Brian Schlitter: Sinkerballer

If you asked the average Cubs fan what they know about Brian Schlitter, the righty who the Cubs just brought up from Iowa to replace an injured Justin Grimm in the bullpen, you would probably get a lot of blank stares. Despite being a local product (he was raised in Oak Park) and being, by call-up date, the second-longest tenured Cub after Starlin Castro (he made his debut on June 28th, 2010), Schlitter has remained largely anonymous.

Given that relative obscurity, I wondered if I could find anything of particular note about Schlitter that might stick in the mind, at least a little bit. Since his hair won’t do the trick—the Cubs have a plethora of long-locked middle relievers—I decided to start by looking at his pitch mix.

Two things immediately stand out here. First, it appears that Schlitter, circa 2014, was a somewhat different pitcher than Schlitter, circa 2010. Specifically, it seems that the slider, which made up approximately 30 percent of his repertoire in his debut season, has seen a precipitous decline in usage, and the sinker, which sat at around 8 percent usage in 2010, jumped up to levels north of 80 percent last year.

The drop in slider usage can be relatively easily explained. In the spring of 2011, Schlitter was claimed off waivers by the Phillies (and, later, the Yankees), but eventually returned to the Cubs by the Commissioner’s Office due to an elbow injury. Given that research suggests that slider usage may well increase the likelihood of elbow injury, it seems reasonable to conclude that Schlitter dropped that pitch (or was directed to drop that pitch) from his repertoire in order to protect himself against further damage.

But I am digressing. The point here is to find something notable about Schlitter, and an elbow injury is, sadly, not all that notable these days. Let’s circle back to that usage chart above, and proceed to the second thing that immediately stood out. And that is the fact that in August of 2014, Brian Schlitter threw essentially nothing but sinkers, and that for the rest of 2014, his usage of that pitch never dropped lower than 75 percent.

In one sense, this isn’t surprising. Since Chris Bosio took over as pitching coach (or, I suppose, you could say “since Theo Epstein and Jed Hoyer took over in the front office”) the Cubs have shown a marked interest in pitchers who get ground balls, improving in that category every year since 2012. Since the sinker is a pitch noted for its tendency to induce ground balls, you’d sort of expect to find some high sinker usage rates among Cubs relievers.

But still, despite the Cubs’ tendency towards sinkerball pitchers, that number still seemed extraordinarily high. So I went digging to see if any other pitchers had recorded as high a percentage last year. Courtesy of Pitch Info, here are the leaders in fastball usage (a metric which includes sinkers alongside other fastball types) for 2014, with a minimum of 250 pitches thrown:

1. Jake McGee, Rays (95.7%)
2. Zach Britton, Orioles (90.4%)
3. Aaron Sanchez, Blue Jays (87.5%)
4. Kevin Siegrist, Cardinals (85.3%)
5. Sean Doolittle, Athletics (85.1%)
6. Brian Schlitter, Cubs (85.1%)

There. That’s pretty good; we can now say that, at minimum, one notable thing about Schlitter is that he threw, last year, the sixth highest percentage of fastballs in the major leagues. But I think we can do better. Looking at fastball usage alone, without differentiating between four-seamers, cutters, and sinkers, might underrepresent the degree to which Schlitter’s 2014 was notable.

And indeed it does. By looking at their pitch selection, we can see that Doolittle, Siegrist, and McGee’s fastballs are all exclusively of the four-seam variety. Sanchez’s, meanwhile, are about two-thirds four-seamers and one-third sinkers, pulling him below Schlitter in sinker usage. Britton, in short, is the only major-league pitcher who, in 2014, used the sinker more heavily than Schlitter. Indeed, the list of top sinkerballers—again courtesy of Pitch Info—looks like this:

1. Zach Britton, Orioles (90.0%)
2. Brian Schlitter, Cubs (81.3%)

Because Britton pitched (and still pitches, in fact) for the Orioles, we can go one step further, and say this: Schlitter, last year, used the highest percentage of sinkers in the National League. Therefore, if you’re looking for something to remember about Schlitter and don’t want to talk about his hair, his hometown, or his debut date, remember this: Brian Schlitter, sinkerballer.