Aaron Civale Is Curving Towards Usage Optimization
The Guardians' righty seems healthier and is leaning on his best stuff more often. His feel for the curve will prove to be pivotal in his quest for a bounce back season.
Aaron Civale is a marvel. How many pitchers at the major league level struggle to command more than one to two offerings, let alone six? Against right-handed hitters, the Guardians righty fires off six different offerings, but none more than 23 percent of the time. The pitch mix does not adjust mightily when expanding to all hitters, either. Therein might lie the problem.
According to FanGraphs pitch values, the only two offerings that are routinely graded on the positive side are the cutter and the curveball. No coincidence that he uses those most often. The question with any pitch mix conversation tends to revolve around finding that middle ground that optimizes the effectiveness of each offering. It is unclear whether the curveball could be tapped into more and remain as effective, but it is quite clear that it is a dominant offering that is utilized only one-fifth of the time.
Since 2021, Civale’s curveball has been thrown on 25 percent of his pitches to left-handed hitters and has resulted in an xwOBA of 0.202 over 122 plate appearances.
Since 2021, Civale’s curveball has been thrown on 9.4 percent of his pitches to right-handed hitters and has resulted in an xwOBA of 0.192 over 80 plate appearances.
While xwOBA points out what should happen in a plate appearance based on exit velocity and launch angle, we can also go old school and offer that the curve has allowed a 0.125 and 0.169 batting average against lefties and righties, respectively. No matter the preferred metric, Civale’s curve translates to destruction.
On a related note, Aaron Civale has decided to … curve … into increased curveball usage. We can ascribe a lot of prospective reasonings to limiting usage in 2021, but my the leader in the clubhouse reasoning might be that his right middle finger injury in June of 2021 hampered his feel for the pitch. It is abundantly clear when looking at the above usage chart that something changed in how he approached each hitter from a pitch mix perspective, and the dip aligns with the timeline of the injury. In this theory, we might assume that it remained a comfort based usage item as he worked to overcome the injury, among other nagging issues, in his starts over the remainder of the 2021 and 2022 campaigns.
Look no further than Civale’s quote covered by Cleveland.com’s Paul Hoynes last month:
“At times you have to pick and choose,” he said. “You have to assess what’s going on in the game. What’s going on with how it’s feeling. There are definitely times where it feels better than others.”
What’s going on with how it’s feeling.
Okay, maybe the limited usage of the curveball over the last couple years was less a cognizant usage decision than a feel issue, after all.
Obviously, pitch mix decisions are difficult. There is a balance between too much and not enough, and teetering too far one way might decrease the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a given pitch. He needs that 4-seam fastball, which is a poorly graded pitch, to set up the curve. Perhaps the cutter could be substituted a bit more, though, as he only threw that 9 percent of the time against righties. Oh wait, is he already doing that?
Stand down. Aaron Civale is tweaking usage on the path to success. Last weekend against the Mariners, he threw his cutter twice as much as the 4-seam (good!) and his curveball 25 percent of the time. Look for him to continue this path that proved effective in today’s home opener against those same Mariners and beyond into the 2022 season. That will depend heavily on his health, obviously, which is a disclaimer that need be added to any discussion of this iteration of Aaron Civale.