Chris Paddack is a relief pitcher
There are good reasons why Chris Paddack is having a hard time as a starting pitcher, and here some some of them.
After dominant pitching performances from Blake Snell, Joe Musgrove, and Ryan Weathers, the pressure was on Chris Paddack to show up against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sunday and prove that he could do the same.
Paddack was not terrible, so that’s a step in the right direction. In 4 innings, Paddack gave up 4 hits, 3 walks, and 3 runs (2 ER). That’s a better final line than ace-of-the-staff Yu Darvish had, but Paddack looked like he was laboring for most of the appearance.
His 2nd inning was a perfect 1-2-3 inning. In each of the other 3 innings, Paddack walked someone and gave up a hit. This explains the 1.75 WHIP and explains why “The Sherriff” seemed to be pitching from the stretch the whole time.
However, none of the above is why I wanted to write about Paddack today. It was something Mark Grant said during the broadcast, and then something Chris Paddack’s brother tweeted last night.
Two pitches
After Paddack was pulled, having thrown 89 pitches, Mudcat said that he only saw two pitches thrown by Paddack all day: fastball and changeup. This brought me back to the days of early 2019, when the Padres made the decision to start the season with Paddack in the rotation while talking heads argued that a starting pitcher at this level needs more than two pitches.
Typically, they’re not wrong. Starting pitchers, who see batters 3+ times during a game, usually have three or more pitches to try and keep them hitters guessing. The instances when a starting pitcher has performed well with such a limited arsenal are when that pitcher has an unhittable pitch (like a knuckelball or Hideo Nomo’s famous forkball).
The Padres argument was a pretty simple one, at the time. Paddack’s fastball command is almost perfect, his changeup is almost unhittable, and Darren Balsley can teach him a third pitch.
The problem of Paddack as a starter splinters off into a lot of directions, but here is where it should always start: If he didn’t feel comfortable enough to throw the curveball for one of his 89 pitches yesterday, it doesn’t really exist. Chris Paddack only has two pitches…and hitters can spot them from a mile away.
Location
During the broadcast yesterday, former MLB relief pitcher Bob Scanlan confirmed something that I swear I was seeing with my eyes: Paddack almost never throws his fastball low in the strike zone (or even below it). It’s always in the middle of the zone or up.
On the other side, Paddack throws his changeup exclusively low in the zone, which makes it nearly impossible for hitters to get under. As Scanlan said, hitters can take the philosophy of “If it’s high, let it fly. If it’s low, let it go.” High fastballs are hit hard, and deep, while the changeups are largely ignored.
I’m not going to get into how Paddack’s fastball moves more now than it did during that 2019 season, or how that’s being caused by his throwing motion, but you can see by looking at the above that the issue of location is only getting worse. The fastball avoided the lowest parts of the zone in 2019 but was definitely less predictable.
Blowing away hitters with high fastballs with the looming threat of a changeup sounds more like the pitching philosophy of a relief pitcher than it does a starter.
No shame in the bullpen
I made a mistake last night and looked at the truly terrible Twitter account of Chris Paddack’s brother, and found this:
So, first off, that’s Michael Paddack trying to use a poor Spring Training start from Shohei Ohtani last week to try and mock Padres fans. This doesn’t deserve a further breakdown but know that it’s hilariously stupid.
However, his facepalm reply to someone saying that there’s nothing wrong with bullpen duty struck me. Because it’s true! Playing major league baseball is incredibly difficult and rare, and sometimes it doesn’t all come together until you find the right role for yourself.
Most relief pitchers start out as starters and transition to bullpen duty because they’re better suited for it. There are even two within the organization that could talk to Chris about it:
Trevor Hoffman took the very normal route of going from minor league shortstop to minor league starting pitcher before someone figured out he was made to be a reliever. He is a Hall of Famer, with a major annual award named after him, and I doubt he’d be upset about getting moved to bullpen duty.
Drew Pomeranz literally made an all-star game as a starting pitcher and, just a few years later, realized he could be more effective if he became a 2-pitch relief pitcher.
Pomeranz now makes more per-year than he made during any of his time as a starting pitcher.
With guys like Ryan Weathers, Adrian Morejon, and MacKenzie Gore on their way to the starting rotation very soon (Morejon pitches tonight!), Paddack either needs to figure out how to be as effective as he was in 2019 or he needs to embrace the fact that he was built to be an MLB relief pitcher. He can take pride in that. Most people would give anything to be an MLB relief pitcher.
While Paddack wasn’t a disaster in his first 2021 start, he did show weaknesses in his game that he doesn’t appear ready to overcome.
1-0 start
I tend to look at series as games. The best teams in the league win most of the series they play in, and I predicted that the Padres would win this first series against the Diamondbacks.
It’s fun to say the Padres are 3-1, even without much of an impact from Fernando Tatis Jr. or Manny Machado, but I currently view them as 1-0 because they won the series and are onto another with the San Francisco Giants starting tonight.