Shane Bieber Versus The Tampa Bay Rays
Profiling the Guardian's ace ahead of the initial wildcard showdown.
Sitting here and trying to tell you what is going to happen in a baseball game is utterly pointless. Baseball is, by nature, a crapshoot. Shane Bieber is a great pitcher, which gives him a good chance of having success in any given baseball game. It is really that simple. Yet, we can dig a bit deeper and look at big picture data to determine if a singular team, such as the Tampa Bay Rays, might be a more favorable matchup for the former Cy Young winner.
It starts with pitch type. Take Bieber’s slider, his most effective offering. He has thrown it more than one out of every four offerings and it grades out fifth in effectiveness on a rate basis across Major League Baseball. The Bieber slider has performed well above average at inducing swings and misses and limiting damage on contact, a lethal combination.
Flip that axis and consider the Rays against sliders, in general. A dismal 27th place mark against sliders in terms of weighted on-base average (0.249). To drill down even further, their weighted on-base average (0.243) was even worse against right-handed sliders. Bieber will look to exploit this early and often; we should expect a slider nearly once in every three pitches. Of note, it is the best way for him to attack Rays’ hitters like Randy Arozarena, Harold Ramirez, Manuel Margot, and Isaac Paredes, the former being one who Mike Petriello sheds some light on in a tweet about swings and misses against sliders:
Sliders are only one piece of the puzzle, though. As we’ve indicated, Bieber will likely only throw this pitch one out of every three or four times. The reasonable method of analyzing how Bieber fits against the Rays would be to surmise his weaknesses and Tampa’s relative chances of exploiting these.
An obvious area of vulnerability for Shane Bieber is contact authority. You can see that clearly in his 15th percentile average exit velocity and 14th percentile hard hit percentage results. Tampa can hit the ball with authority, finding a slightly above average exit velocity level. Yet, they do not do so often, demonstrated by their lower tier hard hit percentile.
The Rays’ seemingly smaller chances of exploiting his biggest weaknesses likely bodes well for Shane Bieber from a matchup perspective. Conversely, anyone who has watched Bieber closely throughout his career could attest that he is superb at generating swings and misses while avoiding free passes. We can note that he accomplishes this in a slightly unconventional manner due to his weak relative fastball velocity. It appears that Tampa is not inadequate at drawing walks and avoiding strikeouts, but it is hardly an area of excellence for them. By the same token, the balls they do put in play are inherently harmless comparable to that of other playoff teams.
If one went to the drawing board to create a potential playoff team that matches up well against Shane Bieber, it would be a team with far more top end contact results than the Tampa Bay Rays. Though baseball is a mess of variance that yields the most unpredictable frame by frame results of any major team sport, one would still rather have the percentages in their favor.
We have seen Bieber against the Rays twice this year. Earlier this summer, he dominated Tampa over seven brilliant innings. Last week, he scuffled a bit as some of the contact allowed was more damaging and well placed than could be expected given his profile against the fabric of Tampa’s offense. Bieber’s success in today’s noon affair will depend largely on how his slider fares and whether Tampa can act on it with authority.