Relief Pitcher Target

Tyler Kinley of the Colorado Rockies is a reliever that I believe has the potential to be used in high leverage situations. Kinley from his stats alone does not look good. Over his career, he’s put up a 4.98 ERA and 1.392 WHIP in 258.2 innings so one can’t use sample size as a reason for his struggles. However, Kinley's strengths lie within his pitches. His arsenal is pretty simple, a 3 pitch mix with a four-seam fastball, slider, and occasional change-up. Both his slider and his change-up are amazing out pitches. The slider generated a whiff percentage of 41.3% and hitters can only muster an average exit velocity of 82.8% against it. His change-up was mainly used against lefties and performed even better generating a whiff percentage of 66.7 mph and an even lower average exit velocity of 69.1 mph. His slider displays above average spin showing off with 2615 rpm and his change-up has an induced vertical break of 10.7 inches which would place him in the top 30 among pitchers who have thrown the pitch at least 50 times this past season. Both pitches are currently plus pitches with his change-up being among the best in the league. With two of the three being great, why isn’t he better than he actually is? 

The reason being is his fastball. His fastball is by far his worst pitch and gets hit hard for 93.3 average exit velocity with a .506 slugging against. It has historically been his worst pitch and been consistently bad through his entire career. He does, however, show good spin on the fastball with an induced vertical break of 15 inches and an rpm of 2365. He does struggle to land it for strikes as well as not mixing it well with his offspeed. Looking at his heat maps, Kinley has a set place for his offspeed with both pitches being targeted towards down and away to get the swing and miss. His fastball is not the same case with a slight shift towards the outside part of the zone but no real set target. With the spin and break Kinley gets on his fastball, he should be targeting both the upper and inner quadrants of the zone. His offspeed pitches have great tails that move away from the batter and Kinley has a fastball with velocity and a little tail action to it. He should be using his fastball more to set up the offspeed while keeping hitters off balance. The lack of command may play a part in the avoidance of the inner quadrant but targeting that area would set Kinley up to be more effective. His pitches already have the ability to get outs, it is more about being able to use the pitches in the proper manner to turn them into results.

With his current stats paired with his age (33), Kinley has the potential to be a DFA or non-tender candidate this coming offseason. As such, his value remains low and he could be acquired as a reclamation project for cheap. All teams should be clamoring to obtain Kinley in attempts to develop him into this potential. Bringing these pitches out of Coors Field and pairing him with a better game plan can do wonders for him.