Spinning wheels over Brad Hand’s spring

Brad Hand’s 2016 really couldn’t have gone any better — outside of being designated for assignment by the Marlins on Opening Day. It looks like an absurd transaction now, filtered through the binary lens of hindsight, but to be fair, at the beginning of the year, no one expected Brad Hand (and his career -0.1 fWAR amassed over 288 ¹⁄₃ innings) to go on to epitomize the idea of the dominant, modern reliever — and that probably includes the Padres, who plucked him off waivers on April 8, four games into the season.

Hand would go on to make 82 appearances, pacing all relievers while showing up in more than half of the Padres’ games. The 89 ¹⁄₃ relief innings he threw also led the league, and for a more historic sounding perspective, has been exceeded just 11 times over the last decade in American, professional baseball.

But beyond the sheer quantity, these were quality innings Hand delivered on his way to a top-20 reliever season by FanGraphs’ WAR.

Now, a logical supposition that Brad Hand dilettantes might make is that, as a failed starter-turned-reliever, he was primarily working mop-up for a hapless Padres team — a notion to which I say, nay, dear friends. Nay.

When Hand entered games, the average leverage index (gmLI), which is “the swing in the possible change in win probability”, was 1.38 (1.00 is average). If we remove all relievers who amassed at least 10 saves, since closers generally appear in tenser situations, Hand jumps into the top 12 as measured by gmLI. What’s more, his 2.07 WPA places him in the top 20 among all relievers, with only three hurlers from non-playoff teams adding more win probability.

This is all to say that, while it may sound like a contradiction, Hand threw important innings for the Padres last year, often in bulk, and most importantly, whenever Andy Green summoned him — which featured a slew of different scenarios.

Data via Play Log at Fangraphs

If you’re keeping track at home on your “How fire is this reliever?” score sheet, it should look like this:

You can kindly check the “wipe-out pitch” box, as I refer you to an article by the incomparable Jeff Sullivan, who points out that Hand’s newest weapon, his slider, was basically the clone of Andrew Miller’s slider in 2016. All it did was induce whiffs at a ludicrous 53-percent clip, while stifling damage against opposite-handed hitters. (Oh yeah — you can check the “no platoon” box now, too.)

Meanwhile, the Padres, for whatever their role was in all this, even if it was just claiming the 26-year-old southpaw from the Marlins, look incredibly shrewd. And as they’re likely preparing to unload any valuable trade pieces at the deadline this summer (as Jeff Sullivan also already wrote about), they have to be ecstatic to have an asset like Hand on their, well, hands.

That is, of course, if Hand really is the pitcher they got in 2016.

Let’s backtrack a bit. Brad Hand first caught my eye during the second half of 2016, when I noticed his fastball spin rate had been steadily climbing all year. With the season well in our rearview, here is the full account of his four-seam fastball’s ascent to an elite level spin-rate:

Data via Baseball Savant

Interesting! And it wasn’t just his four-seam fastball that experienced tremendous spin rate inflation, either — all of his pitches made substantial gains as the year went along.

Neat!

I want to take just a moment to focus on four-seam fastballs. Out of the ten pitchers who increased their four-seamer’s spin rate the most between the first half and second half last year, Hand’s name stands out, not only as the name appearing at the top of the list, but as one of just three names who were healthy all year, did not return to a previously established norm, and/or did not change roles during the season (from reliever to starter or vice versa).

Now, it has yet to be determined why some pitchers possess higher spin rates than others, and outside of velocity gains, we’re in the dark about how pitchers can add spin. So while Hand’s velocity crept up a hair over the course of the year, it’s hardly evidence I can point to as to why Hand was able to increase his spin rate by so much, nor is it clear as to whether he’ll be able to maintain these new levels.

Most importantly, when we’re talking about improved spin rates, as I covered in my last article, it’s important to remember that only transverse spin is useful, and that transverse spin can be influenced by factors such as grip and release point. This is relevant because as I was following up on Hand while writing this article, I discovered that his release points seem to have gotten away from him this spring.

Working under the premise that the 2016 version of Hand’s arsenal is the most effective, we’d ideally see the trend lines connecting 2016 to 2017 at as close to 180 degrees as possible. You see, the confluence of enhanced spin and the new release points he threw from in 2016 allowed him to create separation in the action between his pitches that he was not able to obtain in 2015. So, based on the release point data from spring training, it’s probably not a coincidence that his pitches thus far have been interacting — and producing results — a lot more like their 2015 versions.

If you need a clue on where to look, watch the yellow curveball and red slider dots move further away from the black fastball dot in 2016. Or, if you’re not visual, here’s the same data presented in strictly numeric values.

I don’t mean to say that pitchers can’t succeed without making use of both vertical and horizontal movement, because they can. Among southpaws, Chris Sale comes to mind as someone who works primarily along the x-axis, and there’s some dude named Clayton Kershaw who relies heavily on a disparity in vertical movement to attack hitters. Hand, however does not possess elite movement in either direction, and he’s been at his best when he’s making use of both.

To wit, while Hand has shown improved control this spring, tallying a 72.4 strike percentage so far, the results from his pitches have regressed to resemble 2015’s results.

At the end of the day, his spring training release points and numbers are pulled from an incredibly minuscule amount of information — he’s made just four appearances this spring, and Brooks has data for two of them — so it’s impossible to say for certain if this is anything but a blip or if it portends regression.

It seems like a release point issue could easily be ironed out before meaningful games are underway, so I’m hoping for the best. While Brad Hand’s performance means nothing in the cosmic sense, I prefer a world where he pitches well. That’s because if he’s pitching well, the Padres likely trade him, and that means more baseball conversations to be had. And since I’m writing — and you’re reading — about a reliever on what could be the worst team in baseball, I’m going to assume you feel the same way.

I wasn’t just calling you dear friends off-hand.

---

Author’s note:

I don’t mean to step on Jeff’s toes by writing about Hand so soon after he did (twice, no less), nor do I desire to oppose Mr. Sullivan, my favorite writer. The way I see it — and work with me here — is that if the baseball blogosphere is a wedding, and you, the readers, are collectively, somehow, the couple, Jeff Sullivan’s gift to you is a Vesuvius dual boiler with pressure profiling espresso machine. Meanwhile, I’m hanging around waiting for an opportunity to slip a poorly wrapped, re-gifted, Mr. Coffee 4 cup coffee maker onto the gift table without being seen. I’ve included the receipt.

---

Mark Davidson is a featured writer at Beyond the Box Score. You can follow him and send him bat flip gifs at @NtflxnRichHill