We better have a good excuse if we’re going to put a modern pitcher in the company of Randy Johnson and Pedro Martinez. Their names are not to be used lightly.
Currently providing a good excuse, however, is Jose Fernandez.
You might have noticed the Miami Marlins ace racking up strikeouts like crazy in 2016. With a rate of 13.10 strikeouts per nine innings, he has a comfortable advantage over Max Scherzer (11.56) for the MLB lead.
Lest anyone think a strikeout rate that huge is nothing out of the ordinary, here’s the up-to-date list of the highest single-season strikeout rates ever recorded:
- 2001 Randy Johnson: 13.41
- 1999 Pedro Martinez: 13.20
- 2016 Jose Fernandez: 13.10
Hence, Fernandez is in the company of Johnson and Martinez. This is a thing that is happening, and it’s worth investigating.
Fernandez being a strikeout pitcher isn’t anything new. Mainly with a blistering fastball and a knee-buckling, humiliation-inducing curveball, he posted a 10.5 K/9 across his first three seasons.
But in 2016, the Marlins’ hope was that the 23-year-old right-hander would actually become less of a strikeout pitcher.
“We want to see him continue to pitch and continue to develop his weapons, where he’s not having to have the mentality that I’ve got to strike everybody out,” Marlins manager Don Mattingly said in March to Clark Spencer of the Miami Herald. “There’s nothing wrong with having guy hit a ground ball early in the count. That’s what I’ve talked to him about.”
To some extent, it looks like Fernandez is trying to oblige. He’s cut down on his fastball usage, dropping it from 55.6 percent in 2015 to 54.4 percent this year. He’s also eased up on his velocity. His average fastball has been 94.9 mph. That’s still really good, but it’s a substantial drop from last year’s average of 95.8.
But strikeout rates as high as 13.1 per nine innings don’t happen by accident. More recently, Fernandez provided a few clues to what’s going on.
“A lot of it is location and making the right pitches at the right time,” Fernandez said in June, per Steven Wine of the Associated Press. “It’s something we’ve been working on. I like to throw 155 mph every pitch, but there are things you learn, and you become a pitcher and not just a guy who has good stuff.”
The main key for Fernandez, as it is with every non-knuckleball pitcher, has been fastball command. This is something that got away from him before his Tommy John surgery in 2014, when a career-low 56.2 percent of his fastballs were finding the strike zone.
As Fernandez was on the comeback trail in 2015, one thing he stressed to Christina De Nicola of Fox Sports Florida was not letting his arm drop, so as to avoid putting stress on his surgically repaired elbow. Sure enough, Brooks Baseball shows his release point went up in 2015 and again in 2016:
When Fernandez’s release point was higher in 2013, his fastballs found the zone 57.6 percent of the time. Not so coincidentally, raising it back up led to a 58.9 zone percentage last year and an even better 60.6 mark this year.
And there’s more! As August Fagerstrom of FanGraphs highlighted last month, Fernandez has gone from mostly working right down the middle with his fastball to working on the arm-side edge of the zone. That’s in on right-handed batters and away from left-handed batters. Either way, tough to hit.
With a better-location/harder-to-hit dynamic at play with Fernandez’s primary pitch, it’s naturally become more difficult for batters to gain an advantage against him. According to Baseball Savant, he’s been behind in the count at a career-low rate.
When Fernandez has gotten to two strikes on hitters, there’s one thing that hasn’t changed: His curveball is still his preferred finishing move. What’s changed is the effectiveness of his two-strike breaking balls. Witness:
The big difference has to do with location. While Fernandez is throwing more fastballs in the strike zone, he’s throwing more curveballs outside the strike zone in 2016. Only 36.8 percent of his hooks have been in the zone. Moreover, their hot spot is in a place that makes them tough to lay off and tough to hit.
With movement that made it a legend in the first place now combining with its new location pattern, we’re seeing a lot of swings like this at Fernandez’s curveball in 2016:
Fernandez would be dangerous enough if he had only his fastball and his curveball working. But 2016 has also seen him continue to develop his changeup.
It’s always had the movement to be a third dominant pitch in his arsenal. It was drawing a crowd as far back as his rookie season in 2013. Three years later, it has become the stuff of GIFs:
Like he’s doing with his curveball, Fernandez is now making the most of his changeup’s movement with his location. He’s throwing only 42.1 percent of his changeups in the zone. Also like his curveball, the hot spot for Fernandez’s changeup is in a place that makes it tough to lay off and tough to hit.
All of this adds up to a pitch that would be especially useful as an out pitch against left-handed batters. You can guess where this is going:
The only thing that doesn’t make the grade here is the rate at which Fernandez’s changeup is finishing off strikeouts of left-handed batters. But next to everything else, that also looks like something that could fix itself and potentially take his already sky-high strikeout rate even higher.
In all, that’s three plus pitches working beautifully in tandem with one another. The result is a historic strikeout rate that, though eye-popping, feels inevitable.
Fernandez was an elite prospect with huge minor league strikeout numbers when he arrived in 2013, and he really needed only his fastball and curveball to win Rookie of the Year. If further development wasn’t in the cards then, Tommy John surgery has a way of changing things. In his case, the change has been better use of talent that was already there.
Fernandez is not without his flaws. He’s giving up too much hard contact in 2016, suggesting he’s not above getting hurt by mistakes. In addition, his rate of 2.8 walks per nine innings has reversed what had been a downward trend in that department.
Still, strikeouts are the most foolproof way to collect outs. Fernandez is collecting those en masse by setting hitters up with his awesome fastball and knocking them down with his awesome secondaries.
If a pitcher can do that, he may indeed find himself sharing some special company.
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com and FanGraphs unless otherwise noted/linked.
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