Is Julio Teheran Really This Good?

Julio Teheran came through his start on Monday evening having allowed just three runs in his first three Brewers outings, combined. When Wade Miley was put on the 15-day injured list, and the team expected him to be out for eight weeks, it looked as though the Brewers had finally gotten one injury too many. Where could they go? Robert Gasser wasn’t ready yet, regularly losing command for a big inning, and no other arms were really there to get big-league outs.

Teheran was picked up after posting a 5.63 ERA with the Padres’ Triple-A affiliate–not a burgeoning indicator. He had struggled to a 10.05 ERA in 30 innings for the Los Angeles Angels in 2020, given just five innings for the Detroit Tigers in 2021 and had no recent history of anything of substance to suggest this would go well.

On the surface so far this season, he has a 90.6-mph average exit velocity, and an average launch angle of 17.8 degrees, which spells trouble. However, hitters are finding the “sweet spot” (launch angles between 8 and 32 degrees) just 32% of the time, compared to 42% in his fallow years. He is also forcing hitters to beat him, giving up just two walks in 17 1/3 innings pitched, leading to a very manageable expected ERA of 3.34. So while he’s barely striking guys out, he’s performing very respectably indeed, making a case that he should be retained (over Colin Rea) when Miley, Lauer and Woodruff all return.

Teheran’s swing-and-miss stuff is almost non-existent. He has 153% (yep, you read that right) less horizontal break on his slider than the average major-league version, and below average vertical movement too. His curveball and four-seamer are both poor pitches in terms of movement as well. However, his sinker has 4.4 inches of extra vertical drop compared to the MLB average, and his changeup is slightly on the plus side too. What this has resulted in is a very high ground ball rate with the changeup, one of his better swing-and-miss pitches.

Most interesting is the four-seamer, which (despite its poor movement profile) has been a weapon for him so far this season. He keeps it up in the zone well, using it especially against left-handers and to good effect with a .228 expected slugging percentage and 23% whiff rate, inducing a lot of pop-ups and lazy fly balls. Opponents’ average launch angle against the pitch is 31 degrees, too high to be productive. The biggest plus for him is the location; he keeps it in the zone, but most interesting is how it pairs with his sinker, staying just slightly higher, but tunneling very well off each other. He uses the above-average sinker movement to avoid barrels, and the four-seamer’s tunneling to generate whiffs and popups.

The slider, however, seems to be getting used as a backdoor breaking pitch, rather than attempting to get chases down and away, and it’s being hit fairly hard with regularity at the moment (xBA .365, xSlg .603). His best offspeed pitch is, as mentioned, the changeup, and look at the accuracy around its location:

In terms of pitch mix, during his last full season in MLB (2019) Teheran based almost everything off his four-seam fastball, rather than the sinker we see him use today. He was, however, having his offspeed pitches getting hit hard (all three of his changeup, curveball and slider), which continued into 2020 with his changeup having a .467 batting average and 1.200 slugging percentage against it. In short, when he left his offspeed offerings over the plate, they got absolutely hammered.

The curveball has been used almost exclusively out of the zone so far this season, but the most interesting usage thus far is his slider, with which he has mostly tried to slip in the front door to right handers, and the back door to left handers equally. For a pitcher that likes to pitch on the outer edges of the plate, especially with the sinker inside to right handers, it can fool the occasional hitter and allow him to get ahead early in the count. Due to its subpar movement, it potentially blends much better with his fastballs, almost as an opposite-handed changeup in some ways, making it more difficult to pick up for hitters than the slow, early-breaking, sweeping sliders that are all over the league.

Is it likely that he can sustain this indefinitely? Probably not, but the plus defense the Brewers have employed behind him and Adrian Houser has definitely helped thus far. Teheran’s unique style will likely get picked apart sooner rather than later. That being said, he’s an experienced pitcher and should have the nous for a few more solid starts before the league catches up. If he can show an ability to adapt after that, then he may even stick around.