This is the most dangerous time of year for pitchers. The white paper MLB published this winter after its deep dive into the root causes of the pitcher injury epidemic found that spring training is more hazardous to pitching health than the regular season.
Data in the report showed that IL placements for pitchers between the opening of camp and Opening Day rose 45% over the past four seasons. But from Day 2 through Game 162, pitcher IL placements have gone down four straight seasons.
According to the report, “Many experts suggested that higher-intensity offseason throwing programs and a lack of consensus regarding the optimal Spring Training workload potentially contribute to pitcher injury risk.”
I remember spring trainings when power pitchers like Dave Righetti would struggle as they used the six weeks to build their velocity. Those days have been long gone, as archaic a part of camp as dorms, sliding pits and rubber jackets to sweat off pounds. Pitchers come to spring training throwing at full capacity. They have been throwing off a mound for weeks and chasing more velo and spin in high-tech labs.
The result is what you saw this weekend: it’s February, games have just started and pitchers are throwing max effort like it is mid-summer. The modulation of velocity just doesn’t happen.
Teams can talk all they want about “load management” and “innings limits.” Wearable tracking devices to monitor workload, once a concern of the players association as personal data is collected by the clubs, are as ubiquitous as resin bags this spring. But nobody talks about modulating velocity.
Take Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers, for example. He is a 5'10" righthander who missed three months last year with a right rotator cuff strain. In his first start Thursday, he threw harder on Feb. 21 than he did in the 2024 regular season. He threw just as hard in the Cactus League as he did in the World Series:
Yes, he was on a pitch count Thursday. But it is stunning how pitchers are throwing at peak velocity so early. If someone happens to be down 2 mph in a spring start, the question immediately after the game to the manager and pitcher is, “What’s wrong?”
Of course, many of these pitchers are trying to make the team. That’s no time for modulation.
Metrics drive the game. They are there for all to see. Pitchers didn’t need a white paper to know they risk blowing out an arm by spending the winter in a lab to throw harder. They know every bullpen throw they make is tracked. And so, even this early in spring training, we get a good reading on the ceiling of pitchers’ stuff.
After just the first few days of spring training, here are some under-the-radar pitchers who are lighting up Trackman with their stuff. It’s too early to predict if the next Mason Miller is here in this group. But think of this as a purely data-driven list, the pitchers who made such big first impressions via Statcast that you should keep an eye on them this spring.
Jack Leiter, 24, Texas Rangers
On the advice of the Texas staff, Leiter dialed back his velocity in his work leading to camp. Instead of reaching max velo in January, he staircased his range of velocity with a more measured ramp up. It paid off in his first appearance with eye-popping velocity.
Leiter averaged 98.8 mph on his fastball Saturday, up from 96.4 last year. He reached 99 mph three times in one inning, as many times as he did in 35 ⅔ innings last year with the Rangers. He topped out at 99.9, a career high. The velocity on his slider and change also were up 2–3 mph.
Leiter does not appear to have adopted any significant mechanical change. His delivery is smoother with less effort, which may be why his release extension is slightly shorter than it was last year.
Paul Gervase, 24, Tampa Bay Rays
Watching Gervase pitch against the Yankees, with a rare combination of velocity, extension and attack angle, you would never guess Gervase is a former Division III walk-on. His is the quintessential story of how, in the age of technology, major league pitchers can be made, not just born, the way it was thought generations ago. In other words, he is the perfect Ray.
Gervase, then about 6'5", threw 84 mph at Harnett High in Angier, N.C. Nobody offered him a scholarship. He walked on at D-III Pfeiffer University in Misenheimer, N.C. He pitched sporadically for the Falcons. One summer, with the help of instructors Chris Patton and Brandon Young, he started to get serious about pitching and training. Within three months, he was throwing 93.
His velocity and height continued to grow as he moved from Pfeiffer to Wake Tech Community College to Pitt Community College and to LSU, where he became the closer. The Mets drafted him in the 12th round in 2022, then at the trade deadline last July, in a fascinating swap of righthanders with huge differences in height and age, traded the 6' 10" Gervase to Tampa Bay for the 5' 11" Tyler Zuber.
The trade looks like a typical coup for the Rays. They signed Zuber out of independent ball in May and two-and-a-half months later flipped him for a prospect who is five years younger and has an incredible minor league strikeout rate of 15.0 per nine innings. After joining Double A Montgomery in the Rays’ system, Gervase lowered his walk rate (from a scary 5.5 per nine to 1.5) and somehow boosted his K rate (15.8).
Conquering his walk rate is the last hurdle for Gervase to become a valuable big league reliever. It has taken years of hard work, but he has transformed from a gangly thrower for the Pfeiffer Falcons into an efficient pitcher for the Rays with well-timed movements and terrific arm deceleration. Despite being 6' 10', Gervase has a smooth delivery with a low release point.
You just don’t find many low-slot, elite-extension power arms like Gervase. Against the Yankees, he topped out at 95.5 mph with a release point 7.5 feet down the mound. Only two MLB pitchers last year had more extension on their four-seam fastball: Alexis Diaz of the Cincinnati Reds and Logan Gilbert of the Seattle Mariners. Gervase threw 26 fastballs among his 28 pitches.
How rare is an arm like Gervase? Last year there were only five MLB pitchers with Gervase’s combination of perceived velocity (at least 95 mph) and extension (7.2 feet or greater) from such a low vertical release point (less than 5.4 feet off the ground):
Eduarniel Nunez, 25, San Diego Padres
This is an elite arm. Think Jason Adam. Nunez posted eye-popping fastball metrics in his appearance against the Mariners: 96.8 mph with a spin rate of 2,661 rpm. Only six pitchers threw four-seamers in an MLB game last year with that kind of velocity and spin (minimum of four fastballs): Adam, Michael Kopech, Jeff Hoffman, Ryan Helsley, Randy Rodriguez and Brock Stewart.
Not bad for a non-roster invitee whom the Padres quickly snapped up as a minor league free agent after Nunez spent eight seasons in the Cubs’ system. His slider spin rate (2,911) and curveball spin rate (2,931) are also elite. Yikes.
Of course, there are reasons why the Cubs did not give him a 40-man roster spot: poor mechanics and poor control.
Nunez still cannot consistently throw his fastball for a strike when he needs it. He has walked 6.1 batters per nine innings in 190 minor league games, including 26 in 23 2/3 innings last year in his first look at Triple-A.
Nunez has an unusually short stride for a hard thrower, falls to the first base side while spinning off his landing heel and has poor arm deceleration. He is a project. But there is something there for pitching coach Ruben Niebla and his crew to unlock. San Diego has found hidden bullpen gems in Robert Suarez and Jeremiah Estrada.
Daniel Palencia, 25, Chicago Cubs
Palencia is another elite thrower who could be dominant with improved control. There are only a handful of pitchers who last season did what Palencia did in his first spring training outing: break 100 mph on half of his pitches (min. 16 pitches). Those flamethrowers were Miller (an absurd 16 times), Ben Joyce (five times), Kopech (twice), Jhoan Duran (twice), Robert Suarez (twice), Trevor Megill and … Palencia. That Palencia does so as a 5-foot-11 righthander is even more amazing.
Ethan Routzahn, 26, San Diego Padres
This is another success story when it comes to hard work, technology and instruction. Undrafted after playing for three colleges (Dallas Baptist, Northwest Florida State College and St. John’s), Routzahn signed with San Diego after pitching for Trenton in MLB’s Draft League. At age 26 in High A with an 88.4 mph sinker, Routzahn did not appear to be on a track to the big leagues. Always a hard worker, he decided to check in with Driveline to work smarter.
His velocity ticked up to 91 mph. Just as importantly, he learned the value of recovery, how to monitor workload and how seam-shifted wake on his sinker could produce phenomenal arm-side run from his low release point. The result last year: Routzahn zoomed from High A to Double A to Triple A and posted a 2.19 ERA, the lowest in the Padres system of any pitcher with at least 40 innings.
On Saturday, Routzahn threw his sinker on 13 of 17 pitches. It’s a low-spin sinker with crazy movement down and to the arm side. He could be a workhorse, groundball reliever with deception, in the manner of Ryan Thompson and John Schreiber or a righthanded version of Hoby Milner.
Conor Grammes, 27, Arizona Diamondbacks
A two-way player at Xavier, Grammes has yet to reach Triple A in five seasons in the Arizona system. He is not an elite prospect and is still raw given his college background and the obligatory Tommy John surgery for a hard thrower. But Grammes has an interesting arsenal: the second-fastest sinker thrown in games this weekend (97.8 mph) and a cutter that is almost 10 mph slower (88.2) with the biggest downward movement of any cutter thrown this weekend.
There is nobody in baseball who throws a sinker-cutter combo with that kind of velocity separation. The cutter acts much like a slider. So, let’s call it a slider. His comp in that case would be Camilo Doval (97.6/88.8) or Seranthony Dominguez (98.1/88.4).
Grammes’s story is familiar in today’s tech-driven game that is loaded with more throwers than pitchers: he has swing-and-miss stuff (11.9 Ks per nine in the minors) but doesn’t throw enough strikes (6.2 walks per nine) and because of injury hasn’t thrown enough pro innings to progress with his mechanics and command (166 ⅔ IP in the six seasons since he was drafted).
Brad Keller, 29, Chicago Cubs
Keller owns a career record of 38–57 with a 4.34 ERA while bouncing from the Diamondbacks to the Reds to the Kansas City Royals to the Chicago White Sox to the Boston Red Sox to the Cubs, who signed him in January to a minor league contract. That profile screams “journeyman.”
Last season his four-seamer averaged 93.8 mph. In his debut with the Cubs Friday, it whistled in at an average of 96.3 mph. It was the highest average velo for Keller in any game of his career in which he has thrown at least 10 fastballs. He topped out at 97.9 mph, the hardest pitch he has thrown in three years.
Keller came to camp to be stretched out in a starting role, and he is unlikely to make the Opening Day roster, but that performance opened eyes in the Chicago front office. Keller could be a valuable depth pitch as a hybrid starter/reliever.
Where did the velo boost come from? Keller began to make some mechanical adjustments with Boston at the end of last season and continued through the offseason at a pitching lab. The most obvious change is how Keller “sits on his back side” more.
On the left is Keller early last season and on the right is Keller on Friday. Note the bend in his back leg. With greater flex, he is in a more powerful position and stays over the rubber longer.
Scott Effross, 31, New York Yankees
Now 31, Effross is two years removed from a breakout season, when he posted a 2.54 ERA for the Cubs and Yankees. But Tommy John surgery and a back injury derailed him.
The side-arming righthander is back with New York fighting for a roster spot. What little velocity he did have is diminished, but his pitches are moving like crazy. Check out his pitch metrics from 2022 compared to his debut this spring:
One notable change: Effross is slightly more on top of the ball with a slightly higher arm angle:
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Eight Pitchers With Newfound Stuff in Spring Training.