NEWSLETTER
Dan Winkler appears, at first blush, to be a fairly generic MLB player. A right-handed, short-inning reliever with a robust medical history, a low 90s fastball, and a FIP/xFIP combination a full two ticks higher than his ERA. It’s easy to dismiss him as dime a dozen, as not worth the 40-man spot and seven figure salary he’d attain if tendered a 2021 contract by Wednesday’s deadline.
It’s a viewpoint I understand, and I know Winkler didn’t make a good first impression on Cubs fans when he walked eight batters in his first seven outings. But what I want to tell you is what drew the Cubs to Winkler, and what informed the changes they made with him in 2020, both help give context for his 2020 success (particularly in whiffs and bad contact) and help excuse some of the control problems. Winkler shows what can happen when R&D departments and pitching coaches work in concert, and I like the unique look he gives hitters out of a bullpen.
No one else the Cubs have succeeds quite like Winkler.
Among the 415 right-handed pitchers to throw 100 pitches in 2020, Winkler ranked as the 37th-lowest release point, per Baseball Savant data. It’s been my contention the Cubs signed Winkler particularly because of this, as there are new-age reasons to be optimistic about lower release points. It stems from a number you’ll find in Trackman data (which is not publicly available for MLB pitchers): Vertical Approach Angle. This number, which combines release height, velocity, spin, and location to reveal the angle at which the ball enters the plate. There has been data to suggest that the extremes of the scale: very steep and very flat, are particularly successful with hard stuff. The best introduction to thinking about pitching approach angles that I’ve seen came from Ethan Moore at Prospects 365 this summer.
I believe the Cubs identified Winkler as someone with an extremely low release point and good spin rates, who wasn’t maximizing his Vertical Approach Angle potential by pitching up in the zone enough. Because location is part of the VAA calculation, pitching high in the strike zone from a low release point will create the flattest approach angle. In 2018 and 2019 combined, Winkler threw 42.3% of his total pitches high in the strike zone. In 2020, that number jumped all the way to 57.9%, which ranked third(!) in all of baseball among pitchers who threw 100 total pitches.
Give the Cubs credit. They identified Winkler as unique due to this one trait, and they worked to center his strategy around what best makes him successful. And while being asked to live in the top third of the strike zone did result in extra walks early in the season, we can’t ignore that Winkler settled into that way of pitching as the season went along. In his final 11 outings, Winkler was in control and pretty dominant: 11.1 IP, 8 H, 2.38 ERA, 3 BB, 12 K. For the season, his average exit velocity allowed was in the 91st percentile, so he was not getting hit hard all year.
This was particularly true with his cutter, where Winkler allowed an average exit velocity of just 78.7 mph, fifth best in baseball among pitchers that threw at least 50 cutters in 2020. The cutter was another area where the Cubs saw potential. Winkler threw the pitch 56% of the time in 2020, according to Baseball Savant, thirteen percentage points more than in 2019 and easily the most of his career.
If we put these two things together, more cutters and more balls up in the zone, we begin to see what the Cubs identified in Winkler. In 2020, 34.4% of Winkler’s total pitches were cutters up in the zone. In 2018 and 2019, that number was just 25.5%. I asked Ethan Moore, the author of the post linked above, to help me answer why the Cubs were so interested here. Moore has built a model that estimates Vertical Approach Angle using its component metrics with much success, and I asked him to analyze Winkler’s cutter. What he found was that it was elite in terms of its VAA.
The higher you appear in the graph, the flatter your Vertical Approach angle is. Winkler is the middle-top red dot, top 8 in baseball.
As we finally get to talking about the decision tomorrow on tendering Winkler a contract, this is all why I am inclined to believe in the second half of Winkler’s season more than the first (and also, why I’ll believe he deserved a better ERA than FIP). The Cubs made some real changes, Winkler took some time getting used to them, but ultimately got used to his new style and succeeded. This is what having a focused pitching infrastructure in modern baseball looks like. Not all low 90s fastballs are built the same, and Winkler’s release point functions as a kind of deception. I think having that look out of your bullpen, something different than your traditional mid 90s brute with a hard slider is a nice change of pace. I say bring him back.
[Brett: You really sold me, man. I struggled all year analyzing Winkler, because there was obviously the huge disconnect in results and peripherals, but beyond that, there was the story batters were telling you. Even if you can’t quite figure out HOW a pitcher is doing something, you can definitely tell a lot about whether it’s real just by watching the batters. And against Winkler, batters were consistently just … off. They were not seeing pitches well, they often had terrible body language, and they almost never squared him up. Now seeing what Bryan uncovered, and pairing it with what we watched? I’m sold. Don’t let this guy get away, Cubs. I want to see him in the bullpen again next year.]
