Marco Gonzales and his boringly elite fastball
These days you can’t even go to a rotary club without coming out the other side thinking that Marco Gonzales is boring. Once you see he has a fastball in the upper 80’s your suspicions of boringness will be confirmed. To put into perspective just how boring Marco Gonzales is look no further than the Mariners team store.
There isn’t any Marco Gonzales merchandise on the Mariners’ team shop. The best you can do is customize a jersey yourself.
Oh sorry, were you trying to find some merch-- ANY merch, for the Mariners’ best pitcher?
I hope that by the time you reach the bottom of this page you will no longer view Gonzales as a boring pitcher. For one thing, those qualities that make him boring to the Mariners former CEO and also apparently to their marketing department are actually things that make him unique. Unique isn’t usually boring.
Before we get to the unique, let’s first establish the fact that he is very good. Since 2018, his first full season, he is the 17th best pitcher in baseball in terms of fWAR, at 9.2. That’s ahead of notable pitchers such as Luis Castillo, Walker Buehler and Jose Berrios. All three of whom have been All-Stars while Gonzales has never had that honor.
Marco Gonzales lived on the extremes in 2020, but not the type of extreme that gets you on Pitching Ninja’s feed. Gonzales is a more weird type of extreme. He had 4th percentile fastball velocity and 9th percentile whiffs. He can thrive with those numbers because of an 83rd percentile exit velocity and a 99th percentile BB%. He doesn’t give up free passes and primarily gives up soft contact.
Surprisingly one of the things not extreme about Gonzales is his K%. It was 49th percentile last year and when combined with the best BB% in baseball he actually had the 16th best K-BB% last year. Given his lowly whiff% it may be prudent to wonder whether his 23.1 K% is fluky. That K% is mostly backed up by his above-average CSW(Called Strikes plus Whiffs) which has been shown to strongly correlate with K%. Gonzales had a 30.7% CSW last year. League average was 28.9%. He clearly is getting a load of called strikes which is allowing him to out-pace his ability to get whiffs.
I’m guessing his fastball has something to do with that.
Gonzales sits in the upper 80’s with his fastball. He touches 90 occasionally but his fastball velocity is heading downhill after sitting 91 MPH in his first full season. What’s most interesting is the fact that his fastball gets great results. It’s his best pitch and 2020 was its best season. In fact, by Pitch Value, his fastball was the best fastball in all of baseball last year. You can’t have the best of anything and be boring. Especially when his fastball is unique among the other “best fastballs.” Look at the average velocity of the top 10 fastballs from last year.
Hitters simply couldn’t square up his fastball last year. He gave up a .218 wOBA(.277 xwOBA) on the pitch. That’s a huge improvement from the .343 wOBA in 2019 and .419 wOBA in 2018. The pitch has gone from a liability to a weapon all while losing velocity. Hitters saw the pitch a lot too as Gonzales threw it a whopping 45.3% of the time in 2020. Up from 37.7% in 2019.
Slower fastballs being thrown more often is not exactly what’s being taught at Driveline.
Something strange happens when Marco Gonzales pitches. He’ll blow an 88 MPH fastball by a hitter and it certainly doesn’t seem like you just saw an 88 MPH pitch. It looks faster. I’m no major league hitter and I’m certainly not standing in the batters box but I have a feeling it doesn’t seem like an 88 MPH fastball to them either.
Gonzales makes the most of his fastball by using it all over the strike zone and in any count. There is no count in which Gonzales didn’t throw his fastball at least 35% of the time last year. As for the command, Eno Sarris’ command metric places Gonzales as the 17th best in baseball. Even if a hitter is sitting on this fastball, which is a wise move given his propensity to throw it, they have no clue where the pitch is going. His heat map from 2020 shows a fastball that is used from the top to the bottom of the zone.
Gonzales’ Fastball(sinker) is the plurality for each batter count.
In an age of ever-increasing velocity there is something comforting and nostalgic about watching a pitcher like Marco Gonzales carve through major league hitters with stuff that might not look out of place on a college baseball field. Taking that concept to the extreme there would probably be nothing sweeter than watching him carve up the best hitter in baseball. But that’s probably never happened so we’ll have to lower our expectations.
Hold up.
Marco Gonzales struck out Mike Trout three times in a game just last August. I’m going to have to see that.
Strikeout #1
Ball(1-0) - Fastball 88.7
Foul(1-1) - Fastball 89.3
Ball(2-1) - Cutter 86.2
Strike(2-2) - Fastball 89.7
Swinging Strike(2-3) - Fastball 88.8
Strikeout #2
Strike(0-1) - Cutter 86.7
Foul Tip(0-2) - Fastball 89.5
Swinging Strike(0-3) - Fastball 89.5
Strikeout #3
Strike(0-1) - Curveball 73.7
Foul(0-2) - Cutter 86.5
Strike(0-3) - Fastball 88.8
Going into the last at-bat Trout had whiffed on multiple fastballs. Gonzales has got to be thinking he’s sitting fastball so he throws him the first curveball he’s seen today for an easy 0-1.
7 of the 11 pitches he threw during these at bats were fastballs. This is the type of “country hardball” you hear announcers swoon over when a pitcher challenges a great hitter with fastballs. You don’t exactly hear that same thing when the fastball ranges in velocity from 88-90 MPH.
Mike Trout has struck out three times in one game only 60 times in his Hall of Fame career. Trout has had a below average strikeout rate for each of the last 5 seasons. So on top of being the most feared hitter in the game, he isn’t exactly an easy strikeout. Trout was also white hot. Up to that point in the series he was 5 for 9 with 2 homers and 5 walks.
I’m a big Mike Trout fan so I never thought I’d enjoy seeing him strike out three times in a row. I did enjoy this. There was nothing boring about it.
Everyone throws hard these days. Seeing a player succeed who bucks the trend is exciting. If boring is a proxy for a lack of flashy stats than that is on the Mariners for not properly marketing or highlighting his unique strengths. Do your soul some good and watch an entire Marco Gonzales start this season. I have a feeling you won’t be bored. And to the Mariners, at least make a shirsey for this dude.