An adaptation evaluation | Fanraph's baseball

Last week I examined the increasing divergence between the way in which jugs approach equally and hands. I have learned that pitchers in the league are increasingly varying their arsenals every year. But that was a broad appearance and I had some follow-up questions. Mainly who specifically? Which teams? Which players? And how? Today I will give some answers.

As a refreshment, I calculated what I call “adaptations score” by comparing how often a pitcher uses its top two offers, both with the same hands and with opposite battery. The adaptation assessment is simply the difference between the most common, how often a pitcher makes his two best parking spaces when he has the train advantage and how often he throws the same two parking spaces when the dough has the edge. I divided the data from teams to see who drove the move. First, we have the five and least adaptable teams in 2025:

Not much to see here. The Dodgers -on the ground could indicate that the adjustment is even bad. But to be honest, there is a large element that we are missing when we look at the data in this way: personnel. If you change in your team, even if you have the same philosophy, you can change the way you score in this metric. The Dodgers were in the middle of the pack last year when it was about the adaptation assessment. Then they overtook their pitching staff and landed here.

To try to smooth the fluctuations from year to year, I have mixed together for the past three years. I did the same for 2015-2017, the first three years of my data set. Then I compared the two. The big change? It is mainly the Al -Central:

These are change data, but I can tell you why these teams appear: None of them adapted very much in the 2015-2017 time frame. It is not so much that they are noticeable now; The tigers and legal guardians are at the top of the adaptation movement, but the white Sox and Royals are in the middle of the pack. But a decade ago, the entire division was full of guys to all types. I have no great theory for why it is so grouped, but it seems clear that things have changed. Well, except for the twins that were more adaptable than almost everyone a decade ago, but have not changed as much as their division rival.

If you are surprised which teams have changed the least, I can also show you that:

Apart from a factoid, this is not very interesting: Each single team now has a higher adjustment assessment than a decade ago. This is not something in which some front offices love this trend, and others think that he is backwards. Everyone does it. The only question is the degree in which you lean.

My main order from the data at the team level is that you cannot imagine this trend as just one or two teams. Everyone The team does that. The team, which distinguishes its parking spaces from one handwaters to the other in 2025, would be in the TOP 10 in 2015. We do not talk about one or two clever F&E groups that find out this new trend. We speak of everyone who realizes that the pitches develop easier than ever before and therefore turn around and develop more.

Everyone does it – but how much? To answer this, I looked for the starters with remarkable movements between 2024 and 2025. Here are the biggest changes:

Wait a negative adaptation assessment? That's right – and it is not difficult to understand how it happens. Cabreras Best Pitch is probably his 94-mile change. It is so good that even against equal batteries, in which change eups are generally less useful, more than any other field last year. Of course he threw it even more often against the left. Last year, 53% of his offers for Righties change or four -seater. But when he was opposed to the left, he Really Let the change eat; Change and four -seater made 67% of his offers. In order to obtain a negative adaptation assessment, you must also give your best pitch with the opposite of the same report. It is rare, but hardly impossible.

Nevertheless, Cabrera tries something new this year. He uses a sink/slider approach for righties and almost complete the four-seater. He still throws a lot of change against the left, but now his second mandatory pitch is a curve ball. He hardly throws sinks and sliders to the left – why should they? The result is a much larger adaptation assessment and the greatest change in baseball. Now I would argue that Cabrera is better used to work on his command than to develop new pitches. He rocks a double-digit walk price for the fifth year in a row. But the numbers don't lie; It fits far more than before.

The other names here are a mixed bag. Holmes added a cutter and a change when he went over to the starting trotation. Wilson learned a change in winter. Carrasco leaned into a sink/slider approach to legal remedies; He used these two parking spaces about half the time with the pulling edge last year, but he has up to 77%in 2025. Lodolo, a left one, throws more sinks on left -handed people than ever before.

Maybe my favorite is from these Basint. I am surprised that he has not yet had a higher adjustment assessment. After all, he throws eight parking spaces, why not mix? But while he throws eight, cutter and sinker made about two thirds of his offerings to the Righties in 2024. And now, he likes his sink and cutter! He also threw more than half the time to left -handed people. But this year he added a new fold to his game. Instead of a cutter against appeal, he uses a sweeper and climbs into the sink/sweeper madness that everyone loves. In the meantime, he leans into the approach of the sink of the sink against left and throws more than 10% of cases four parking spaces, a completely different strategy than the one that he uses against equal bats.

I am not convinced that the adaptation assessment is a only good thing. I am convinced that it is useful descriptive. Are you wondering which jugs have changed your approach? It will tell you. Are you wondering which gluely stick to old? This is also pretty easy to find. Just to choose a few prominent names, Bryan Woo, Corbin Burnes, Kyle Hendricks and Yusei Kikuchi have almost identical scores in 2024 and 2025.

I will leave her with a very amusing player, the man whose adaptation points from 2024 to 2025 fell the most. That would be Cardinals Righty Andre Pallante, who was an extreme adapter in 2024. And I mean almost completely: in 95.8% of the cases in which he did not have the train advantage, he threw four soul or curveballs. This led to a whopping 60.2 adaptation value, the third highest brand in the majors.

This year Pallante has returned his sink use, and I understand why. His four -seater is his best pitch for a long time; Through running values, 24 runs in his career are above average, while each other field is 21 races below Average. He now leads with a four-seater against Righties and he should be what his best pitch and everything is. But since he supports himself even more against left -handed, this means that his adaptation assessment is now negative! In fact, he is now boasting the thirdlowest Adaption division in baseball, far from the third highest brand of last year. This is absolutely wild stuff.

Pallante and Cabrera are reminiscent of a good memory that the problem of whether they vary their pitch mix or adhere to their best options. Cabrera turned his approach to have different pitch mixtures against the left and rights hinters, and his results have suffered so far. Pallante went into the other and went from an extreme adapter to bread and butter more often, and he also has a miserable start. There are no silver balls here, no simple movements that everyone can do to improve. While the data is loud at an individual level, the overall trend is clear. More jugs diversify their approaches than they consolidate. I am not sure where the trend will end – but I am quite confident that the direction is not a coincidence.