Colorado Rockies: Jon Gray hasn’t just been unlucky, he has a problem

It starts with fastball command and Gray’s last start against the Reds on Friday night highlighted this. The home run Eugenio Suarez hit was on a fastball right down the middle. Moreover in that game, Gray threw more than a dozen fastballs over what is considered to be the heart of the plate.

He threw 100 pitches in his start against Cincinnati. The start before that in San Francisco where he only lasted 3.2, he threw 78 pitches and left nearly as many fastballs over the heart.

This can be seen pretty drastically in his fastball usage chart for the season.

Obviously throwing fastballs there is not good. It helps explain why opponents are slashing .333/.391/.564 against his heater. But even then, there is a near 40 point difference in his xwOBA and his wOBA showing, again, that he has been unlucky. Last year, that same difference was almost half that.

Okay so he’s still unlucky. Except he hasn’t been.

In 2017, when he was behind in the count, Gray threw fastballs in the zone 62.5 of the time. This year, that mark has risen to 69.3. Of the 10 barrels batters have hit off of him, four have come in this situation. This makes sense given how many fastballs he’s hearting.

Players can make an assumption with the data that they are going to get a fastball in the zone when they’re ahead in the count. It’s why the hard hit rate in this scenario on batted balls has risen from 33.0 percent of the time to 55.9 percent.

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It’s why his wOBA while behind and throwing a fastball in the zone is at a high .445. That makes sense. What is weird is that his xWOBA says that number should be even .042 points higher.

This isn’t because Gray was lucky last year. It’s because he is generating a lot less swings when ahead in the count and the pitch is in the zone. Which is a sign that Gray may have become more deceptive.

Still, Gray is getting behind, throwing fastballs over the heart of the plate, hitters are making hard contact and getting a fair amount of hits yet not as much as they should.

Has Gray been unlucky? Yes. But he’s been unlucky in the sense that the balls he’s leaving over the middle of the plate and where there has been weak contact, it’s going for flares, bloops and ground balls that fall for hits. There should be almost no weak contact in this situation, therefore he has been kind of lucky too.

There’s one more issue.

Gray’s off-speed stuff is getting spit on more and more.

What do I mean by that? Looking at the whiff rates, Gray is actually generating more whiffs on his slider and curveball, up 3 and 6 percent, respectively. That’s great.

The average launch angle on his curve moving from 13 to 25 degrees is not.

Part of that is him throwing it lower in the zone and being more effective with it. Part of it is because the pitch has become more predictable.

That’s on the same note of the average exit velocity on his slider has moved from 78 mph to 87 mph.

It all falls into place when Gray is ahead of batters.

He is generating less chases on his off-speed stuff.

In 2018, batters are only swinging at 38.6 percent of his off-speed stuff outside the zone when he is ahead in counts. Compare that to 2017 where the rate was 46.3 percent. That’s a massive jump.

Further, he’s only generating swings and misses 72 percent of the time off of those pitches, which is down 5 percent.

Gray’s off-speed stuff is being chased less and it’s being hit harder or higher than before.

Overall he’s throwing more strikes … but it’s been easier to attack because of the sequencing. He’s throwing too many fastballs in the zone or missing his spot entirely. Players are spitting on his off-speed stuff and hunting his fastball, which has become a more hitable pitch. His mistakes have therefore compounded and, when he does hang a breaking ball, it has been crushed.

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So does Jon Gray have some luck issues? Sure, the balls being hit into play are finding holes, but look deeper and they should probably be going further and for more bases than one. Gray has some problems. All of it seems fixable and, on Friday, he did for a few innings.