It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch.
The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches, I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to see if the recent results are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth buying into or if they're just mirages.
Each week, I'll try to cover change for at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully you'll find it useful, so let's get started.
Most of the charts you see below are courtesy of Kyle Bland over at Pitcher List. He created a great spring training app (which he's now carried over into the regular season) that tracks changes in velocity, usage, and pitch movement. It also has a great strike zone plot feature, which allows you to see how the whole arsenal plays together.I'll also use Alex Chamberlain's awesome work with his Pitch Leaderboard.
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Nick Lodolo - Cincinnati Reds (Pitch Mix Change, Arm Angle Change, New Slider Shape)
After years of injuries and inconsistencies, are we finally getting the Nick Lodolo that we anticipated back when he was a prospect? Lodolo carved up the minor leagues, with a 2.70 ERA and 1.09 WHIP in 96.2 minor league innings, where he also struck out 149 batters and walked just 22. Yes, a 149:22 K:BB ratio. Yet, due to multiple injuries and some confounding trouble with command, Lodolo has a 4.24 career MLB ERA in 289 innings with 91 walks to 326 strikeouts.
This season, however, he has come out like a house on fire, registering a 2.25 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, and 26:4 K:BB ratio in 36 innings through six starts. So, how has he done it?
For starters, Lodolo is healthy now, which is great news after pitching just 115.1 innings last year and 34.1 innings the year before that. He has also made some minor shifts in his pitch mix, dialing back the use of his four-seamer and leaning into both the changeup and sinker more.
As you can see from Kyle Bland's chart, in Lodolo's last start against the Rockies, he went to his sinker far more than his fastball despite facing all right-handed batters. He keeps the sinker high and outside to righties, which allows it to miss slightly more bats than the average sinker, but it does have a 41% ICR, which is only slightly better than league average. All things considered, it's about a league average pitch, but should set the four-seamer up to miss more bats up in the zone if hitters get used to seeing the sinker and then get the four-seamer upstairs. Lodolo seems to agree, which is why his four-seam fastball has been in the top third of the zone 10% more to righties this year. However, it's not missing many bats, and a lot of that could be that the sinker and four-seamer are basically the same velocity with minimal movement differences, so it's not enough to fool hitters.
What has been a nice change for Lodolo this year has been using the changeup more often. Last year, he threw the pitch 16% of the time, but he's using it 23% of the time this year. He also seems to have tightened up the movement on it, taking off some of the horizontal run and adding a touch more drop. That could also be helping him command the pitch better since he has a 40% zone rate and 71% strike rate on the changeup this year after posting a 35% zone rate and 64% strike rate last year. He's also been using it more in two-strike counts and keeping it arm-side almost 10% more, which is helping his PutAway rate on the pitch in those two-strike counts. The pitch models like this new version of the changeup, and so do I.
He also seems to have taken off some of the horizontal movement on his curveball as well this season, which had me thinking that there might be a bigger change behind all of this. Turns out, there might be.
As you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard, Lodolo has now dropped his arm angle for the third straight season. Perhaps that's simply an angle he feels better pitching from. We talked about how Matthew Boyd changed his arm angle this season to let pitches move more naturally rather than force a movement profile onto them. That might be what Lodolo is doing here too. Perhaps lowering his arm slot allows him to command the changeup and curve more effectively because they move slightly less East-West.
What we do know is that Lodolo has a career-high zone rate, is getting ahead of hitters more regularly than he ever has, and has a career-high strike rate. The issue is that increased command has so far come at the expense of strikeouts since he has a career-low swinging strike rate (SwStr%) and strikeout rate. Yet, looking at his approach and his pitch shapes, I think Lodolo still has the arsenal to post a 25% strikeout rate. He just needs to figure out how to optimize this new pitch mix and maybe address the lack of velocity and shape difference between his sinker and four-seamer.
Matthew Liberatore - St. Louis Cardinals (Changeup shape, Cutter Shape, Attack Plan Change)
Matthew Liberatore is another former well-regarded prospect who has not lived up to expectations but is taking a step forward in 2025. Liberatore was not the level of prospect that Lodolo was, but he debuted with St. Louis at 22 years old, and many people assumed he would be a fixture in their rotation for a while. So far, he's pitched to a 4.73 ERA and 1.36 WHIP in 96 MLB appearances with only 29 starts. Yet, here he is with a 3.19 ERA, 0.97 WHIP, and 23.1% strikeout rate through his first five starts. So what do we make of this?
The first change I noticed is that Liberatore has not only changed the shape of his changeup but also doubled the usage to 14.3% from 7.2% last year. He uses the changeup exclusively to righties and has added three inches of horizontal run this season while cutting off two inches of vertical break and also throwing the pitch two mph faster. James Schiano, who co-hosts the Rotoworld Fantasy Baseball Q&A with me on Mondays at Noon ET, speculated that Liberatore could have switched his grip to a kick-change, which would fit with his release point and movement profile.
We also know that Liberatore is throwing the pitch in the zone more often, missing slightly more bats, and trying to use the changeup early in the count to righties. This allows him to rely less on his four-seam fastball and sinker to righties since he can get ahead with the changeup, and that's been a nice change for him. Last year, his cutter and sinker got hit hard by righties, and his four-seam fastball didn't miss many bats, so he needed a change in approach there.
He has also changed his attack plan to righties with just his locations. In addition to using his changeup more often, he's throwing his four-seam inside to righties 20% more often and his cutter inside to righties 30% more often. His plan appears to be to jam righties inside with his fastballs to offset the changeup away or the slider low in the zone. That approach has led to plenty of weak contact but a drop in SwStr% to righties. Still, that's a change I'll take, especially since Liberatore's swinging strike rate to lefties has climbed to nearly 18%.
Part of that is because he's using his slider 7% more often to lefties and getting it glove-side far more often. The other change has been that Liberatore is using his cutter more to lefties as an early-in-the-count offering and doing a better job of keeping it low and away. The cutter is now two inches slower with less drop and more horizontal bite, which makes it a solid pairing with the slower and sweepier slider. Using the cutter more often early in the count has also allowed Liberatore to dial back the usage of his sinker and four-seamer to lefties, and the cutter is grading out as a good pitch for him this season.
At the end of the day, I think these changes make a lot of what we're seeing from Liberatore legitimate. I don't think he'll finish with a 3.19 ERA, but he's reducing hard contact to righties and missing more bats to lefties, which means you may get a lot of starts from him where he goes six innings, allows two runs, and strikes out four batters. That's going to be valuable in deeper formats, and I think he has a long leash in this rotation that's collapsing around him.
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Ben Casparius - Los Angeles Dodgers (New Cutter, Arm Slot Change, New Changeup Shape)
With the Dodgers' rotation banged up and the team beginning a stretch of 10 games in 10 days, Dave Roberts has said a few times that they have discussed stretching Ben Casparius out as a starter. The 26-year-old has thrived in a relief role for the Dodgers this season, but 19 of his 21 appearances in the minors last year came as a starter, so this isn't some major role change. He was also pretty good between Double-A and Triple-A last year, posting a 3.35 ERA, 1.25 WHIP, and 28% strikeout rate, even though he was old for the level.
Given that he could find himself with a rotation spot on one of the best teams in baseball, I thought it was smart to look into who Casparius is and what he's doing this year that might be working for him.
Right here, we have our first hint from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard. Casparius raised his arm angle over four degrees from last year, and we can see how drastically that has changed the horizontal movement (H-Mov) profile of his pitch mix. Coming from that higher arm angle has allowed his slider and cutter to pick up significant horizontal movement. His four-seam fastball also jumped in vertical movement from 14.8 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB), according to Pitcher List's metrics, to 18.1 inches this year. That has improved the PLV and Stuff+ grades on almost all of his offerings, but what does that mean for him as a pitcher?
We do need to highlight that Casparius' longest outing this season was 3.1 innings, so there are a lot of things you can do in your pitch mix when you don't have to go through the order two or three times. For instance, you can heavily dial back the usage of your four-seam fastball, as Casparius has done. That being said, I do love that Casparius has leaned into his cutter more this season. He uses it primarily to lefties - 28% of the time - but he also mixes it in 13% of the time to righties as a go-between for his four-seam fastball and slider.
This season, the cutter has more horizontal movement, as we covered above, and he's using it up in the zone more often against lefties. It's only up in the zone 38% of the time, but that's still an improvement from last year, and he throws it inside to lefties almost 50% of the time. He has also been using it a lot more in two-strike counts against lefties, and it is getting plenty of whiffs at the top of the zone as one of his best two-strike offerings.
That's important for him because he doesn't throw his slider much to lefties, and his curve, which he uses exclusively to lefties, is more of a pitch he tries to steal strikes with early in the count. He gets league-average swing and miss on the pitch, but it doesn't give up a lot of hard contact, so it's a fine but not great offering, which means he needs that cutter to miss bats against lefites if he's going to have a true out pitch for opposite-handed hitters. Other than occasionally going to the four-seamer upstairs.
Overall, I see that the pitch models like Casparius, and I see why he's been an impactful multi-inning reliever, but I'm not as convinced about him as a starter. One of the biggest reasons has to do with his locations.
If you look at Kyle Bland's plot chart above, you can see that nothing Casparius throws moves down-and-in to righties, and the only pitch that even moves in to righties at all is his four-seam fastball. Yet, he throws his four-seam fastball inside just 25% of the time to righties, and, as is typical of the Dodgers, uses it up in the zone just 44% of the time despite adding vertical movement to it and making it a flatter fastball than in years past. (WHY DO YOU HATE HIGH FASTBALLS SO MUCH!?)
I think this arsenal, which almost exclusively attacks away to righties, is why his SwStr% is 5% better against lefties this season. The cutter and slider are good pitches, but we also saw Graham Ashcraft struggle for years against righties because both of his best pitches moved similarly and attacked the same part of the strike zone. I'm not saying Casparius is Ashacraft, but I'm just saying that while I like the IDEA of his pitch mix as a starter, I don't know if I love the attack plan, and so I'd need to see that change before I can buy into him being a reliable starter for fantasy baseball.
Andrew Heaney - Pittsburgh Pirates (New Curve, Slider Shape, Pitch Mix Change)
ARTICLE WAS DRAFTED AND SUBMITTED BEFORE TUESDAY NIGHT'S START
When I added Heaney to this article, I thought I was going to dig into what he was doing and tell you that this was the same old Heaney. Now, I’m not sure that’s true. Yes, the velocity is the same, and there is no brand-new pitch (or is there?), but Heaney is attacking hitters much differently in 2025.
One of the first major changes we can see is that he’s dialed back the use of his slider a lot and is using the curveball way more. Heaney threw his slider 28% of the time in 2024, using it 35% to lefties and 26% to righties. So far in 2025, he's using it 17% of the time overall, 20.5% of the time to lefites and 15% to righties. At first, that may seem confusing to you since we've associated Heaney with a slider for a while now, but his Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) on the pitch has been getting worse in every season since 2021. Last year, he allowed a 43% ICR on the pitch, which suggests that, despite it having a great swinging strike rate, it wasn't a pitch that he needed to use as often as he was.
So far, he's been using the pitch early in the counts less often and using it as more of a two-strike pitch, even to righties. Even though it's giving up a similar ICR, since he's using it less often, it's not hurting him as much, and he's still getting a lot of swings and misses on it. The slider also appears to be slower this season, coming in at 80 mph and with more horizontal break and drop, which has helped it to grade better on most pitch models. This could be because, much like Lodolo above, Heaney dropped his arm angle this season.
Heaney is now throwing from a four-degree lower arm slot, which has taken away some of the vertical movement from his arsenal and added horizontal break overall. We see that on the slider, but also on the curve, which he has leaned on far more often this season.
Last year, Heaney threw the curve just 3.6% of the time, but he's up to 10% usage this year and throwing it to both righties and lefties after rarely throwing any to lefties last year. That could be because he has more horizontal break on the pitch and felt more comfortable using it as a strike pitch to lefties, with a 60% zone rate, as he doesn't need to focus only on burying it low-and-away.
We should acknowledge that Statcast has Heaney throwing a slider, a curve, and a "slow curve," but none of Pitcher List, Brooks Baseball, or Alex Chamberlain have that same classification, which is why the curveball and slider metrics are a bit all over the place. Has Heaney truly added a new curve, or is he manipulating the spin on it like we know Seth Lugo does to throw different versions depending on the count and the handedness of the hitter? Whatever he's doing there, it has been working.
He’s also using the sinker far more to left-handed hitters and using the changeup more to both righties and lefties, which means he's less reliant on his four-seam fastball, which is a good thing. His strikeout rate and swinging strike rate are the highest they’ve been since 2022, and his Ideal Contact Rate is the lowest it’s ever been, so the new approach is certainly working. However, I'd be lying to you if I said I believed this would last the full season. His sinker is getting hit hard, so I'm not sure using it more is good, and the fastball is still an average pitch. The slider is giving up a decent amount of hard contact, and his changeup appears to be a slightly above-average pitch that's actually underperforming last year.
At the end of the day, I think Heaney's new pitch mix and approach raise his floor just a bit, but I don't believe it leads to this kind of ceiling. I think he's in the middle of one of the hot stretches we've seen him go on before, and he now pitches his home games in a park that suppresses home runs, which has been a major weakness of his. That may mean he pitches well enough to stay on deep league rosters all year long, but I don't believe he's going to be somebody you start regardless of who the opponent is.
Matthew Pouliot
