Welcome to another installation in the Yankees Separation pitching series. Today will be almost a hybrid of two different pieces I’ve written already. I’ve talked about how Michael King reshaped his four-seamer to create separation off his sinker and I’ve written about how Clarke Schmidt’s embrace of the whirly slider creates separation off the movement profile off his knuckle curveball. Today, I will be looking at Schmidt’s four-seamer and see if he would stand to gain from adjustments similar to the ones made by King.
The more I looked at the data, the more it began to dawn on me — Schmidt might just throw the most inefficient and underperforming four-seam fastball in MLB.