Getting ahead hasn’t been an issue. Finishing off at-bats has.
“Not leaving the zone with two strikes is an issue right now. I need to be better at it. I’m letting the team down, and it’s a bad feeling. … I’ve got to learn.”
Louie Varland, after his last start in Baltimore
One of the most powerful factors in the game of baseball is the ball-strike count. In general, the player who controls the count controls the game, as you can see in the data below:
A two-strike count is often a terrible place to be for a hitter. It’s a great place to be for a pitcher, especially 0-2 and 1-2. For Louie Varland, getting to two strikes has rarely been an issue in his short career.
Varland throws strikes and lots of them. Of the 1,782 major league pitches he’s thrown, 55.1% have been in the Statcast-measured strike zone. That’s well above the 48.6% league average. Varland’s rate of throwing pitches in the zone is the 10th-highest among the 438 starting pitchers to have thrown at least 100 pitches in the zone in the past four seasons.
As a result, Varland has been ahead in the ball-strike count for more than a third (33.8%) of the pitches he’s thrown as a starter in his career. That mark ranks 12th-most among those starters, right up there with front-line pitchers like Spencer Strider, Max Scherzer, and Kevin Gausman, and nearly 59% of the batters Varland has faced have reached two strikes.
Converting That to Outs
Throwing strikes and working ahead are good things. The best pitchers do it. The best pitchers also convert that count leverage into outs, which Varland has struggled to do.
As a starting pitcher, Varland has allowed opponents to hit .283/.290/.452 (.317 wOBA) when he’s been ahead in the count. MLB starters, on average, have allowed .203/.212/.318 (.228). Those OBP figures mean that 29% of the batters that fall behind Varland still reach base, whereas starting pitchers overall average just 21.2%. Varland’s .290 OBP allowed in such situations ranks 363rd out of 392 starters with at least 100 such pitches since 2021.
Varland and the Twins coaching staff have rightfully zeroed in on Varland’s execution in two-strike counts as an issue.
“The two-strike execution, with the breaking balls especially, has to be better than what it is,” manager Rocco Baldelli said after Varland’s last outing against Baltimore. “That’s what I talked to Lou about. … It’s multiple starts in a row where he threw the ball reasonably well but needs to make better pitches when he gets to two strikes.”
To that point, Varland’s work as a starter in 0-2 and 1-2 counts, when the pitcher is in his most advantageous position, has left even more to be desired. Whereas the league’s starters have allowed .179 wOBA in those counts, Varland has given up .276 — a 97-point gap from average that is even bigger than the 89-point gap illustrated above.
Strength to Weakness
Some large measure of that is due to Varland’s strike-throwing. Strengths in the extreme can become weaknesses. Compared to his overall approach, Varland does reduce his strike-throwing when he’s in 0-2 and 1-2 counts, as most pitchers do when they have the advantage. But his reduction down to a 44.0% zone rate in those counts is still the 8th-highest among starters, well above those other pitchers who come into the zone in those counts just 34.9% of the time.
I wondered with Zach in the game thread for that start in Baltimore if part of this was Varland’s relative lack of a big-breaking chase pitch. But the data suggests he gets chase swings on pitches out of the zone at about average rates.
In all counts, opponents have chased 27.6% of Varland’s pitches outside the strike zone (the league average is 28.4%). In 0-2 and 1-2 counts, his chase rate bumps up to 36.0%, almost right in line with other starter’s 36.9% average.
So hitters do go after his stuff out of the zone, he just needs to do a better job giving them opportunities to do so (and, in turn, give them fewer opportunities to hit pitches in the zone when they are disadvantaged).
Finally, because it’s the question that surrounds Varland at all times, I looked at how he’s done with this as a reliever. Bear in mind that he’s faced all of 42 batters in his career in relief (compared to 419 as a starter).
But, in 0-2 and 1-2 counts in relief, he threw just 10 of 33 (30.3%) pitches in the strike zone, which was below the league’s reliever average of 36.0%. I wouldn’t recommend drawing anything conclusive from those data points, other than Varland executed a little better in a very small relief sample than he has as a starter thus far.
His underlying stuff is plenty good to work as a starter, and the pitch modeling grades suggest it’s improved over last year. But, if he wants to stick starter, he’s going to have to tighten this part of his game up. It’s something to watch during his start later today.
John writes for Twinkie Town, Twins Daily, and Pitcher List with an emphasis on analysis. He is a lifelong Twins fan and former college pitcher. Follow him on Twitter @JohnFoley_21.