Ben Brown Working Tirelessly to Keep Wheels from Falling Off
Ben Brown may be a tireless worker, but he still needs to find ways to keep the wheels from falling off during his starts. In his recent outing against the Phillies, he got through three scoreless innings with five strikeouts before allowing the first five batters to reach in a disastrous frame that saw him give up six earned runs on nine total hits. He only walked one, but four of the hits he surrendered came with two strikes.
That theme carried over into his next start in Milwaukee, where three of the four hits he surrendered came in two-strike counts. Wednesday’s loss to the Giants saw Brown rack up nine punchies in five innings, but five of his six hits allowed again came with two strikes. Through eight games this season, opponents are slashing .244/.330/.267 with a .280 wOBA when Brown gets them down to their last strike. The MLB averages are .175/.254/.269 with a .241 wOBA, so there’s definite room for improvement.
“I had some bright moments early on [against the Phillies], and then just the wheels fell off,” Brown explained to reporters. “After the game, you’re like, ‘I don’t know what happened. And then here [against the Giants], the wheels kind of came back on late, really late. So I’m looking forward to just carrying that with me.”
This is where having just two viable pitches — for now — is preventing Brown from taking that next step in his development. The fastball and curve can both work well, but the heater isn’t dominant enough to keep batters off of it even if they’re sitting breaking ball when down in the count. That’s why I remain adamant about his continued adoption and expansion of what certainly appears to be a new changeup.
We looked at the likelihood of him having altered something during that Milwaukee start based on disparate results in velocity, spin, and depth. Even though it was only two pitches, the results on two more against the Giants support the hypothesis. Statcast actually has him throwing three offspeed pitches on Wednesday, but I think we can agree that a 93.5 mph ball at 2146 rpm was probably a misclassified heater.
This was the first time Brown had thrown two changeups in a game at less than 88.5 mph, and the 87.5 mph ball to Mike Yastrzemski in the 3rd inning was his slowest ever. Brown had also never thrown two changeups in a game that both got less than eight inches of induced vertical break; both of them on Wednesday were at seven inches, nearly four below his season average.
Finding the confidence to throw his revamped changeup more frequently could be the difference between cruising in the left lane or trying to avoid traffic while installing a spare tire once every two weeks.
