What Happened to Reid Detmers?

Intro Reed Demmer has been sent down the angel star pitcher who was poised to be the Ace of an otherwise pretty weak staff started off the year so hot a small corner of M Mo fans began to raise the flag of a potential Sai Young candidate that we'll have to wait as Demmer has completely Fallen apart after his first five starts earning him a demotion to figure out what on Earth changed between his first five and last seven starts deur is a top pitching talent in the league and he's shown many flashes of just how Elite he can be at just 24 Demmer will most certainly fix himself and be back in The Bigs before we know it but what actually happened to retur what will he be working on in the miners and most importantly what can he do to pitch well again this season Reed Detmer started this year on fire demmer's first five starts seem to be the signs of the big breakout ml has been waiting for and at 24 years old Demmer would have been set up for another around 7 years of domination despite pitching against relatively solid teams overall throwing two games against Baltimore two against the Red Sox and one game at Tampa Bay Demmer had five starts in 29 2/3 Innings at a 2.12 ER Demmer also had good rates to project future success having three walks per nine 10.3 strikeouts per nine innings and 6 home runs allowed for nine innings with such great stats against good teams and no perinal warning for significant regression it didn't seem likely that Reed Demmer would run into any adversity this season much less a complete disaster but as the angel season fell apart so did he and his last seven starts have been an entirely different pitcher than that first The Fall month Demmer skid was terrible to put it simply in seven games started he pitched 33 in a third Innings to a 9.62 erra Demmer couldn't even eat Innings due to his Mass jump in walks as he walked 4.6 batters per nine innings while losing out on those juicy strikeout rates from earlier than the year even worse the balls put in play were hit much harder as he almost quadrupled his home runs allowed for nine innings as a result his season data doesn't illustrate the great start to the year but the shelling he received over the last two months across the season Demmer has been barreled at a 9% in clip and when he has a walk rate of 9.7% Demmer is combining well struck balls with free base runners for a perfect storm of issues but deur isn't just ineffective as much of the underlying data offers a clear set of problems and solutions for this Solutions year the number one issue with Reed Demmer is his fastball although he's increased his velocity during his MLB career he still has just League average V at 94 mph relative to other fast balls with his velocity however Demmer does have a great amount of movement that suggests his fast ball could be more valuable in the future his fast ball is 1.7 in above average in vertical movement meaning the ball fights Against Gravity better than most 94 mower fast balls giving the impression that it's rising more added with his good horizontal movement as well using some Lefty run and his fast ball should be at least serviceable even if it won't bring a huge swing and Miss pitch the most obvious issue with his fast ball is his location as even slower fast balls can be effective in mob be the issues are parent by taking a quick glance at his heat map as his fast balls consecrated not up in the zone and above the Zone where it belongs but instead primarily in the middle of the Zone with many of his fast balls being uncompetitive misses as well demmer's slider is one of his primary weapons but it's only as effective as possible when his fastball keeps hitters honest just looking at the sequence against Jordan Westberg it's easy to see how well his slider can play off the fast ball if he can throw the heater in the zone deur can sequence both righties and lefties by setting up the slider with a good fast ball even though the fast ball hasn't been there for depur this season his slider is still a positive run value pitch when his fast ball is finally useful the slider will be a crucial part of his Effectiveness even though it's been a positive pitch his command over the slider has been questionable as well his heat map explains just how unpredictable his slider is as the most popular location is right down the middle and many of his sliders aren't Chase pitches but waste pitches the slider is a pitch that should be thrown outside the strike Zone but only as far outside as hitters will chase it and Demmer has not done a great job keeping the slider close to the Zone the biggest surprise of his struggles has been the failure of his curveball the curve which is a slow big curveball was a highlight of his draft profile was his most valuable pitch last year but by stat cast run value is actually his worse this year the only pitch in his Arsenal with a positive run value is his change up which is a great sign as change UPS can help starting pitchers find long-term success but with three or four pitches in the negatives it seems that Reed demoris just doesn't have the stuff this Weaknesses year the biggest problem for many of the Angels pitchers but especially notable with demmer's is his inability to finish off hitters and innings when things are all going as way Demers just can't quite shut the door on his opponents in two strike counts opposing hitters have a 601 Ops which in a vacuum is great but since two strike counts favor the pitcher so heavily that's actually a 139 split Ops plus meaning that compared to the average hitter with two strikes that same hitter with two strikes against dmer is almost 40% better in a more situational approach Demmer has also struggled to close Innings quickly getting to two outs but then falling apart looking at the ops's of opposing hitters with 01 and two outs his inability to close out the inning is obvious as hitters with two outs are nearly one doted typically two outs is a sign of a pitcher doing well as you've already gotten two hitters out and that should be the lowest Ops of the bunch but instead it's the opposite even worse with two outs and Runners and scoring position hitters are tagging Demers to a 1.98 Ops which is just astounding those two out rallies have haunted deur as teams are hitting at an MVP caliber and finishing both hitters and innings will be the main focus of Demmer stint back in the Luck miners the numbers are ugly and really that's a nice way to put it and year that angel fans needed to see deur finally take that step forward for any hope to watch good baseball the opposite has happened but there are a lot of reasons to hold out hope that he'll be back and much better in a timely manner but where does that hope start luck maybe redmer stepped on a foul line one too many times or maybe he just has bad vibes but his luck with baded balls has been tremendously awful all three of his negative value pitches are massively underperforming their expected statistics now expected statistics are almost never perfectly accurate and simple things such as defensive shortcomings and the reality of the game means he won't reach those exact statistics but he is due for significantly better performances when the fast balls hit batters are getting lucky slugging almost 50 points higher than expected the slider is underperforming by nearly 80 slugging points as well and the most shocking is that curveball you know that most valuable pitch last year that became his is least valuable this year a lot of it is due to batted balls off the curveball expecting a 381 slugging percentage but instead overperforming to a 719 such a massive disagreement is unsustainable and even if deur were to do the exact same thing for the rest of the year it would be assumed that he would get better soon overall batted balls against depur will most likely stop outperforming their expected values soon as ground balls hit off demmers are 94% more successful than the league average which is certainly unsustainable and fly balls are 41% more productive as well with a home run to Fly ball rate too high to maintain itself over the whole year a big part of that over performance is demmer's Barrel rate which is unkind but his relatively low hard hit rate and sweet spot percentage are actually good things when hitters are squaring up his pitches they aren't producing the best outcomes meaning depur can throw pitches in the zone and still be effective he just needs to continue to do so which will bring his luck back to normal but Demmer can also just pitch better which when compounded with regression to the mean would mean he would improve drastically for starters Demmer and pitching coach Barry Enright simplified his windup to better get him behind the ball and moving toward the plate making the motion easier to repeat which typically leads to more command controlling his fast ball and slider is going to be a key as fast ball command not only makes his secondary pitches better but keeps depur ahead of the count and allows him to to utilize those good secondary pitches as an extremely young pitcher it's not shocking to see Demmer struggle with consistent command but this option to the miners needs to be where he finally tiles it in and understands himself as a Fastball pitcher surprisingly enough one of the most similar pitches to read demmer's in terms of fast ball profile and Pitch mix is Astro's breakout starting pitcher ronell Blanco just like deur Blanco has a forseen fast ball with similar velocity and spin rate an upper 80s slider mid 80s change up and a sub 80 m per hour curve ball their similarities are almost Eerie as they even both have no hitters in their young careers but that's about where they end Blanco has made the most of his pitch Arsenal and Reed Demmer should study how Blanco stays effective with a similar fast ball the fast ball is key to likening these two young Stars Demmer actually has a more effective amount of vertical break than Blanco but that is likely evened out by their different extensions blanos still doesn't have a great fast ball with a minus two run value and it is overperforming its expected statistics but the root of Blanco's ability to work with the below average fast ball is command just comparing their heat map side by side illustrates the value being able to place the fast ball well as their very similar fast balls have a 4run difference in value if Demmer could just use his fast ball like Blanco he would likely take Leaps and Bounds forward as he would Dominate and be able to play his slider off that fast ball the pitching coach coaches in the Angels organization need to focus on keeping the fast ball high the slider away from the middle of the strike zone and his mechanics repeatable and Demmer will be up before the All-Star break looking better than ever with the angel season as over as it gets deur has the room to experiment and find himself as a long-term piece in the Angel's future [Music]