Ian Anderson plays for the Atlanta Braves, CCed by Liscense 2.0
When it comes to witnessing successful teams in the MLB, I think most would agree that one of the most important things is a good rotation. We see time and time again that the teams that make the playoffs are the ones with a strong rotation. This year we see the same thing. All teams currently leading their division (as of August 5th) are in the top 11 in team ERA. Naturally, with this information, teams want to draft the best pitching prospects who will be staples of their rotation for years to come. The Atlanta Braves have become almost famous for always drafting pitching in the first few rounds of the last few drafts. Since 2010, the Braves have only drafted 5 non-pitchers in the first round. This led to the Braves having several outstanding pitchers expected to become the team’s next ace or at least a mainstay in the rotation. Many of them have also been ranked on MLB’s top 100 prospect lists over the years. However, when you look at the Braves rotation this year, it is almost entirely devoid of their draft picks. The only ones who came from their farm were Max Fried, who wasn’t even drafted by them, and Bryce Elder, who is only being used for spot starts because the Braves currently have so many injuries. So the question is, what happened to all those highly touted prospects?
First up is Sean Newcomb. In 2016, he was the Braves #1: prospect and the 24th best prospect in MLB. He was traded to the Braves in 2015 and received his call-up in 2017, where he saw a couple of years of decent success. In his rookie season, he started 19 games and 100 innings, finishing with a 4.32 ERA and a 101 ERA+. He was basically league average his rookie season. That trend continued the following season as he got more innings under his belt, totaling 164 innings while finishing with a 105 ERA+. He was eventually moved to the bullpen in 2019, where he homered and finished with a 145 ERA+ in 68.1 innings. It was Sean Newcomb’s final season in which he had 50+ innings and an ERA+ over 100 combined. The first sign of this regression should have been his walking problem. From 2017-2019, he never finished with a BB% higher than 22nd, meaning he was in the bottom 22% of all qualified pitchers in walk rate. In fact, his WHIP has never been below 1.317 in those 3 years. He clearly had a problem keeping batters off base. Another sign is that his xERA was significantly higher than his ERA in 2017 and 2019. His xERA was 4.76 compared to 4.32 in 2017 and 4.08 compared to 3.16 in 2019.
The rest of his percentages from 2017-2019 matched that of Sean Newcomb, a slightly above-average talent. Nothing on her page said she was going to be more than she was. In Newcomb’s peak years from 2017-2019, he totaled 332.1 innings. He has pitched a total of 97.5 innings in the majors so far in 2020. We can’t even compare his “prime” percentages to the latter because he hasn’t raised enough to even earn a percentage in any year between 2020 and now. He’s gotten worse over the last few years at keeping hitters off the base paths, with his BB% hovering near 20% and his WHIP averaging around 1,700. He allows a HardHit% and Barrel% that is well above the league average.
Apparently, Newcomb’s main problem was that he never had a good command of the off-speed pitch. His second-most thrown pitch, next to his fastball, changed every year. He tried the cutter, the curveball, the changeup, and in recent years he followed in the footsteps of many players and tried the breakdown. He didn’t lack for confidence on the second pitch, and his pitching spray chart showed as well. He was rare and never consistent in his position on the field. Those two things combine to explain why Newcomb couldn’t keep runners off the bases. The Braves would part ways with him in 2020 when they traded him to the Cubs for Jesse Chavez.
Ian Anderson debuted in 2020 and was projected to be the Braves’ ace for years. He was the third overall pick in the 2016 draft and was ranked as the 37th best MLB prospect in 2020. In the shortened 2020 season, he finished with a 1.95 ERA, 1.082 WHIP and 11.4 K/9. Not only that, but he was an absolute monster in the playoffs in 2020 and 2021. According to the New York Times, he went “4-0 with 1.26 ERA in eight postseason starts in 2020 and 2021, totaling 40 strikeouts in 35 2/3 innings while limiting opponents to .159 average and .483 OPS, including five hitless innings in 2021 World Series game : 3 win against the Houston Astros, which he helped the Braves win their first championship since 1995.” Braves fans were excited to welcome Anderson as a staple of their team for the next decade.
2021 was also a pretty good year for Ian Anderson, and it was also his first full season. In 128.1 innings, he finished with a 3.58 ERA and a 1.231 WHIP, and even finished 5th in Rookie of the Year voting while still eligible as a rookie. If this was going to be his “sophomore slump,” it seemed clear that he would have a bright future in the big leagues. Or at least that’s what Braves fans thought until 2022, when Ian Anderson finished with a 5.00 ERA and 1.513 WHIP in 111.2 innings. He was eventually optioned to AAA and hasn’t pitched in the majors since. He is now back in the Braves minor league system trying to work his way up to the majors, but is currently still struggling somewhat. He currently has a 4.26 ERA this year throughout the minors, so it may be a while before we see Ian Anderson, although he is 26 years old, so there is still hope. But the question remains, what happened to Ian Anderson?
What made Ian Anderson so successful was his change. When he made his debut in 2020, his changeup was the talk of the league, becoming one of the best in the game. In 2020, he threw it 33% of the time, consistently placing it down and away. It was also the pitch he hit the most with 19. That was a faster than average changeup at an average of 87.4 MPH and resulted in an opposing batting average of .104 and a slugging percentage of .146, which is insane. It had 1748 rpm and a stun rate of about 40%. Overall, this resulted in him having a fairly dark red baseball savvy page, and above-average weak contact and ground ball velocity.
The thing is, after 2020, his changeup started to decline. The batting average went up to .197 in 2021 and up to .209 in 2022. His changeup was still pretty good, but not great. His Whiff% was slowly decreasing, as was his spin rate, which dropped to 1519. To be clear, his changeup was still very good, but it was no longer dominant. Without that dominant velocity, his fastball also began to have less success, as his opponent average on that pitch went from .212 in 2020 to .306 in 2022. He had lower total inches of movement and spin rate on all of his pitches. and was allowing much harder contact on his pitches as shown by increases in Barrel% and Slugging. He also wasn’t keeping the ball on the ground anymore as his GB% dropped to match increases in Fly Ball% and Line Drive%.
Ian Anderson’s woes, though perhaps not entirely, must probably be attributed to his injuries. According to an interview with The Athletic, he experienced elbow discomfort in 2022 before finally being sidelined with a strained elbow in September of that year. In 2023, the elbow pain returned when he tried to treat it at AAA, but he continued to fail. Eventually, the inevitable happened and he was scheduled to undergo Tommy John surgery in April 2023. Since he’s been back, he’s clearly not the same pitcher he was all those years ago, and that almost certainly has to do with his injury. last few years. Since he is young and he has shown signs of greatness, hopefully he can make a full recovery soon and become the ace that Braves fans hoped he could be all those years ago.
Kyle Wright had big things expected of him out of the gate as he was the No. 5 pick in the 2017 draft. He performed well in the minors right out of the gate and made his debut in 2018. This was the beginning of a long and difficult journey for Kyle Wright.
Kyle Wright has been in the league for 7 years. He has only pitched more than 40 innings in a season. He led the league with 21 wins that season. Now, to be clear, I think wins are a silly stat that can be used to justify how good a player is. However, I will say that 21 wins after barely 21 innings pitched is crazy. Kyle Wright is pretty much the epitome of a triple-A player. It’s the player who always does well in AAA but can’t figure out how to make things work in the majors. From 2018-2021, Kyle Wright has only pitched 70 innings and hasn’t had any real success. In his very limited innings, he just couldn’t do anything right. He would give up hard contact, couldn’t keep runners on base and didn’t strike out as many people. The only time he would really ever see major league talent was for a start here and there.
That’s why 2022 is such a strange year for Victory leader Kyle Wright. He finished the season with a 3.19 ERA, 128 ERA+, 1.159 WHIP, 174 K’s and finished 10th in Cy Young Voting. Needless to say, Braves fans were convinced this was the start of a true dynasty, led by an upgraded version of the three-headed monster of the 90s, including Max Fried, Spencer Strider and Kyle Wright. Unfortunately, Kyle Wright’s success was what many analysts would consider “successful.” Statisticians have worked hard to measure luck in many ways, and there’s no real good way to do it. First, let me show you Kyle Wright’s 2022 season on the Baseball Savant Page.
As you can tell, the one true thing Kyle Wright excelled at was keeping the ball on the ground. Every other key percentile was at or below the 65th percentile. He was fortunate to be backed by one of the game’s better defensive outfields, led primarily by Dansby Swanson and his Gold Glove. Everything about his Savant page just screams “average pitcher.” In 2022, he even had a league average barrel% and solid%, uncharacteristic of anyone in the top 10 of Cy Young voting. What happened to Kyle Wright this season for him to see all the success he’s had when all his peripherals say he should have been no more than average?
The first thing I noticed was his pitch mix. From 2018-2021, Wright transitioned between his fastball and his curveball as his primary pitch, with his slider being his primary velocity. In 2022, he decided it just wasn’t working for him. That’s when he decided to make the curve of his knee his main height. He always had this pitch, but it was always his 4th or 5th pitch. In 2022, it became his primary, as he threw it 34.1% of the time, with the next highest being his sinker at 23.9%. This pitch resulted in a .211 average, .307 SLG and .251 wOBA. Needless to say, it was an extremely productive and rewarding game. He was great at finding pitches in the zone, which is my best guess as to why he had so many ground balls that season that fundamentally helped him achieve the level of success he saw.
If it wasn’t clear by the state of this article, 2023 was not a good year for Kyle Wright. In just 31 limited innings, he had a 6.97 ERA. He battled a shoulder injury all season before needing shoulder surgery that will keep him out for the entire 2024 season. Hopefully, when he returns from surgery, Kyle Wright can recapture some of the success he had in 2024, although he will need to change something to repeat that. Peripherals proved that whatever success he was achieving was not meant to last.
