Ryan Borucki's next step will hinge on breaking ball development
For all the excitement that surrounds Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Danny Jansen and the Blue Jays’ future position player core, the team is not awash in young pitching talent.
That’s why it was so encouraging for the team to see Ryan Borucki’s emergence last year. Pitching in a tough division, in front of a dubious defensive club, Borucki managed an encouraging 3.87 ERA (with a 3.80 FIP to match) in a 97.2 inning rookie campaign and looked like part of the club’s long-term future in the rotation - a title no other pitcher in the organization can confidently claim.
Although Borucki’s 2018 was largely positive, it left some room for doubt as well. The 24-year-old’s style is a throwback in an era where velocity and throwing as many breaking balls as the human elbow will endure is the standard. You don’t see many guys breaking through who are fastball-changeup dominant and rely on command and pitching to contact as opposed to missing bats with raw stuff.
“Once I figured out that was my game I just rolled with it,” Borucki explains. “Pitch my game pitched backwards, just like how Mark Buehrle did, pound the zones with strikes, and let my defence work behind me instead of wasting pitches trying to put away guys.”
The idea of pitching to contact has become increasingly divisive. When going deep in games was a starter’s primary goal, it made more sense as a philosophy. Now that’s less often the case.
Even as we’re learning more and more about pitchers managing contact from Statcast, the best contact is still no contact. The fact Borucki had a 10th percentile strikeout rate and an essentially-average exit velocity against (53rd percentile) is a bit of a troubling combo. If he’s going to allow guys to get wood on the ball so often, you’d hope it’d be worse quality.
Borucki does deserve credit for avoiding getting truly squared up. His “Hard Hit” rate allowed is strong (66th percentile) and his HR/9 was an excellent 0.65. Some luck goes into that, but the left-hander has always had a lot of success keeping the ball in the yard throughout his pro career. The most long balls he’s given up in a season is 13 and he remarkably conceded just one dinger in 115.1 innings at Single-A in 2016.
“I’m constantly attacking [hitters],” he says. “I’ve got my changeup and my sinker that I work on the bottom half of the zone and just come at ‘em with both of those and I keep them off-balance with my changeup so they can’t really rev up to take one out of the yard on me.”
Even with his ability to keep the ball in the park, if Borucki is going to build on his rookie year and make big improvements, it’s going to be on the strength of his third pitch, a slider. The left-hander is the first to admit the pitch lags well behind his top two, for the simple reason that it’s comparatively new to him.
“When I was a freshman, sophomore in high school I only threw a fastball and changeup. So I didn’t really throw a breaking ball a lot until I got to pro ball. Those reps are still coming.”
Last season, Borucki had his moments with the pitch, which opponents swung for (51.7 percent) and missed (30.8 percent) at respectable rates. He also got more and more comfortable with it as the season wore on.
“Last year when I started throwing it a lot it got a lot better. I took the time off from throwing so right now it’s still coming back and I’m trying to get the feel back.”
Now, it worth noting that rising breaking ball usage didn’t correlate with a strikeout spike or radical change in Borucki’s overall effectiveness, but it’s a trend to watch this year.
The lefty is undoubtedly good as it is, but it’s hard to imagine him taking a big leap forward from here unless he misses a few more bats. The easiest way to imagine that happening is him taking strides with the breaking ball. Mark Buehrle may have carved out an enviable career with one of the lowest strikeout rates in the game, but he also had extremely good control and saved runs at the margin by fielding his position like no one else and rendering the running game nonexistent.
Those are tough qualities to emulate, and while improving a less refined third pitch is no easy thing either it’s probably an easier road to reaching the next level than becoming the greatest fielding pitcher of his era.
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