Atlanta Braves have almost become known for always drafting pitching in the first few rounds of the last few drafts. Since 2010, the Braves have only drafted 5 non-pitchers in the first round. Simply through odds alone, this led to the Braves having some notable pitchers who were expected to become the next ace for the team, or at least become a staple in the rotation. Many of them were also ranked in MLB’s Top 100 Prospects lists over the years. However, when you look at the Braves rotation this year, it is almost entirely void of their draft picks. The only ones that came from their farm system were Max Fried, who was not even drafted by them, and Bryce Elder, who is only used for spot starts since the Braves currently have so many injuries. So the question is, what has happened to all of those highly touted prospects?
First off, there is Sean Newcomb. In 2016, he was the Braves #1 prospect and the 24th-best prospect in the MLB. He was traded to the Braves in 2015 and got his call-up in 2017, to which he saw decent success for a few years. In his rookie season, he started 19 games and 100 innings pitched exactly, ending with a 4.32 ERA and a 101 ERA+. He was basically league-average his rookie season. That trend continued into next season when he got even more innings under his belt, totaling to 164 innings, finishing with a 105 ERA+. Finally, in 2019, he got moved to the bullpen, where he came into his own, and in 68.1 innings, he finished with a 145 ERA+. That was Sean Newcomb’s last season where he had both 50+ innings and an ERA+ over 100 combined. The first sign of this regression should have been his walking problem. In 2017-2019, he never finished with a BB% percentile above 22nd, meaning he was in the bottom 22% of all qualified pitchers in walk rate. Actually, in those 3 years, his WHIP was never below 1.317. He clearly had a problem with keeping batters off the base. Another sign is that is xERA was significantly higher than his ERA in 2017 and 2019. In 2017 his xERA was 4.76 compared to his actual of 4.32, and in 2019 it was 4.08 compared to 3.16.
The rest of his percentiles in 2017-2019 matched who Sean Newcomb was: a slightly above-average major eague talent. Nothing on his page said he was going to grow into anything more than he was. In Newcomb’s peak years, 2017-2019, he pitched a total of 332.1 innings. From 2020-Present Day, he has pitched a total of 97.5 innings in the Majors. We can not even compare his “prime” percentiles with his recent ones because he has not pitched enough to even qualify for percentiles in any year from 2020 to now. He has gotten even worse in the last few years at keeping batters off the basepaths, with his BB% reaching almost to 20%, and a WHIP averaging out to about 1.700. He is allowing a HardHit% and a Barrel% that is significantly higher than the league average.
It appears Newcomb’s main problem was that he never had a solid grasp on an offspeed pitch. His second-most thrown pitch, next to the fastball, each year, changed. He tried the cutter, curveball, changeup, and in recent years, followed in a lot of players footsteps and tried the slurve out. He lacked confidence in a second pitch, and that also showed in his pitch spray chart. He was sporadic and never showed consistency in pitch location. These two things combine to explain why Newcomb could not keep runners off the bases. The Braves would part ways with him in 2020 when they traded him to the Cubs in exchange for Jesse Chavez.
Ian Anderson made his debut in 2020 and was supposed to be a Braves ace for years to come. He was the third overall pick in the 2016 draft, and in 2020 was ranked as the 37th-best prospect in the MLB. In the shortened season of 2020, he finished with a 1.95 ERA, 1.082 WHIP, and an 11.4 K/9. Not only that, but he was an absolute monster in the playoffs in 2020 and 2021. According to the New York Times, he went “4-0 with a 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts during 2020 and 2021, totaling 40 strikeouts in 35 2/3 innings while limiting opponents to a .159 average and .483 OPS, including five no-hit innings in a 2021 World Series Game 3 win against the Houston Astros, whom he helped the Braves defeat for their first championship since 1995”. Braves fans were excited to welcome Anderson as a staple part of their team for the next decade.
2021 was also a pretty good year for Ian Anderson, and it was also his first full season. In 128.1 innings, he finished with a 3.58 ERA and a 1.231 WHIP, and even finished 5th in Rookie of the Year voting, as he still had rookie eligibility. If this was going to be his “sophomore slump”, then it seemed clear that he was going to have a bright future in the big leagues. Or at least, that is what Braves fans thought, until 2022, when Ian Anderson in 111.2 innings, finished with a 5.00 ERA and a 1.513 WHIP. He ended up being optioned to AAA and since then, has not pitched in the majors. He is currently back in the Braves minor league system trying to make his way to the majors, but currently is still somewhat struggling. Throughout the minors this year, he has a 4.26 ERA currently, so it may be a while till we see Ian Anderson, although he is 26, so there is still hope. But the question remains, what happened to Ian Anderson?
What brought Ian Anderson so much success was his changeup. In 2020 when he debuted, his changeup was talked about all over the league, becoming known as one of the best in the game. In 2020, he threw it 33% of the time, consistently locating it down and away. It was also the pitch he accrued the most strikeouts with, at 19. It was faster than the average changeup at 87.4 MPH on average and resulted in an opponent batting average at .104 and a slugging of .146, which is insane. It had a spin rate of 1748 and a whiff rate nearing 40%. Overall, this led to him having a fairly dark red baseball savant page, and well-above-average weak contact and ground ball rates.
The thing is, after 2020, his changeup began to decline in success. In 2021, the opposing average was up to .197, and by 2022 it was up to .209. His changeup was still pretty good, but not great. His Whiff% slowly decreased as well as his spin rate, which lowered all the way to 1519. To be clear, his changeup was still very good, but it was no longer dominant. Without that dominant offspeed, his fastball started to see less success as well, as the opposing batting average on that pitch went from .212 in 2020 to .306 in 2022. He had lower total inches of movement and spin rates on all of his pitches and was allowing much more hard contact on his pitches, as shown by the increase in Barrel% and Slugging. He also was no longer keeping the ball on the ground as his GB% decreased coinciding with the increase in Fly Ball% and Line Drive%.
Ian Anderson’s woes, while maybe not completely, should probably be associated with his injuries. According to an interview he had done with The Athletic, he had pitched with elbow discomfort throughout 2022, until finally being sidelined with a strained oblique in September of that year. In 2023, the elbow soreness came back as he tried to nurse it in AAA, but he continued to see no success. Finally, the inevitable happened and he was set to undergo Tommy John surgery in April 2023. Since he has come back, he is clearly not the same pitcher that he was all those years ago, and it is almost certainly attributable to his injury-plagued last few years. Since he is young, and he has shown signs of greatness, hopefully, he can soon fully recover and become the ace that Braves fans hoped he could be all of those years ago.
Kyle Wright had great things expected from him out of the gate, as he was the 5th overall pick in the 2017 draft. He performed well in the minors right out of the gate and made his debut in 2018. This was the beginning of the long and complicated journey of Kyle Wright.
Kyle Wright has been in the league for 7 years now. He has only pitched more than 40 innings in one season. In that season, he led the league with 21 wins. Now, to be clear, I think wins are a stupid stat to use to base how good a player is. However, I will say that 21 wins after barely ever having a season with even 21 innings is insane. Kyle Wright is pretty much the epitome of a Quadruple-A player. That is a player who always performs well in AAA, but can’t quite figure out how to make things work in the majors. From 2018-2021, Kyle Wright accrued exactly 70 innings total and did not pitch to any real success. In his very limited innings, he just could not do anything right. He would give up hard contact, could not keep runners off base, and did not strike that many people out. The only times he would really ever see major league talent was for a spot start here and there.
That is why 2022 is such a weird year for the Wins Leader, Kyle Wright. He finished the season with a 3.19 ERA, 128 ERA+, 1.159 WHIP, 174 K’s, and finished 10th in Cy Young Voting. Needless to say, Braves fans were convinced this was the beginning of a true dynasty, led by the modernized version of the three-headed monster they had from the 90s, including Max Fried, Spencer Strider, and Kyle Wright. Sadly, Kyle Wright’s success was what many analytics would consider “lucky”. Statisticians have tried hard to quantify luck in many ways, and there is no real good way to do it. First, let me show you Kyle Wright’s 2022 season Baseball Savant Page:
As you can tell, the only true thing Kyle Wright excelled in was keeping the ball on the ground. Every other main percentile was at the 65th percentile or below. He was lucky that he was backed by one of the better defensive infields in the game, led primarily by Dansby Swanson and his gold glove. Everything about his Savant page just screams “average pitcher”. In 2022, he even had league-average Barrel% and Solid%, which is not typical for someone in the top 10 of Cy Young voting. What happened to Kyle Wright this season to make him see all of his success, considering all of his peripherals say he should have been nothing more than average?
The first thing I noticed is his pitch mix. In 2018-2021, Wright switched between his fastball and his sinker as his primary pitch, with his primary offspeed being his slider. In 2022, he decided that this just was not working for him. That is when he decided to make his primary pitch his knuckle curve. He had always had this pitch, but it was always his 4th or 5th pitch. In 2022, it became his primary as he threw it 34.1% of the time, with the next highest being his sinker at 23.9%. This pitch resulted in a .211 average against, .307 SLG, and .251 wOBA. Needless to say, it was an extremely efficient and useful pitch. He was great at locating the pitch down in the zone, which is my best guess as to why he had so many ground balls that season, thoroughly helping him achieve the level of success he saw.
If it was not clear by the state of this article, 2023 was not a good year for Kyle Wright. In a limited number of innings of only 31, he had a 6.97 ERA. He battled a shoulder injury all season, until requiring shoulder surgery that would keep him out of the entire 2024 season. Hopefully, when he comes back from surgery, Kyle Wright can re-find some of that success he had in 2024, although in order to repeat that, he is going to need to change something. The peripherals proved that whatever success he was achieving was not meant to last.
