How Burnes has turned it around…

[Brewcrew82]

https://www.mlb.com/news/keys-to-corbin-burnes-2023-dominance

Nice read from MLB.com that goes in-depth into how Corbin has turned things around in July/August from a rough (for his standards) first few months. The three keys:

1) He’s changed his slider from a hard slider to a “sweeper”. Sweeper has more horizontal movement and pairs better with his hard cutter.

2) More vertical drop on sinker/curveball, pitches which you want to have a lot of vertical drop. Result: 56% whiff rate on curveball!

3) Putting more cutters in the zone. As we saw, hitters simply weren’t chasing earlier in the season. When his cutter is actually in the zone, hitters aren’t able to do much damage with it.

I will say that the last thing that’s missing from him truly being 2021 Burnes again is minimizing the throwaway pitches/spurts of rough command. Corbin has only given up 17 total hits in his last seven starts, which is the second best for any seven start stretch in the live ball era. But when he’s given up runs, it’s because he’ll suddenly lose his command for an inning or two and pile up a lot of “throwaway pitches” where batters aren’t even tempted to swing. The result is batters simply waiting him out and drawing walks, with the rare hit being enough to produce runs due to the base runners from the walks.

To get to the postseason and then go anywhere once there, we’re going to need the Big 3 pitching at their best, and it starts with Corbin. If Corbin can find a way to limit the throwaway/non-competitive pitches and maintain his control throughout his starts, we’ll truly have Cy Burnes on our hands again. Good for playoff chances and good for trade value in the off-season.

BTW, the Cy Young race in the NL this year is as wide open as it’s ever been. It’s not out of the realm of possibility, with slightly improved command, that Corbin could back door (pun intended) his way into a 2nd Cy trophy. 

[Brock Beauchamp]

7 hours ago, Brewcrew82 said:

Corbin has only given up 17 total hits in his last seven starts, which is the second best for any seven start stretch in the live ball era.

[kestrel79]

Anyone else annoyed with the new "sweeper" pitch being a thing now? Just call it  a slider.

A 12-6 curveball and one that moves more horizontally as well as vertically they are still both called a curveball. Sliders can be different too. 

Or am I just old man yelling at cloud? :)

[Samurai Bucky]

1 hour ago, kestrel79 said:

Anyone else annoyed with the new "sweeper" pitch being a thing now? Just call it  a slider.

A 12-6 curveball and one that moves more horizontally as well as vertically they are still both called a curveball. Sliders can be different too. 

Or am I just old man yelling at cloud? :)

... and is a Sinker really what used to be known as a Screwball?

[sveumrules]

53 minutes ago, Samurai Bucky said:

... and is a Sinker really what used to be known as a Screwball?

Sinker and two seam fastball are pretty much the same thing.

Screwball was always an offspeed or breaking pitch. Think it might have even been called an in-curve in old days.

[Matt]

In my day a sweeper was just a slurve. 

[markedman5]

I’m old enough to remember when Devin’s change up would have been called a screw ball.