SAN FRANCISCO – Archie Bradley’s results remain hit or miss, but the Diamondbacks reliever thinks he finally has isolated what has gone wrong with his fastball, an issue he believes stems from an arm slot that crept almost imperceptibly upward over the past two seasons.
Bradley had been baffled by how his fastball tended to run in on right-handed hitters or away to lefties and by the way opposing hitters seemed to be squaring it up more easily than in years past, despite the fact he was still throwing it in the 96 mph range. He has come to believe this had to do with where and how he was releasing the pitch, a belief cemented by information from the club’s analytics department.