In Dominant Preview Outing, Colin Rea is a Model of Pitchability

The Brewers lost in walk-off fashion to the Cubs on Tuesday night, but the main story was Colin Rea’s excellent start. Rea induced 14 whiffs en route to seven strikeouts over four hitless innings.

While that remarkable performance would draw attention in most instances, it stood out even more because Rea has been reliably unremarkable during his time as a Brewer.

A STRONG outing for Code Red

4 IP
0 H
7 K pic.twitter.com/zAm2RD2Nck

— Milwaukee Brewers (@Brewers) March 13, 2024

Ironically, that became a central topic of discussion in his post-outing media scrum. It’s difficult to draw up a more stereotypical back-of-the-rotation arm than Rea. He tossed 124 ⅔ innings last year, with a 95 ERA+. His strikeout and ground ball rates mirrored the league averages. His average fastball velocity was a tick below that of the average MLB starter.

None of Rea’s pitches are inherently good ones. The Stuff+ model available at FanGraphs grades his curveball at 101 and all of his other offerings as below-average. Statcast pitch movement metrics say that most of his pitches have slightly less movement than average. Rea’s auto-generated PITCHf/x arsenal report leads with, “Their sinker is a prototypical pitch with few remarkable qualities.”

Rea knows his stuff isn’t good. He acknowledged it without hesitation or prompting when discussing his approach on the mound.

“I don’t really have a pitch that stands out as far as stuff-wise,” Rea told the media on Tuesday night.

Despite that lack of stuff, Rea keeps chugging along as a reliable arm who keeps his team in the game in most of his outings. His game is a sum of unremarkable parts that create competitive results.

None of Rea’s pitches have plus movement, but they all move in different ways. Look at how each of his six offerings form distinct clusters in the movement plot below. A more accurate graph would feature a seventh cluster, as the sinkers with a higher vertical break are actually two-seam fastballs that Rea throws as another distinct pitch.

Rea doesn’t excel at generating a particular kind of movement, but he can do a little bit of everything. He can create moderate amounts of sink, arm-side run, glove-side cut and sweep, vertical drop, and occasional ride. Each pitch he throws looks different to the hitter.

That diversity in pitch shapes allows Rea to effectively cover every quadrant of the strike zone.

The foundation of Rea’s approach is his trio of fastballs. He attacks down with his sinker to both sides of the plate, throws his cutter to the glove-side portion of the zone, and elevates with his four-seamer. That variety keeps the hitter from getting comfortable enough to consistently barrel a particular pitch.

“When we mix all three of those together, that makes it play up,” Rea explained.

Rea mixes the three pitches effectively to the point that hitters can’t hunt any of them. Last season, he threw his sinker 30% of the time, his cutter 26.5%, and his four-seamer 19.2%. From there, he mixes in a sweeping slider, a curveball, and a splitter that he has refined over the last few months.

As someone who relies on mixing speeds and locations to keep hitters from growing comfortable against any of his pitches, Rea is always searching for new ways to add variety to his game plan.

Right-handed batters see Rea’s cutter low and away most of the time, so on Tuesday, he deliberately threw several cutters up and in. The idea is that when the hitter sees a pitch in the upper third of the zone, they’ll assume it’s a four-seamer, only for the different movement of the cutter to violate their expectations and miss the barrel.

Rea is best off keeping elevated cutters to a minimum. His cutter is more of a breaking ball than a fastball, averaging just 5.7 inches of induced vertical break last year. If left up in the zone, it’ll appear like a hanging breaking ball more often than not.

Still, the high cutter is an extension of the thought process that has served Rea well in his time with the Brewers. Pat Murphy confirmed after his outing that Rea will be a member of his starting rotation. The Brewers will be relying on him and his knack for pitchability as a consistent source of innings this year.