JUPITER, Fla. -- By the end of last season, Luke Weaver says, opposing hitters began to figure him out. Few starting pitchers were more spin-averse than the 23-year-old righty, who navigated most of the 60 1/3-innings of his rookie season with just two distinct pitches, adding and subtracting from them all the way.
Eighty-five percent of Weaver's pitches were either four-seam fastballs or changeups, a whopping number that looked less out of place in St. Louis' rotation (alongside heater-happy Lance Lynn and changeup specialist Michael Wacha) than it did across the Majors, where only five starters threw fewer breaking balls.