After Breakout Last Season, Jared Koenig's Atypical Dominance Continues for 2025 Brewers Bullpen

[Jack Stern]

Image courtesy of © Kelley L Cox-Imagn Images

Jared Koenig was a breakout contributor in last year's Brewers bullpen, authoring a 2.47 ERA, 3.28 FIP, and 88 DRA- in 62 innings, while ascending to a high-leverage role by season's end. It was fair to wonder, though, whether that success would carry into his second full big-league season.

Relief pitcher is the most volatile position in baseball, and one year's surprising success story can fizzle out just as abruptly. At first glance, Koenig profiled as such an arm. He came out of nowhere last year at age 30, and his raw stuff is more solid than elite.

Instead of regressing, however, the left-hander has improved across the board to begin his follow-up campaign. He leads Brewers relievers with 17 appearances this year, posting a 2.25 ERA, 2.31 FIP, and 77 DRA-.

"It feels like every game for me," Pat Murphy said. "It's nice having him down there. I have a ton of confidence in him."

Pitching is all about keeping hitters off-balance, but the path to that destination differs for every pitcher. While Koenig will sometimes mix speeds and locations, his method of attack is more straightforward than most, to the point that it might look unsustainable. He comes right at hitters with a relentless onslaught of fastballs over the plate.

According to Statcast, among 283 relievers who have thrown at least 30 innings since the start of the 2024 season, Koenig's 58% zone rate ranks 12th. A staggering 50% of his total pitches have been fastballs in the strike zone, the fourth-highest rate among the same number of relievers to throw at least 500 pitches in that span. Overall, 83% of his pitches have been heaters.

"Even before I started throwing harder, I was always a heavy fastball thrower," Koenig said, adding that he already understood how he wanted to attack hitters before joining the Brewers.

Koenig's velocity has climbed since his conversion to a full-time reliever. He's gone from averaging 89 mph with his primary fastball in 2022 to 93 in 2023 and 95 in each of his two seasons in the Milwaukee bullpen. With that extra heat, he's taken his approach to even greater extremes.

"Now I throw harder, so my chance to miss in the zone helps," he said. "I don't have to worry about spotting it as much. I think it frees me up a little more."

On its face, it doesn't seem like an approach that would yield such a high level of success, but it keeps working. Last season, hitters posted a modest .314 wOBA when they put Koenig's fastballs in play. This year, that figure is down to .258. His 27.5% hard-hit rate and 2.5% Barrel rate both put him in the best 4% of all pitchers in the league in terms of minimizing damage.

Koenig keeps throwing sinkers and cutters over the heart of the plate, and opponents keep struggling to barrel them up. Why can't they do anything with pitches that appear so hittable to anyone watching the game?

"I think it's just the knack of how I throw, and then my movement profile is not necessarily a normal movement profile," he said.

The raw movement of Koenig's sinker is not all that impressive. It averages 11.2 inches of induced vertical break, meaning it neither sinks nor has much carry. At 15.1 inches of arm-side run, it tails slightly less than the average left-handed sinker However, that movement plays up because it's unexpected. Based on the direction Koenig spins his sinker, a hitter's eyes do not expect it to tail at all.

"People call it the seam-shift stuff, or whatever," he said. "It's how I've always thrown my two-seam fastball."

Seam-shifted wake is a phenomenon that creates late and unexpected horizontal movement on a pitch when a pitcher orients the baseball's seams a certain way. The seams produce an uneven airflow around the sides of the ball, creating a force that imparts lateral break.

If that brief definition is difficult to comprehend, the image below provides a visual demonstration. The graphic on the left depicts the direction in which Koenig spins his pitches. The one on the right shows the direction in which his pitches actually move.

Koenig's breaking ball occupies similar positions on the clock in both visuals. That means when hitters see the ball spinning like a curveball, it moves in the direction they expect from that spin. His fastballs are different. Hitters read the spin of Koenig's sinker from his crossfire delivery and expect a ball that moves like a traditional backspin four-seamer or has slight glove-side cut. Instead, the ball tails, after they've already made a swing decision.

"Especially inside to righties, it looks like a ball and then it comes back, because it looks like it's cutting," Koenig said. "Plus, with how I throw, it already looks like, when I'm throwing that way, it's coming across before it sinks back."

Adding to Koenig's deception is that his sinker and cutter often spin in the same direction, but break differently. It's hard for hitters to take a comfortable swing when they cannot trust their eyes to tell them which direction the ball will move.

Koenig's sinker did enough heavy lifting in his pitch mix last year, when he threw it 57% of the time. This year, he's upped his sinker usage to 66%, and opponents have hit just .194 with a .259 wOBA against it. Still, he mixes in just enough cutters for different movement from the same initial look.

"That's when the back-door cutters come into play," he said, referring to at-bats in which right-handed batters start to get used to the sinker's surprise movement away from them. "I got Elly (De La Cruz) looking on a back-door cutter."

While Koenig says he takes outs any way he can get them, as a high-leverage reliever, he looks for strikeouts whenever possible. His high sinker usage means he must take an unconventional route to get them. Koenig's whiff per swing rate this year ranks in the 36th percentile, and his chase rate on pitches outside the strike zone ranks in the 15th percentile. However, he uses his breaking ball strategically when he needs a whiff outside the zone, and his sinker and cutter pairing generate plenty of called strikes.

"I'm not getting chase, I'm getting quality looking strikes," he said. "So it's like, take one or the other. I'd rather have them not swing the bat, because it's a lesser chance of them hitting the baseball. It's a zero chance."

Last year, opponents swung at 63% of Koenig's pitches in the zone, which trailed the MLB average of 66%. This year, they're swinging at just 51% of such pitches. Since the start of last year, Koenig's 26 called strikeouts are 19th among all relievers.

It is an atypical form of dominance, but Koenig has proven that it's legitimate. Hitters know they're getting something hard over the plate. They just can't track it, producing uncomfortable takes and weak contact on pitches that might typically be in their hot zones.

"I'm funky," he said. "I'm heavy cross-body. Everything is different. I'm not like a normal, standard pitcher, I guess. Everyone's got to be different and find their own niche. I think that's my niche."

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[mattsinc]

Super interesting!  Is the 51% a sign of small sample size regression incoming though?