Photo Credit: KIRSTEN SCHMITT
Jhoulys Chacin
Even in a season where several members of the Brewers have struggled to repeat their 2018 performances, Jhoulys Chacin’s year stands out.
The Brewers abruptly ended Chacin’s tenure in Milwaukee over the weekend, designating him for assignment just five months after using him as their Opening Day starter. A year after he was the Brewers’ most valuable starting pitcher, Chacin’s stock within the organization had fallen so far that David Stearns told reporters the Brewers couldn’t anticipate using him in a meaningful role even if he eventually regained full health. That’s especially telling given the Brewers’ prolonged lack of depth and star power in their starting rotation.
Chacin’s basic statistics paint a clear picture as to why the Brewers decided to move on. His 5.79 ERA is easily his worst in any of his eleven MLB seasons. Home run rates are rapidly climbing across baseball but Chacin is outpacing the trend, allowing more long balls in 88 2/3 innings in 2018 than he did in 192 2/3 innings in 2019. His walk rate also climbed by more than half a free pass per nine innings and he gave up nearly three more hits per nine. It’s clear that Chacin’s results had diminished, but why?
When trying to figure out what happened to a pitcher whose performance rapidly declined in a small sample, bad luck is a logical place to start looking. Opposing batters hit .308 on balls in play against Chacin this season, up from a .299 mark for his career and a .250 mark in 2018. That change correlates with his contact data, however, as a career-worst 48% of the balls put in play against him were hit hard (per FanGraphs). xFIP, a statistic designed to predict a pitcher’s expected outcomes in a defense-neutral environment, has Chacin at 5.23 instead of his 5.79 ERA for 2019. He outperformed his xFIP by nearly a run in 2018.
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Chacin’s pitch repertoire changed, but only slightly. His velocity is roughly the same in 2019 as it was in 2018, with his average fastball sitting just above 90 mph. He’s followed an MLB trend and reduced the usage of his sinker (per Brooks Baseball), a pitch hitters have increasingly squared up in the “launch angle” era. If anything, he’s probably still a step behind the curve on that front: He threw sinkers about 30% of the time in 2019, down from 35% last year. FanGraphs’ pitch value data suggests the pitch has cost Chacin about 20 runs this season. His slider remains his best weapon but he can only throw it so often, and in 2019 he’s used it more than 50% of the time.
It’s also impossible to tell if the Brewers’ offseason coaching change had an impact on Chacin, but the data correlates with it. Seventeen pitchers appeared in games for both the 2018 and 2019 Brewers, with that group posting a 3.71 combined ERA in 2018 under former pitching coach Derek Johnson and a 4.67 combined mark in 2019. Eleven of the 17 pitchers in that group saw their ERA increase this season. Offense is up about half a run per game across the National League as a whole in 2019, but this increase is nearly double that trend.
Finally, it’s possible that the workload of a long MLB career has caught up with Chacin. He’s only 31 years old but has been a full time starting pitcher nearly every season since he was 22 in 2010. He’s logged over 1300 innings and gotten a lot of mileage out of his slider, a pitch traditionally viewed as damaging to a pitcher’s long term health (although Driveline Baseball’s findings have contradicted that viewpoint). It certainly seems possible that Chacin’s arm simply isn’t as effective as it once was after the strain of over 20000 MLB pitches.
Whatever the reason, Chacin joins a long list of recent Brewers Opening Day starters that have struggled mightily after taking the mound in that first game. It’s likely the list will come up again next spring when the organization has a different pitcher in that role for the seventh consecutive season.
