Padres Closer Mark Melancon Rediscovers Old Form
The San Diego Padres are loaded up for a championship run. Their roster is packed with star power including Fernando Tatís, Jr., Manny Machado, and Yu Darvish. The pitching staff features high-octane arms one after another… until the ninth inning, to which they entrust 36-year-old journeyman Mark Melancon.
The Padres signed Melancon on a one-year deal for just $2 million plus incentives after Spring Training already began (there’s also a mutual option for next season). San Diego is his eighth team in 13 MLB seasons. He was enormously successful with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals from 2013-2016, then signed a four-year, $57 million free agent deal with the San Francisco Giants, with whom he was only okay. A salary dump trade sent him to the Atlanta Braves where his ERA improved but his underlying stats did not.
His trusty cutter used to average 94 mph, but now it’s only 91. His 21.6 percent strikeout rate is well below the MLB average for relievers of 24.7 percent. For closers, it’s undoubtedly much higher. Nevertheless, he has a 1.86 ERA, league-leading 19 saves, and could be an NL All-Star. What is he doing differently to turn back the clock?
Subtle Changes Go a Long Way
Melancon has always relied on a pitch-to-contact style. Even in his heyday with the Pirates, he only averaged 8.3 K/9 but that came along with just 6.9 H/9. He surrendered just nine home runs over 260.1 IP in Pittsburgh. From 2017-2020, batters made much better contact off him, leading to 10.1 H/9. This year, his H/9 is back down to 6.5, matching his career-best set in 2014.
His pitch mix, such as it is, remains unchanged. He is still just a two-pitch pitcher, throwing his cutter roughly 60 percent of the time and his curveball just under 40 percent. The velocity of both pitches is much the same as in previous years, and the spin rates are actually down a little. His 2021 arsenal doesn’t seem like it would yield better results than in his recent past, but he’s 95th percentile in lowest average exit velocity and 93rd percentile in hard-hit rate.
The biggest difference has been his ability to tie up left-handed hitters. The right-hander has always been decent facing opposite side bats, but this year he’s on another level. Here’s his wOBA allowed vs. lefties by year:
- 2018: .338
- 2019: .296
- 2020: .317
- 2021: .151
Of his two pitches, the cutter was the most problematic against lefties from 2018-2020. They compiled wOBA of .435, .354, and .407 off of his bread-and-butter pitch. In 2021, that’s down to just .145. Left-handed hitters have only three singles and no extra-base hits off the 91 cutters he’s thrown them this season.
Here’s where he located those cutters to lefties from 2018-2020 (per FanGraphs):
He clearly made an effort to bust lefties inside, trying to saw them off at the bat handles and induce weak contact. This is a common strategy for right-handed cutters, perfected by Mariano Rivera, but in 2021, he has a different approach:
He’s pounding the outside of the strike zone instead of the inside corner. The result is a massive jump in effectiveness. His CSW rate (called strikes + whiffs / total pitches) on his cutter vs. lefties improved from 24.4 percent in 2020 to 37.8 percent in 2021.
It’s no accident that Melancon’s best years were in Pittsburgh in the mid-2010s. The Pirates’ then pitching coach Ray Searage preached a pitch-to-contact strategy and encouraged his staff to throw sinkers and cutters. This has been largely debunked, and is blamed for the underperformances of Gerrit Cole, Charlie Morton, and several other pitchers who became aces after leaving the club. However, it was perfect for Melancon’s skillset. Now at age 36, he’s taking this approach to a new level by using the outside part of the plate against left-handed hitters.
