Kyle Gibson ended last year with a new sweeper. Will it be the key to the new Orioles starter's success in 2023?
The Orioles' main rotation addition this winter added a new pitch at the end of 2022, and it's one the Orioles like.
When he signed with the Orioles late last year, veteran right-hander Kyle Gibson mentioned the switch to a sweeper slider he made in late-September with the Phillies in a media session that was much more focused on the big-picture reasons he decided to come to Baltimore.
More recently, he spoke about the change in an MLB Network Radio interview and brought the tweaks back into focus. For many — myself included — that little nugget made the signing click a bit. The Orioles, after all, love the pitch for a variety of reasons and have helped many pitchers hone and improve it at all levels over the last few years.
It’s not a huge sample, considering he made two starts after debuting the pitch in the regular season then just two relief outings in the Phillies’ World Series run. Moreover, the results weren’t exactly stellar — he gave up 12 earned runs in 11 innings over those two starts. But he struck out 16 of the 52 batters he faced (30.8%) in that little spell, and clearly showed enough in terms of a major league caliber out pitch (along with his general durability and most importantly his willingness to sign here) to make him the Orioles’ sole rotation addition this winter.
The question is just to what extent a change in his arsenal can change what he is as a pitcher.
Gibson said on his introductory Zoom call with reporters that he added the pitch ahead of his Sept. 25 start against the Atlanta Braves. This handy infographic at Baseball Savant tells the story of its usage that day, but the highlights are as such: he threw it 28 times, with 12 swinging strikes on and two balls in play classified as not hit hard. It moved decently well, even if it was a little scattered, and overall seemed like an effective pitch in a vacuum.
In his next start against the Nationals, he threw the pitch a season-high 30 times, and this time had just six swinging strikes with three of six balls in play hit hard. One was a hanger that Luke Voit hit for a home run.
The composite of those two starts has some promising markers: 10 of those 16 strikeouts came on two-strike sliders, and opposing hitters whiffed on 18 of their 35 swings at the pitch. The batted ball data is pretty polar; either the ball was hit hard or meekly.
The pitch doesn’t exist on its own, though. It is meant to provide another movement plane for hitters to have to consider, meaning they have to cover horizontal movement possibilities as well as the vertical ones that a fastball or changeup. It’s helpful to consider Gibson as a whole in these two starts, and in each one, the expected stats weren’t exactly kind to Gibson.
Three home runs will do that, and as we know, one came off the new sweeper, so it’s not blameless. But with as full an arsenal as Gibson has, with both a sinker and a four-seam fastball, plus a sweeper and a cutter to go with a curveball and changeup, there’s a potential to refine that based on what traits the new pitch has that can improve its effectiveness in certain situations where Gibson’s other pitches may have faltered.
This is what they did with Jordan Lyles, who from 2021 to 2022 cut down on his four-seam fastball usage in favor of a sinker, kept his sweeper as his primary secondary pitch, and threw his curveball less often.
We’re talking about different pitchers, and there’s no one-size-fits-all formula, but for comparison’s sake Lyles threw his two fastballs 48 percent of the time in 2021 — 39.5% for his four-seamer and 8.5% for his sinker. In 2022, that was 49.3 percent of the time, with the four-seamer at 31.8% and the sinker at 17.5%. Gibson is more sinker-heavy, and though the Orioles’ organizational preference seems to be for four-seamers with hop to pair with those sweeper sliders, they aren’t averse to sinker usage — as Lyles can attest.
At least in 2022, Gibson’s curveball was a pitch that didn’t fare well. It was his least-frequently thrown pitch, clocking in at 6.6% of his overall pitches, but was tagged for five home runs and an .897 slugging percentage. It remains a bat-misser to some extent, but the sweeper could easily replace it. And in his last start of the season, it did. Gibson didn’t throw a single curveball in that final start of the year against Washington, and only used his four-seam fastball three times.
Perhaps that’s a path forward—sinker, sweeper, cutter, and changeup—that allows Gibson to more effectively compete against both sides and allows him to better feature a pitch that clearly has some promising potential.
What these two starts do, however, is show that it’s not a panacea on its own. He still didn’t perform particularly well in either, and the fact he was throwing the pitch with an element of surprise didn’t change that. But there’s more to it than just having the pitch in his bag. The Orioles will help him gameplan around it and otherwise be pretty dogmatic about what he should throw, when, and why. They’ll also give him half of his starts in Camden Yards, where the ball no longer floats out over the left field wall with regularity, and he’ll be pitching in front of a much better overall defense than the softball team in Philadelphia.
It’s going to take all those things — sweeper included — to click for Gibson to be what the Orioles need him to be this year. They won’t make him the caliber of pitcher many had their sights set on for the Orioles’ rotation this winter, but Gibson being better than many expect him to be will certainly help make clear the path to the playoffs for this team. Honing this new sweeper may be the key to it.
That infographic link is great! Thanks Jon!