Scouting the Free Agent Market: Tyson Ross

Once upon a time, there was a pitching coach with the Detroit Tigers named Roger Craig who was able to fix pitchers.  His method was very simple:  Teach them the split-fingered fastball.  Bruce Sutter had made a career out of exclusively throwing that pitch, but Roger Craig saw it as an add-on pitch to for pitchers who maybe had just 2 good pitchers like a fastball and slider or fastball and curve.  Jack Morris, Dan Petry, Milt Wilcox, Juan Berenguer,  those pitchers with Roger Craig as their pitching coach won the World Series for the Tigers in 1984.  The next year, Craig became the manager of the Giants and brought his split-fingered magic with him.  He decreed that every pitcher on the team had to at least try to learn the splitter. It seemed to be an easy pitch to learn and most Giants pitchers were already throwing it in his first season as manager.  Although the results were mixed, it seemed to help more than hurt and Craig became one of the Giants most successful managers largely because of his teaching the spitter to his pitchers.

That brings us to Tyson Ross, a pitcher who has had much more success against the Giants than most other teams in his career.  He started his career with the Athletics and later the Padres. At one point seemed to be a rising star.  Then he suffered a shoulder injury in the first game of 2016 and missed the rest of the year.  The Padres did not pick up his option and he signed with the Rangers where he again struggled with injuries and poor performance.  He signed a minor league deal with the Padres for 2018 and pitched with mixed results with an ERA over 4.00.  He was claimed off waivers by the Cardinals and the Padres let him go.  He had a 2.73 ERA in 21 IP for the Cardinals down the stretch. He's always been good agains the Giants, though.  2018 was not exception as he posted a 0.84 ERA in 4 appearances, 3 Starts.

Production:  His combined pitching line for 2018 was 8-9, 4.15, 149.2 IP, 7.34 K/9, 3.73 BB/9.  FIP 4.39.  xFIP 4.25.  GB/FB= 1.66.

Stuff:  Early in his career, Ross had a standard FB/Slider/Change up repertoire.  Since 2015, he's ditched the changeup and replaced it with a cutter which breaks similarly to a slider.  His FB has lost velocity over the years to an average of 91.1 in 2018.  He threw it just 42.5% of the time and threw the slider 40.9% per Fangraphs.  The Cutter was 15.8%.  So, Ross now has an unusual mix of FB/Slider/Cutter. As you might expect, he is kryptonite for RH hitters but struggles against LH batters.

Back to Roger Craig.  The current rage among sabermetric enthusiasts is to fix pitchers by eliminated their worst pitches.  This appears to be what Ross has done with the changeup.  He replaced it with the cutter but the cutter is a far different pitch than the changeup and is quite similar to the slider which Ross already throws a huge percentage of the time.  There is an interesting series currently in Fangraphs entitled "Pitch Mix Improvements for Free Agents."  In every case, the "improvements" are to remove an underperforming pitch from the repertoire.  Here's what was said about Ross:  "I believe his pitch mix(slider, four-seam and cutter) has his production maxed out.  The problem with Ross is his velocity is down 3 mph from his peak levels...."  I'm convinced Roger Craig would take one look at Tyson Ross's repertoire and absolutely drool over what he could do by adding his patented splitter!  I don't know if Curt Young teaches the splitter or not.

Intangibles:  Ross is from Oakland and pitched for Cal in college.  As I mentioned above he's always stymied the Giants.  Hey!  If they signed him, they wouldn't have to face him!

Cost:  I believe Ross rebounded enough in 2018 to get a major league contract but should come at a very reasonable price.

Conclusion:  Tyson Ross is someone the Giants should target. If he is willing to sign with them, they should then convince him to learn a splitter or split change to give him another out pitch that is more effective against LH batters.