The Brewers Have Turned Bryan Hudson Into a Southpaw Super-Freak

[Matthew Trueblood]

The Milwaukee Brewers' newest left-handed reliever will always be the answer to a trivia question. With their help, though, he might soon be the answer to a handful of them.

Image courtesy of © Wendell Cruz-USA TODAY Sports

The Los Angeles Dodgers had to make room for Yoshinobu Yamamoto on their 40-man roster in January. Yamamoto signed a $325-million deal, a record for team investment in any pitcher, so it's not exactly an insult to Bryan Hudson that he was designated for assignment. He just didn't fit onto the most star-studded roster in recent memory. The Brewers got him for late-round 2023 Draft flier Justin Chambers..

Entering spring training, Hudson was a longshot to make the Opening Day roster. He's on the 40-man roster, but has minor-league options left, and if the team had had a perfectly healthy spring, he might well be with the Nashville Sounds right now. Hudson pitched brilliantly during camp, though, and we discussed how he and his new employers had worked to clean up some mechanical things, leading to greater extension at release. He earned a place in the club's injury-thinned bullpen, and after one outing, he looks like a potential fixture there.

More extension from Hudson is--no pun intended--big news, because at 6-foot-8, he's never exactly been short on that. Indeed, though, his first outing of the year at Citi Field in New York proved that he's getting farther down the mound (and closer to home plate) before releasing the ball. He's become a remarkable outlier, and that could pave the way for him to carve out a permanent, fairly important role in the team's bullpen.

Here, from above, is Hudson's release-point scatter plot for 2023. The center of the pitching rubber, in this chart, would be on the far left side, centered at zero.

As you can see, he was averaging somewhere around (perhaps just north of) seven feet of extension in 2023. That was already near-elite, and it's an especially wild thing to see from:

1. A lefty; or
2. Anyone working from that wide of the center of the mound.

Most guys with elite extension (Tyler Glasnow is a famous exemplar) use their length to get far down the mound, but pitch from a fairly centered position, and/or use a high release point and vertical arm path. The only easy comparator for Hudson's great extension and steep horizontal angle for hitters is Steve Cishek, who made a career out of high-sidearm work from the right side and excelled at getting down the mound.

Now, let's take a look at the same chart for Hudson in his outing against the Mets Sunday, when he pitched three clean innings, allowing just two hits and fanning four, without issuing a walk.

Normally, these visuals are a little easier to interpret for viewers, because there's a silhouette of the mound running from 12 down to -12 on that left edge. On these two images, though, there hasn't been, because I had to break the chart out of its default dimensions to show you how much extension Hudson got on several of his fastballs. He's beyond the frontier. On eight of his four-seamers Sunday, Hudson was more than eight feet forward from the rubber when he released the ball. His 92-MPH fastball, on average, looked like 95 to the batters, just because of its release point. 

In the nine-season Statcast Era, 17 different pitchers have thrown at least three fastballs with at least eight feet of extension at release in a season. One of them, Carter Capps, used a since-banned hopping, sliding delivery to break the system. Lefties combined to throw 25 such pitches across the nine seasons, with Miami's A.J. Puk throwing over half of those last year. The most in any season by any individual hurler is 58, by the Crew's Devin Williams in 2023. If Hudson keeps up at anything like the pace he set Sunday, he'll shatter that record. 

That's to say nothing of a lower release point and a flatter vertical approach angle (VAA). It's not a stretch to say that, given the way he's throwing, Hudson's heater has elite upside, despite fairly pedestrian velocity and raw movement. And hey, speaking of movement, there's one more thing we should take time to observe, from his dazzling Crew debut. Here's his 2023 pitch movement plot.

That's what Hudson had when he came to the Brewers. It's not an unworkable arsenal, but nor is it exciting, except against left-handed batters. As he told me early in the spring, he developed much more confidence in his cutter against righties last year, but it wasn't going to make him an especially reliable out-getter against them without more separation from his four-seamer. The heater was a little too straight; it had cut-ride action, minus the ride.

Here's how he looked Sunday.

This is a whole different story. From that slightly lower release point, Hudson is throwing a fastball that increasingly plays more like a sinker than a four-seamer, but which he can locate high in the zone with that flat VAA for whiffs like a four-seamer. The cutter has less true cut, but more depth, and the slider has morphed into a legitimate sweeper, with greater lift and lots of extra glove-side horizontal movement. 

Many of these adjustments feel like modified versions of the tweaks the Brewers made with Hoby Milner over the last few years, to great effect. Hudson is an even more extreme pitcher than Milner, though, so the returns could be even greater. It's too early to dub him a second southpaw relief ace, but not too early to say that he's a success story both in himself (for the hard work and studious approach that have allowed him to overcome considerable adversity in his career) and for the team's pitching development group. Making better use of his enormous size, he's maturing into a potentially exciting bullpen weapon, like fellow gigantic Milwaukee scrapheap scoop-up Trevor Megill. Together with Megill and Milner, Hudson can help the team weather the absence of Williams for as long as necessary.

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[Joseph Zarr]

Very intriguing to say the least. Hard to fathom what that pitching lab is capable of...

[Trax]

Great article, extremely technical breakdown.   Excellent work!

[wiguy94]

Incredible article @Matthew Trueblood, Love this stuff so much.

[Sugarrayray]

Brilliant.

[GasserFace]

Great work Matt!  Great work by the Brewers staff and Hudson.  The new movement and release point data is so useful explaining old terms like ride, carry and extension.  
 

They clearly quantify what a hitter is seeing and how a pitcher is evolving. I love this data.

[jay87shot]

Awesome stuff, any chance he becomes a starter? He seems a lot like Hader minus a few mph in his first year. Obviously it is super early but he has the funky lefty going for him.