Huascar Ynoa Will Be a Key For The Braves Postseason Run
This post is the latest in Off The Bench Baseball’s running series on Huascar Ynoa. Find other takes on Ynoa here and here.
Following a 97-win campaign and an appearance in last year’s NLDS, the Atlanta Braves looked like a team poised to be a force in the National League East for years to come. Outside of an All-Star lineup stacked with Freddie Freeman, Ronald Acuña Jr., and Ozzie Albies, their pitching depth looked like it could stack up to almost anyone in the National League. Mike Soroka could have easily pitched himself to Rookie of the Year accolades in another season had it not been for a historic campaign from Pete Alonso. And even aside from Soroka, the Braves’ starting rotation of the future seemed on its way following the emergence of former first-rounders Max Fried, Kolby Allard, and Touki Toussaint.
It’s 2020 and the Braves are once again division champs after an 11-1 rout over Miami on Tuesday, but not in the way many would have expected. Thanks to some help from the expanded postseason format and the general mediocrity within their division, they’ve cruised to a third straight division title despite a rotation in shambles from injury.
Outside of a no-doubt Max Fried start in game one, there are a lot of questions marks on who will take the hill each day, even in a three-game series. If the Braves have any hopes of making some noise this postseason, it will take some creativity in the club’s bullpen approach to claw their way past the first couple rounds of postseason play and young up-and-comer Huascar Ynoa could play a crucial role in the filling in the gaps of what looked like a lockdown starting staff heading into the year.
Ynoa, a current 22-year-old acquired by Atlanta in the Jaime Garcia deal back at the 2017 deadline, was rated by the MLB Pipeline as the Braves’ No. 11 prospect entering the season and No. 16 per Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen.
The first thing that stands out about the young Dominican fireballer is the raw stuff. He has a live arm that’s sat at 95 mph, in the 77th percentile in fastball velocity according to Baseball Savant, and a wipeout slider he’s throwing nearly half the time this year. Even with fastball usage at an all-time low in the game today, he’s going to his secondary offering as much as just about anyone; his 46.6% usage rate on the slider is the 20th highest in baseball, surpassed only by a handful of full-time relievers. His changeup has even come along to the point of being graded at least an average pitch, a potential third weapon that has kept the Braves dreaming of his ceiling as a potential starter despite erratic command.
As is often the case with an organization’s top pitching prospects, the majority of his outings (79/88) came as a starter in the minor leagues as Atlanta tried to evaluate how his stuff would play multiple trips through the order.
While Ynoa undoubtedly possesses the stuff, the results on the field haven’t matched up. He holds an ugly 5.82 ERA in 22.1 innings this season, and the peripheral numbers don’t paint a much better picture (a 4.89 FIP and a 5.84 xERA that takes into account the quality of contact given up). This can largely be attributed to his 13% walk rate, one of the 30 highest walk percentages in baseball this year among those with at least 20 innings thrown.
Even with wipeout stuff, it’s been the usual archetype for a dominant power pitcher missing too many spots. He’s getting into unfavorable counts too often, and guys are teeing off the fastball to the tune of a .342 average and .500 slugging percentage.
When Ynoa is ahead and can work to get chases out of the zone, he has an elite 23 percent putaway rate with his slider, a measure of how often a pitcher’s two-strike offerings result in a swing-and-miss. (For context, Gerrit Cole led all of baseball with a 28% putaway rate with his entire arsenal in 2019).
While the electric stuff/fleeting command profile makes him a consensus projection as a future reliever, that just hasn’t been a luxury the Braves can afford this year because of the litany of injuries to the starting staff.
Yes, Fried is back and looked like a legitimate Cy Young Award candidate before a spell on the IL due to back spasms; he was tied for the Major League lead in rWAR through his first nine starts and still only trails Mookie Betts by the same metric. Outside of Fried though, the rotation is a huge question mark.
Soroka, last year’s NL Rookie of the Year runner-up, is out for the season with an Achilles tear. Mike Foltynewicz had a horrific start to the season before being optioned to the Braves alternate site and outrighted there after not a single team placed a waiver claim on him. The Braves were dealt another crushing blow on Monday after the announcement that Cole Hamels, who pitched in one game for the Braves this season, is out for the season. Ian Anderson, the Braves’ top pitching prospect with just five Major League starts under his belt, seemingly appears to be the guy that would take the ball in game two.
Largely due to team needs with the rotation, Ynoa has been shoehorned into a role he’s not suited for. His ugly numbers in the small sample are inflated by two of his three most recent starts, one back on September 4 when he coughed up six runs and failed to make it out of the third against the Nationals and another on Monday when he yielded three in as many innings at Truist Park against Miami.
With the division now locked up and a three-game series in Atlanta set with an opponent to be determined, the Braves will have the advantage of taking the time to set up their rotation. The postseason is a different animal than the regular season and that’s been even more evident the last few years with the declining number of innings thrown by starting pitchers. How a team’s back-end of the rotation can transition to a relief role can make or break the series, especially in a best-of-three format, and Ynoa has the stuff to be an impact arm if deployed for shorter stints.
Whether it’s as an opener for a bullpen day in a potential game three or as a key swingman that could be deployed behind a starting pitcher, the Braves will need to lean on Ynoa to fill in the gaps of their pitching depth that was supposed to be a strength when the year began.
