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.