Emilio Pagán Rides Improved Fastball to Breakout Year

Over at FanGraphs yesterday I wrote about Rays reliever Emilio Pagán is having the best year of his young career, and it’s all thanks to an improved weapon: his fastball:

Year over year, its whiff rate has increased 8.9 percentage points and its xWOBA against has dropped 0.146 points. None of his other pitches exhibit any such improvement; besides his cutter, he’s either scrapped them (sinker, change-up) or introduced them this year to poor results (curve).

Check out the full analysis on FanGraphs.

(Photo by Keith Allison)