The Unhittable Brett Headrick | FanGraphs Baseball

What’s the best pitch in baseball?

That’s a tough question. Whatever answer you come up with will certainly say just as much about your methodology as the pitch itself. That’s OK. We’re open-minded people here, and there’s more than one way to approach this problem.

Here are the top 10 individual pitches, according to Baseball Savant, in both whiff rate and opponent xwOBA. Baseball Savant’s leaderboards require 2.5 pitches per team game to qualify, so this top 10 is out of 552 player-pitch combinations across baseball this year.

OK, the answer might just be Mason Miller’s slider. Still, seeing that pitch at the top of those lists, along with Burns’ slider, Skubal’s changeup, and Sánchez’s changeup, says we’re at least in the right neighborhood.

All of these pitches are what you’d call secondary offerings — i.e. not fastballs. This is where pitchers make their living. The fastball is the setup, and any offspeed pitch or breaking ball is the punchline. What about the fastball?

Well, here are the five best four-seamers in the league this year, according to Baseball Savant’s run value per 100 pitches metric.

The top two on this list, Latz and Messick, are both All-Stars this year. Each has a funky, deceptive delivery and a fastball with odd movement. (I’ve written about both this year if you want to know more.) No. 3 is Miller, who throws 115 mph.

You’ll notice I’ve excluded one name from each of these three leaderboards. It’s the same guy. Can you guess who it is?

Oh right, it’s in the headline.

The Yankees’ bullpen has been terrific this year. They lead the league in ERA; they’re second behind the Brewers in FIP, and they’re third behind the Dodgers and Brewers in opponent batting average. And as much credit as is due to Bednar; and Cruz, who’s having a career year at age 36; and shutdown multi-inning guys like Ryan Yarbrough and Paul Blackburn; Brent Headrick has been the Bronx Bombers’ best reliever this year.

Hendrick, the Twins’ ninth-round pick out of Illinois State in 2019, was an up-and-down guy for the first three years of his career. The Yankees didn’t even trade anything to get him; they just plucked him off waivers last spring.

The Yankees, being the crafty developers of pitchers that they are, had a couple pointers. Here’s Headrick’s delivery in his rookie season.

He’s pretty upright here. Also, look at his arm stab at the start of his delivery; Headrick keeps his arm swing short and hides the ball behind his thigh as he’s winding up. That technique — which plenty of pitchers use — will keep the hitter from getting a peek at the baseball early. It’s not a bad idea for a lefty without ideal velocity.

Here’s Headrick against the Dodgers a few weeks ago.

You’ll notice the arm stab is longer than it was in 2023; Headrick is dropping the ball down below his thigh. But he’s also getting his legs involved more. With the Twins, his leg drive was smooth, almost languid. With the Yankees, he drops his butt down, and then there’s almost a jerk as he stops and lunges forward. You’ll remember Clayton Kershaw also had this kind of hitch in his delivery.

Headrick is also throwing from a slightly higher arm angle.

I don’t know if the difference is all that clear from one video to the next, but changing the arm angle has done two things for Headrick. First: It’s changed the spin angle and movement on his four-seamer.

When Headrick was throwing from a lower three-quarters angle, he was getting tons of arm-side run on his fastball: 12.3 inches of induced break as a rookie, which was nearly twice as much as comparable four-seamers were getting. With a higher release point, the spin axis on his fastball is closer to 12 o’clock.

Now, instead of having that nutso arm-side movement, Headrick’s getting closer to average horizontal movement on his four-seamer, but two inches more rise than average. What if he needs a fastball with that arm-side run? Great question. I’ll get to that in three sentences.

Headrick’s higher arm angle has also allowed him to increase his vertical release point while getting more extension. Compared to his time with the Twins, he’s getting about four inches more extension and three or four inches more vertical release at the same time.

The other thing the Yankees have done is have Headrick start throwing a sinker. He basically only ever uses it against lefties, but with 15 inches of arm-side run, it’s a nice pitch to have.

Here’s a 3-0 four-seamer that juuust misses the inside corner. JJ Bleday, being miles ahead in the count with the bases empty in a four-run game, chooses not to invoke ABS, but notes the location.

The next pitch looks about the same, and if the 3-0 pitch was a strike, you’d better swing at this one.

Oh, sorry, JJ, this one was a sinker in on your kneecaps.

And if you get too comfortable with the fastballs, Headrick can go back to that slider with the near-50% whiff rate. This is the end of that at-bat against Eliezer Alfonzo from earlier.

No one has really been able to hit this. In fact, Headrick is getting into some pretty special territory.

A couple more scoreless outings and he’ll break the top three.

Headrick is interesting mostly because he’s going to be throwing for the Yankees in the playoffs this year, so it’ll be useful to know him. But also because he’s part of a trend. Lefty reliever with a rising four-seam fastball, offspeed pitch without much drop, gyro slider: That’s Dylan Lee. Add a curveball and you get Latz. Add a sinker and you get Headrick.

That’s by no means the only way to build an effective left-handed reliever. Adrian Morejon is getting by with more sinkers, and then there’s Josh Hader and Tanner Scott. But it does seem to be the trendy left-hand relief profile at the moment.