Three Things That Make Josh Fleming Weirdly Effective

Tampa Bay Rays LHP Josh Fleming is an interesting pitcher for many reasons; he doesn’t throw hard (his fastball velocity is in the 8th percentile this year) and he doesn’t miss many bats (his whiff% and K% are in the 4th and 2nd percentiles this season respectively), but he generates a ton of weak contact (Fleming is in the 74th percentile for hardhit% this year) and has a respectable 3.69 ERA over the first 109.2 IP in his big league career.

How could a pitcher be so effective in a league dominated by high heat and sexy strikeouts? The secret ingredients are Fleming’s excellent command, ability to get weak contact (not necessarily just ground balls like we’ve seen with sinker pitchers in the past), and some impressive movement on his pitches.

Command

The first thing Fleming does well every 5th day when he takes the mound is that he locates his pitches perfectly. Coming-up as a prospect, Fleming’s command was graded 70 on the 20-80 scale; this is considered plus-plus command and not something too many pitchers possess, and has helped Fleming’s BB% sit in the 74th percentile. We’d assume that because of his command and low BB% that he’s able to load up the strike zone. However, he actually doesn’t throw a ton of strikes, and he uses his command to do that intentionally.

Weak Contact

Fleming uses his command to help him generate weak contact. He has a career BABIP of .244 which is unsustainably very low for almost any pitcher. Fleming is different though because of his stuff is unexpectedly elite (yes, elite – more on this in the next section). The weak contact he generates puts him in the 84th percentile for average exit velocity. While ground balls are his favorite outcome (career 59.4% ground ball rate), he’s comfortable with carefully coaxing weak fly balls and pop outs as well. Fleming’s key here is that he throws pitches out of the zone and (with him being in the 4th percentile for whiff%) hitters make poor contact as a result.

“Okay so why don’t they just stop swinging at pitches out of the zone? The scouting reports on him have to have circulated the league by now.”

Everyone is very much aware of Fleming’s game plan and they still can’t do anything about it. Yes, hitters know he’s going to throw balls instead of strikes on purpose and they still swing at them and make weak contact. They’re actually chasing Fleming’s pitches out of the zone more this year (97th percentile for chase%) than last year (93rd percentile for chase%). How is he doing this? Well, he actually has some elite movement on his pitches.

Movement

Fleming’s final and arguably most important component of his success is the movement on his pitches. Below is his arsenal and a description of what makes each pitch special (excluding his curveball and fourseam fastball because he rarely throws either):

• Sinker: We’ll begin with Fleming’s most thrown pitch in terms of usage (he’s gone to it 44.5% of the time this season). Averaging 91.2 mph, it’s the hardest pitch he throws. Hitters often know it’s coming because he goes to it so often – especially early in the count – and they still produce an average launch angle of -4 degrees. How does he do this? By generating an insane amount of drop on his sinker. Fleming averages 28.9 inches of drop on this pitch; good enough for 2nd most behind Dallas Keuchel at 30.3 inches among pitchers with at least 500 sinkers thrown this season. Fleming will often start this pitch in the zone or near the bottom, and let it fall out right at the last second. His sinker also has the most horizontal movement (18.2 inches of break) out of all sinkers in baseball within the same qualifications mentioned above. This helps account for why he has such a chase rate, and it doesn’t help hitters when the average spin rate on this pitch (1799 rpm) is nearly identical to the spin on his cutter (1849 rpm) this season while having very different movement.
• Cutter: Coming in at 28.3%, Fleming’s second most used pitch is his cutter. Like we identified earlier, his cutter has a very similar spin rate to his sinker but the two pitches have different movement. Fleming’s cutter actually has a few more inches of drop at 30.2 inches than his sinker at 28.9 inches, but the main difference is in their horizontal break. His cutter is tied for the third least amount of break coming in at 0.3 inches – his cutter is the straightest pitch he throws in terms of horizontal movement. It’s drop is so similar to Fleming’s sinker, it can be really difficult for hitters to pick-up if the pitch will break or not. This leads to a ton of weak contact.
• Changeup: Moving on to Fleming’s changeup (he throws it 22.8% of the time), we can see just how difficult it can be to hit the ball hard against him. You could probably guess by now that Fleming gets the second most drop on his changeup at 40.4 inches out of all starting pitchers (just behind Giants pitcher Logan Webb at 41.7 inches). This pitch has pretty average horizontal movement at 13.4 inches, but the way it disappears out of the bottom of the zone more than makes up for lack of sideways movement. Out of all three pitches, Fleming gets the best results on his changeup, leading to an xwOBA of .196(!).

Josh Fleming is a really interesting pitcher who executes his game plan pretty well. He’ll only get better as he continues to develop and learn the nuances of the position. He has the stuff to continue to over-perform in strikeout-pitcher-favoring metrics like FIP and xFIP, and it’s reasonable to expect that he maintains a low BABIP.

Credit to Kyle Snyder and the player development staff for working with the things Fleming already does well while also fine-tuning a few things to create one of the best pitch-to-contact innings-eaters in the league.