Ross Stripling has been the ultimate glue guy for the Blue Jays since landing in Toronto during the pandemic-shortened season. He’s filled any role that either the front office or managerial staff have asked of him, and he’s done it well too. Now, it’s time for him to get paid.

Ross Stripling has been unbelievable in 2022. He has an ERA better than Kevin Gausman, and a FIP better than Alek Manoah. You might not like to hear it, but you can easily argue that Stripling has been more valuable to the Blue Jays than either of those guys. Not only that, but you can argue that his success is even more sustainable than guys like Manoah. Strip is posting better K-BB ratios than Manoah, with better groundball rates as well. Both are huge indicators of future success, and Stripling checks those boxes. Not only that, but Ross has gotten stronger as the season’s gone on, as his 20 game rolling FIP has been dropping basically since May.

He excels at keeping hitters off balance, which he does with a 5 pitch mix. Ultimately, the four-seam fastball’s still the pitch of choice, but the changeup and slider are still used quite heavily. The curve and sinker take a backseat, but the sinker especially is a good pitch. In the past, we’ve briefly discussed tunnelling. Curveballs tend to tunnel best with cutters, they don’t manage to draw whiffs otherwise, and that’s certainly true of Stripling’s curve.

As a matter of fact, the year that Stripling’s curveball generated the most whiffs was in 2018, when it was actually his best swing and miss pitch (35.9%). That was also the year in which he actually did use a cutter, just under 3% of the time. Interestingly enough, it was also the best year for his curveball in terms of chase rate, at 35.1%. It’s never even been higher than 30% s …

Read More

Author: Tate Kispech / Blue Jays Nation