This Major Brayan Bello Change Might Unlock Red Sox Starter’s Potential
Brayan Bello threw 2,518 pitches during the 2023 season, and nearly 21% were four-seam fastballs. Eighty-four pitches into a new season, it appears the Red Sox pitcher’s four-seam percentage is about to fall off a cliff.
Bello was effective Thursday night, allowing just two runs over six innings in Boston’s Opening Day win over the Seattle Mariners. While he only struck
out two Mariners, he did get eight swings and misses while also inducing seven ground balls, including a first-inning double play to hold Seattle at bay. A lot of the Mariners’ contact was weak, as they failed to connect strongly with the ball.
A big reason for that weak contact was Bello’s pitch usage. Of his 84 pitches, 36 of them were his sinker (or two-seam fastball), and he also relied heavily on a changeup (28 pitches) while mixing in his slider (20 pitches). Add that all up, and you get 84, meaning Bello didn’t throw a single four-seam fastball Thursday night, at least not according to MLB’s own pitch-tracking data.
Again, the four-seam numbers are a massive departure from his big-league career to this point. Bello threw four-seamers 19% of the time in his rookie season and he increased it to 20.6% last season
Obviously, it’s worth wondering whether this change is here to stay and whether this is part of the Red Sox’s new pitching infrastructure led by chief baseball officer Craig Breslow and pitching coach Andrew Bailey.
In fact, the change — albeit in the smallest sample size imaginable — does seem to have Bailey’s fingerprints (perhaps literally) all over it. It’s not dissimilar to what Bailey did with Giants pitcher with Giants pitcher Logan Webb when Bailey held the same position in San Francisco.
Webb threw his fastball nearly half the time when he made his big league debut in 2019. A year later, his first with Bailey, he threw it a third of the time, a rate that dipped below 10% in 2021 and was 3% in 2022 — when he went 15-9 with a 2.90 ERA.
