Stormy Seas for Seranthony
Stormy Seas for Seranthony
The appearance of a reliever is an unpopular thing. Unless you’re the flamethrowing closer, that anointed, priestly being emerging from his chambers to the sound of a carefully chosen hymn, the fans would usually rather see someone else. For the other relievers, the ones without their own memorable theme song, many fans tend to remember only the blowups. And so non-closing relievers tend to develop a bit of a sour reputation in the minds of most fans, even when it’s not really warranted. Sometimes, though, the frustration isn’t just a matter of poor memory. Sometimes a reliever really does show signs of something wrong underneath the hood.
Such is the case, unfortunately, with Seranthony Domínguez. Just one month into the season the usual caveats about small sample size apply, but the early returns are worrying. His ERA is a whopping 9.58, and while that appears to be a bit inflated by bad luck, his xERA of 5.16 isn’t anything to write home about either. He’s avoiding issuing free passes, but not much else is going right. And the fact that his 2023 wasn’t quite up to par compounds the worry.
Looking at Domínguez’s numbers, one thing leaps out: contact. He’s facing a fair bit of it, with batters making contact on his in-zone pitches 83.3% of the time, and his out-of-zone pitches 59.4% of the time. And that contact tends to result in damage. He’s allowing a tremendous number of barrels, with 14.7% of batted balls against him finding that sweet spot. Further demonstrating his issues with contact is his ground ball rate: at a mere 23.5%, he’s currently in the very bottom percentile of the league. He’s letting batters put the ball in the air more than ever, and one needn’t be a sabermetrics expert to predict what that leads to. What’s a little less obvious is why it’s happening.
Domínguez hasn’t introduced any new pitches into his arsenal this year (neither the sweeper bug nor the fork fad have found him yet). He has, however, changed the rate at which he deploys his pitches. He’s throwing his four-seamer 51.4% of the time, up from 39.1% of the time in 2023. The increased focus on heat has come largely at the expense of his sinker, down to 18.4% usage from 29.2%. His slider and changeup usage remain static (although the latter of those has always been a rare sight).
Perhaps it’s not surprising that Domínguez is relying more on the 4-seamer this year: it’s the pitch that’s been giving him his best results. The velocity, at 97.2 MPH, is tremendous, and about a quarter of the 40-seamers he throws become whiffs. But you can’t rely only on the fastball, and it’s the need for complements that has caused him to struggle.
Last year, his sinker and his slider shared roughly equal billing; now the two are diverging, with the former falling a bit out of favor. It’s not hard to see why. Hitters have pummeled his sinker this year, to the tune of a .600 batting average against and .800 slugging. His slider, by comparison, has a BA against of .235, although the slugging percentage against is even worse, at .824. It makes sense that he’d begin to favor the slider over his sinker, given his problems with the latter; but the slider just hasn’t been good enough to avoid being a problem in its own right. The only other pitch in his arsenal is a changeup; having only been thrown 5 times this year little can be noted about it other than its scarcity.
With the complements to his primary pitch floundering, it’s no wonder that Domínguez can’t find his legs. But what’s the problem with the sinker and slider? Speed-wise, there’s been no change. But their movement is an issue. Both are showing a bit more vertical movement than they did last year, but that still leaves both subpar in that category, compared to other sinkers and sliders leaguewide. And the horizontal movement of his slider—a pitch where you really need it—is at a career low, as noted by Alex Coffey of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The sinker isn’t sharp enough to compensate for the slider, and the slider isn’t snappy enough to compensate for the sinker. Without either of those working right, Domínguez is left with his fastball—and while it’s a good fastball, a 4-seamer alone isn’t going to get you through major-league at-bats.
Truly diagnosing the issue is going to require more than just figuring out what pitches are lagging behind, and what aspects of them are lagging. It’s going to require a look at hyper-granular details that, even in the age of Hawk-Eye tracking and Statcast, just aren’t available outside the clubhouse: information on the minutiae of grip, on arm movement, on mentality. The Phillies have excellent pitching coaches, and Domínguez has shown the potential for much better before. The bullpen is something of a black box for fans; we can’t see the tweaks and tinkering that occur in there, only the results once they’re applied into game action. All we can do as outside observers is embrace the words that, per Edmond Dantés, contain all human wisdom (which, logically, must include wisdom on baseball): wait and hope.