Walker Buehler’s Impressive Pitch Comps
Walker Buehler, the Dodgers young right-handed pitcher, is just 3 starts into his Major League career and has already contributed to a no-hitter. It doesn’t take a particularly well-trained eye to see that Buehler has good pitches, in fact, his pitches often make batting seem unfair. He’s a 23-year-old top prospect, and that may be about all you need to know to appreciate that he has good stuff, but I’m going to dive into it a bit deeper here.
When Lance McCullers made his Major League debut, I covered his pitching comps, outlining that the young righty had some of the best pitches in the game. Walker Buehler’s stuff might be even better.
Fastball
It all starts with the fastball for the Kentucky-born Buehler. He averages 97 mph with the pitch and gets 10 inches of rise with it. He also has a little arm-side tail that keeps the pitch from being worrisomely straight.
When we filter the MLB leaderboards for similar pitches, we’re left with a who’s who of fastball throwers. Aroldis Chapman has a similar fastball, though a few notches faster, as does Matt Bush, Keone Kela, and the Pirates’ Michael Feliz, but the only other starter currently rocking this type of fastball is Mike Foltynewicz. I covered Folty’s exciting new groove a few weeks ago, but having a fastball like Folty hardly guarantees success.
Changeup
Buehler throws a hard changeup. Something about the 90 mph changeup seems mighty unfair, but MLB is allowing Buehler throw it. To properly evaluate a changeup, we really need to look at it relative to the the fastball, especially for Buehler since not many peoplee average 97 mph fastballs with 90+ mph changeups. Buehler’s changeup is about 6 mph slower than his fastball and appears to move down about 4 inches, and has about 4 inches more run than his fastball.
When we filter for pitches like that, we find that James Shields and Mike Clevinger are the only starters rocking similar changeups relative to their fastball in 2018. Being compared to Shields in 2018 is not the best thing ever, but he has made a career pitching off of his changeup and it’s still a solid offering.
Slider
Buehler’s slider is also hard. (Do you sense a theme?) Coming in at 88 mph, the pitch has serious downward bite and moves about 6 inches in the opposite direction of his fastball. This one is better seen than described:
https://twitter.com/PitchingNinja/status/990331016777732097
The only MLB starters with similar sliders are Garrett Richards and Luis Severino, though neither is a great fit in terms of shape. Richards’ offering moves less both vertically and horizontally, while Severino’s moves about the same as Buehler’s, but plays off of his fastball more dramatically. Severino’s fastball has less rise and slightly more run, making a pitch that dips and curves the other way more different.
Curveball
The Dodgers’ righty is a traditional four-pitch guy, but none of these offerings are merely average. His curveball is of the really sharp downward variety. It drops about 9 inches, or 19 inches from where his fastball trajectory would have been. It also has about 4 inches of break towards first base, a bit more than his slider.
The most similar curveball is Alex Cobb’s, though Tyler Glasnow’s offering is also of similar velocity and bend. Those two might not have the resume of Severino or Richards, but their curveballs are quality offerings.
So to recap, the young Buehler has Mike Foltynewicz’s fastball (.271/.366/.480) paired with James Shields’ changeup (.214/.290/.250), Luis Severino’s slider (.133/.167/.213), and Tyler Glasnow’s curveball (.143/.200/.214). Those pitches, when combined with Buehler’s typical mix (64% fastball, 19% slider, 14% curve, and 2% Changeup) equate to a .223/.299/.382 line. For reference, that’s about what Freddy Galvis put together last year.
Of course, that doesn’t account for the fact that Buehler has all of those pitches, which keeps hitters that much more off balance and result in a line more like his current .179/.270/.179. All of this is to say: Walker Buehler has some great stuff and I’d love to take a day off to watch him pitch in LA.
-Sean Morash
