Jose Quintana's Newly Quantifiable Deception and Command Should Keep Him Afloat in 2025

[Jake McKibbin]

The former All-Star southpaw doesn't lead the league in nasty factor. He doesn't throw the ball hard. He doesn't rack up strikeouts. Who cares? The Brewers can continue his recent success by focusing on the traits he does possess: deception, and pinpoint command.

Image courtesy of © Steven Bisig-Imagn Images

When I mention command, it may seem odd. No qualifying starter was in the zone less than Jose Quintana last season, according to FanGraphs. Yet, that's exactly what Quintana has. He understands his stuff doesn't play all that well in the strike zone, and that he will get crunched if he leaves anything over the heart of the plate.

Instead, Quintana does two things exceptionally well. He gets ahead in the count, early. Look at the number of first-pitch strikes Quintana throws, compared to stuff merchants like Freddy Peralta or Dylan Cease. From there, he lives in the shadow, ranking 7th in MLB for Run Value in the area just outside the strike zone. From here, Quintana can control the quality of contact his pitches face more effectively, but even here his approach is different from that of many other pitchers.

While Peralta, for instance, stretches the strike zone to get swinging strikes, Quintana wants you to make contact. He wants that weak ball in play. He suffers less concern over runners who reach base than other pitchers, on the assumption that he can generate double-play ground balls. He's right, too. His ground-ball rate in 2024 was 46.9%, tied with 2015 for the highest of his career. Only nine pitchers induced more twin killings than Quintana did, and four of those were in position to do so because they put more runners on base than Quintana did, to begin with.

This is one reason why Quintana and the Brewers may be such a fantastic fit. With the sheer athleticism of an infield that includes Joey Ortiz, Platinum Glove Award winner Brice Turang, and either of the range merchants that are Oliver Dunn and Caleb Durbin in the mix, they should be even better at converting grounders into outs than Quintana's Mets teammates were.

Even then, it takes a high level of deception to pull off what Quintana does. A pitcher needs more than mere command, as Kyle Hendricks found out in 2024, and that's where the deception element comes in. Jeremy Maschino's Pitch Profiler app grades Quintana in the 80th percentile for Match+, a measurement he uses to correlate how well different pitches tunnel off each other. In other words, Quintana's arsenal looks incredibly similar at the point when a batter has to make their swing decisions. He has maintained a 108-110 Match+ since 2020, which is quite remarkable. That, as much as anything else, explains his 3.81 ERA over that period. Below is what each pitch looks like at the decision point for a hitter:

Keeping five pitches in such close proximity (before finishing in the spots detailed below) presents a world of problems for a hitter to deal with, particularly as these pitches look eminently bashable at the decision point—only for nearly all of them to average a finish outside the strike zone in markedly different areas:

Combining this with the breadth of his arsenal is key. Quintana's changeup plays wonderfully with his two fastball offerings, but the breaking pitches don't fit quite so well. In essence, Quintana has two types of mix, using his curveball as a primary breaking pitch and a slurve to keep hitters off-balance on it; and then his sinker as a primary fastball, with the changeup and four-seam fastball to keep hitters off of that offering. It's something you can notice in the above finishing position of his pitches, as well as the movement profiles below:

In the movement plot above, you can see the similarity between these two groups of pitches. Yet, each are distinct enough to avoid the barrel of the bat better than most. Using slightly tweaked movement profiles (along with three different velocity bands), Quintana should be able to maintain his sub-4.00 ERA of prior seasons, provided age doesn't catch up to him and diminish his raw stuff further. 

He also isn't purely a contact merchant. He does get some swing-and-miss with his breaking and offspeed offerings. Hitters are itching to find a sinker in the zone to go after, and it's proved fruitful when they can target it. It's one reason why the beautifully tunneling changeup is so effective for Quintana while the curveball and slurve both have the propensity to get a swinging strike on occasion and all three avoid the barrel with metronomic efficiency.

The Brewers have improved the back end of their rotation significantly with this move. Given their defensive setup and their habit of maximizing a large pitching arsenal, I wouldn't be surprised to see Quintana pitch to something in the realm of a 3.50 ERA in the coming season—which would be an unconditional success, if combined with a high volume of innings.

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[Terry]

One thing I found is that he kept lowering his arm angle in season. No idea as to why it worked, but batted ball data did improve massively.
1st half: 0.354xwoba / 0.397xwobacon
2nd half: 0.286xwoba / 0.302xwobacon

[Jake McKibbin]

3 hours ago, Terry said:

One thing I found is that he kept lowering his arm angle in season. No idea as to why it worked, but batted ball data did improve massively.
1st half: 0.354xwoba / 0.397xwobacon
2nd half: 0.286xwoba / 0.302xwobacon

This is an interesting observation, and kudos for finding it.

Certain pitchers arm angles do tend to change as a season wears on and Quintana appears to be one of them. If we look at his 2022 arm angles (given he didn't have the same inning load in 2023) you can see the same sort of pattern as his 2024, starting off higher and dropping as the season wears on.

For that reason I'd say it's not so much a new tweak he made a la Sean Manaea (who wanted to emulate Chris Sale if I recall correctly) and more a natural progression throughout the season

 

[Terry]

Recommend reading these that I accidentally came across today(especially the first piece):
Jose Quintana’s Unlikely Roll Continues
Jose Quintana Buoys Beleaguered Brewers Rotation