Danny Salazar is an immensely talented pitcher on one of the top teams in all of The Show. Yet here we are watching Salazar give up homers much like Tanaka, but Salazar is doing so with an insane K rate sitting at 13.21 per 9. All can agree that Salazar has talent and can pitch lights out at times, but his issues with the deep ball have been noted for awhile as well. But Salazar has a three pronged issue himself that seems to be contributing to his recent rough patch. Firstly a combo of walk rate and his homer to flyball ratio, but you probably caught onto that second part with my puntasticly bad title dedicated to my wife's love of all things Potter. Second is ground ball rate, an oft underappreciated rate. Lastly pitch choices, meaning percentages, yet again rear their ugly head to explain why Danny Salazar could be on pace for a career high number of home runs served up.

Let the Eagle Soar

Sir Salazar is serving up home runs faster than Jeni's Ice Cream serves up Listeria in 2017. He sits at a 24.4% home run to flyball ratio which is .1% away from Masahiro Tanaka's equally dreadful ratio. If you've read my other write ups on here I tend to focus on what would seem to be more detailed things like pitch choices and percentages compared to delivery issues or situations. I do this because a pitcher's choice on what to throw and when to throw it are extremely important and a mix of pitches can lead to strikeouts, walks or even home runs if they get to predictable. Salazar is really talented so looking at his pitch choices can lead to a few conclusions. I will get into the pitch choice percentages later, for now I will focus on walks and home runs specifically.

Salazar is mirroring 2016 in numerous ways. Firstly his walk rate is a bit higher now (4.40 BB/9) than in 2016 (4.13 BB/9), his left on base percentage too is similar (75.1% now, 76.4% in 2016) and his strikeout rate is still astronomical. Actually its better now (13.21 K/9) than in 2016 (10.55 K/9) by a healthy margin. That 13.21 strikeout ratio is actually better than Chris Sale's right now (12.02 K/9). Salazar's numbers right now are comparable to his 2013 rookie season in ways as well.

2013 line: 10 games started, 52 IP, 44 hits, 18 earned runs, 7 HRs, 15 walks and 65 K's.

2016 line: 9 games started, 47 IP, 49 hits, 29 earned runs, 11 HRs, 23 walks and 69 K's.

Just looking here you can see the issue. Runs, home runs and walks. Yeah, I know its really basic to point out, but the difference in the amount of hits given up is meager thus meaning that the hits he IS giving up are more meaningful and, since he is a strikeout pitcher, he is a throw against contact pitcher thus he is throwing quite a few balls. Yet looking at his heat chart over the last month and a half we can see that he is really throwing right down the alley. Over 25% of his pitches are going right down the middle of the plate. Not the corners, not the hard sides, quite literally down the middle. He is also hitting the left outside, out of the strike zone, with about 13% of his pitches. He's throwing a ton more to the outside left (on the side of a left handed batter) than to the right. He's getting a ton of strikeouts in part by getting batters to whiff at outside (or inside for lefties) pitches. This means that 38% of his pitches are either outside the box to the left or right down the gullet. Those outside left heavy pitches though are getting swinging strikes when he paints the left corner. He is getting just around 30% swings with those pitches total. In some areas he is getting upwards of 54%. That's insane. He has a solid fastball and changeup combo, but the problem is he has become a pitcher that relies almost solely on those two. He doesn't use his slider or curveball much so far this year and that leads in part to his getting lit up. It's hard to go 6 or 7 innings with just two pitches. Even if you only use that third one 8%-10% it still leaves the hitter waiting for it, but Salazar uses his slider only 5.5% of the time and his curve only 6.4% of the time. Compare that to his fastball, 56.3%, and his change-up, 31.9%.

Ground em up

Salazar has been having issues with walks, but his issues with inducing grounders to me is far more scary. Grounders usually lead to easy outs and double plays, but Salazar has reverted to his 2013 and 2014 numbers sitting at 36%. Last season he had a really nice 47.8% and was above 40% in 2015 as well. Why is this so important for Salazar? Because he tends to be flyball pitcher who keeps giving up homeruns left and right. Since Salazar has reduced himself into a two pitch pitcher it only escalates the problem. He is simply trying to flamethrow his way around batters with the occasional change-up to get them swinging early. It works really well for Salazar... until it doesn't. He is back to averaging under 1 grounder per flyball much like in 2013 and 2014. His two seam fastball is getting owned (-5.6 pitch value) and he is unable to make up for it with his change up (2.3 in 17') like he did the past two years (13.6 in 15', 12.5 in 16'). Since I have already started let's move onto the final point to make.

choices, choices, choices

I've talked about his pitch decisions a lot already. What I also want to point out is he is getting the highest swinging strike percentage of his career this year (15.8%) and his first pitch strike percentage is still hovering just below 60% percent. Part of the reason for his strikeout surge is due in part to his contact percentages on outside pitches being insanely low 45.8%. The lowest of his career I might add. Batters are swinging a full percent more in the zone against Salazar, but making less contact. Mix his swings outside the zone (30.9%) and the lowest contact outside the zone of his career (45.8%) and you can see where he is getting those strikeouts, but he's only got one quality start in the past 6 starts and that game is the only one he's gone at least 6 innings as well. We're talking he gets lit for 3-5 runs in about 4 innings, but nails down 5 strikeouts. This is normal for him right now and he's in a funk of giving up hits at poor times. He is essentially a Russian roulette pitcher. He can give you the game of your life or immediately put you in the hole for 4 runs. He is basically Homer Bailey with a great K rate. Yeah, I cringed too.

What can we conclude

A lot of it is mental for Salazar and becoming predictable at times due to it. He gets himself into trouble early and tends to give up a handful of hits while still being able to strikeout two batters on the way to the third out. He's factored into the decision for 7 of the 9 games he has started and sits at 3-4. Usually wins and losses are wasteful stats to use cause they don't tell the tale, but in this instance his record speaks for itself. Right now he's an elite strikeout pitcher who is average or below average in every other area of pitching. So long as he walks nearly 5 per 9 innings and gives up 2 or more home runs he will continue having an inflated ERA. If he rights himself we are looking at a slightly north or south of 4.00 ERA pitcher. He needs to cut his home run rate in half if he wants to make any progress and cut his walks by 1.50 per 9 or more.

Time will tell for Salazar and over the next month we will see (really about 5 starts total) where he's at. If he continues to rely solely on a 4-seamer, 2-seamer and change-up almost exclusively then not much will change. But if he starts using his slider and curveball about 2-4% more and attempts to fool batters looking for a down the pipeline heater then he could find a drop in home runs. The walk issue is something he needs to work on, but Salazar's history shows bad signs. His second half of each season shows him giving up nearly a .300 batting average or more whereas he tends to have a below .240 batting average in the first half. Getting as low as .203 last season in his first 104.2 innings pitched. The problem with Salazar is that he is a first half pitcher and not a second half pitcher so even if he rights his ship he is still going to be a strikeout reliant pitcher who has a rather high ERA. He is a better version of fellow teammates Trevor Bauer and Josh Tomlin in that while his K rate is always fantastic, he has major issues keeping runs from coming in and balls from going yard.

Survey says: wait for him to have a good outing and trade him or look to a pitcher starved team and move him. Either way, sell sell sell.

edit: couple spelling errors