How Bryse Wilson Has Evolved, and Why It Matters

Back in late February, I tagged Bryse Wilson as one potential X-factor for the 2023 Brewers. I wanted to capture the broader point that Chris Hook and the rest of the pitching instruction and support staff for the team are very good and versatile, but Wilson had specific indicators in his favor, too. Here's a snippet of what I wrote at that time.

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From his slightly altered arm slot, Wilson’s arsenal can take a new shape, even beyond the transition from straight changeup to splitter. His curveball has always had an extreme amount of horizontal sweep, but gained depth when he raised his arm angle. If the Brewers elect to have him stick with that mechanical change, he can probably find more whiffs when working with those pitches and his four-seam fastball than he has had in his career to this point.

That slot is also a bit more friendly to the cutter, a pitch Hook and the pitching development team loved to help pitchers hone, and with which Wilson has tinkered a couple previous times in his career. He’s a good candidate to be better with a firm cutter than with the traditional slider he’s used throughout his career. 

Lo, and behold: It's already clear that Wilson has both stuck with his higher arm slot, and swapped out his slider for a cutter.

The cutter has been a go-to pitch for him so far, and it's working nicely. He's gotten whiffs on over a quarter of swings against it, and ground balls when batters do put it in play. It's also pretty clear that his four-seamer and curveball work better off one another from this altered slot, and he's achieved both the greater vertical movement and the higher whiff rate that I predicted with the curve in the early going. The samples here are minute, but in pitching, the little things all matter.

That's not all that has changed, though. I also wrote about the fact that, just as he was raising his arm slot a bit, he slid across to the first-base side of the pitching rubber in his setup. The Brewers' advice to him, based on his new slot and new repertoire, has been to keep the mechanical change but return to the third-base side of the rubber,

From there, Wilson's splitter (which has about six inches less armside run than does his straight change) works just fine, but the rest of his arsenal really plays up. His cutter can work across the plate, but is around the zone. He's much more able to consistently work left-handed batters away, but can steer his sinker in on righties. He's elevating his fastball and his sinker with more confidence, and while a high sinker might sound like a bad idea, it's exactly how Wilson's works best. 

That Wilson is also still using his full arsenal tells us he still wants to try his hand as a starter. With Woodruff sidelined, that opportunity is before him. The Brewers probably won't get another Eric Lauer-level breakout from Wilson, who (after all) cost much less to acquire and has a long track record of mixed results in MLB. He's been solid, though, thanks to the synthesis of some things under the guidance of Hook and company. He still has room to grow, and he's in the right place to do so.