{"id":280497,"date":"2024-03-07T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2024-03-07T15:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=280497"},"modified":"2024-03-08T07:17:38","modified_gmt":"2024-03-08T13:17:38","slug":"how-sinker-could-make-ryans-repertoire-even-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/?p=280497","title":{"rendered":"How Sinker Could Make Ryan’s Repertoire Even Better"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fort Myers, Fla. – When Joe Ryan<\/a> burst onto the scene as a rookie down the stretch in 2021<\/a>, he was basically a one-pitch pitcher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan\u2019s four-seam fastball is a good one, and he found success with it then and still does. But he threw it a lot<\/em> — 65 percent of the time in a small sample in \u201821, more than any starting pitcher in baseball. He then threw it 60 percent of the time in his first full season in 2022, and with good reason — the fastball always performed well. But there was still a sense his pitch mix would need to evolve in order to set up him best for long-term success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two-and-a-half years later, Ryan still throws a lot of fastballs. But his pitch mix is otherwise transformed. Last season, he ditched his changeup and curveball while implementing a splitter that became his No. 2 pitch. He also upped his sweeper usage. And this spring, he\u2019s tinkering with another new pitch — a sinker, the goal being to provide the 27-year-old righty with as many weapons as possible<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a blast,\u201d Ryan said after logging three innings of one-run ball in Wednesday’s 7-1 win<\/a> over the Red Sox at Hammond Stadium. \u201cIt\u2019s fun to just see how different guys around the league use different pitches and it\u2019s always fun to keep working on stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan clarified the sinker isn\u2019t technically an entirely new pitch — he threw a two-seamer growing up, and the sinker grip is only a slight variation on that pitch. But that was a long time ago. These days, Ryan is far from the only pitcher jumping on the sinker train, an emerging trend that MLB.com\u2019s Mike Petriello recently explored<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHigh school and elementary school are a little bit different than the big leagues,\u201d Ryan said. \u201cBut at the same time, it’s still baseball and it\u2019s still pitching.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even without macro trends pushing pitchers toward throwing more sinkers, for a pitcher like Ryan who relies so much on his fastball, the exploration makes sense. Last season, Ryan still threw 57 percent four-seamers, and the splitter is effectively a fastball redesigned as a swing-and-miss pitch. A sinker just gives him another offering with slightly different movement coming out of the same slot, engineered to generate weak contact early in the count.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the kind of pitch that can keep Ryan\u2019s pitch count down, help him pitch deeper into games and withstand the demands of a long season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it’s a great pitch to add to the arsenal,\u201d said Ryan. \u201cI don’t know how much we’re going to use it. I don’t know what that usage looks like throughout the course of the season, but it’s a fun pitch to have in my back pocket to keep hitters off balance and it feels really good to throw.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan said the idea came out of \u201cjust joking around\u201d with grips and ideas in a casual way. Soon he was experimenting with it at Driveline this winter, and in Twins camp this spring, it\u2019s no longer a joke. For Ryan and Minnesota, the benefits could be very real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJoe has really defined strengths that he’s relied on for his entire career, and there’s still going to be a strengths,\u201d manager Rocco Baldelli said. \u201cBut you definitely need to keep developing those other pitches and pay a lot of attention to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“To be kind of blunt about it, hitters need more than one type of swing to hit in today’s game. You can’t just go out there and attack all of these fastballs in the same manner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fort Myers, Fla. – When Joe Ryan burst onto the scene as a rookie down the stretch in 2021, he was basically a one-pitch pitcher. Ryan\u2019s four-seam fastball is a good one, and he found success with it then and still does. But he threw it a lot — 65 percent of the time in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":274823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-280497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280505,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280497\/revisions\/280505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/274823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/csinewsnow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}