Muñoz's sinker, four seamer are getting crushed

Reliever Andrés Muñoz has had several high profile blown saves this season that have rattled his reputation as one of the game’s best closers. It’s resulted in an unreasonably high ERA of 5.47 with a FIP of 3.70 and xFIP of 2.91; which tends to indicate that he hasn’t gotten as much help from his defense this year as he has in the past. But it’s hard to blame the fielders because his four seamer and sinker are getting absolutely crushed.

Both fastballs have seen hitters absolutely tee up on them this season. against the sinker they’re hitting .556/.583/.556 while the four seamer is getting hit slightly worse at .360/.529/.480 in his 26.1 innings pitched this season. What has really hurt the 27 year old is the fact that batters have figured out to elevate the sinker this season, 33.3% of sinkers put in play are fly balls and that’s come with a significant uptick in hard hit balls against Muñoz.

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The reason his fastballs are getting shelled this season is that he’s left them in the middle of the plate and when you compare the pitch location for his fastballs to the location for his slider, the difference is quiet stark.

These heatmaps show the difference between Muñoz’s pitch location this season. (Photos credit: Fangraphs)

The pitch that hitters have struggled to hit this season is his slider; .159/.194/.333. It’s generated a strikeout rate of 45.8% when he’s used it with two stikes and swings on 52.3% of the times he’s used it. Which is why it’s become his most used pitch this season as Muñoz has adapted to the the abuse his two fastballs have taken.

Despite the issues with his command over his fastballs, the closer is striking out batters at a higher clip than he has at any point in his short career which is combined with his lowest walk rate. Once he figures out those pitch location issues it should be fairly straight forward for the 27 year old to get back on track.