A.J. Minter is a name that you may have seen trending on Braves Twitter in recent weeks. If you’ve been watching the games, you likely know why. He’s had a rough start to his 2023 season. He seems unmoved by his recent performance, and I suppose that’s a good thing but let’s look at what’s been going on with our interim closer.

.291/.328/.455. Decent slash line, but not if you’re looking at “batting against” data for one of you high leverage relievers. Minter’s ERA has ballooned to 8.56 over his first 14 outings of 2023. and some of the underlying metrics are pretty unsightly. MLB averages will be denoted parenthetically.

Let’s start with something that we can at least attribute to bad batted ball luck. Minter has fallen victim to a .378 BABIP (.286). This is wildly high for a reliever. This lands him in the 20th percentile across baseball. The silver lining is that this should even out over the course of 162 games. But why is it so high?

Cutter

The cutter is getting hammered. His cutter usage is up ten percent from 2022 and hitters aren’t missing. Spin on the pitch is down almost two hundred RPM from last year. The hard hit rate has jumped 12% and the ground ball rate has plummeted to 26%, which is well below league average (43%). Line drive percentage goes up 13.5% in tandem. The cutter looks like it’s being left up in the zone. Velocity doesn’t seem to be the issue. All of the available data shows a tick or less of drop. Whiff, K, and Put Away percentages are all trending downward while launch angle and barrel % are all inflated. The cutter has produced the worst numbers by far for A.J. last season so I’m not exactly sure why he’s leaning on it so heavily. Perhaps they thought they found a nice shape somewhere underneath the numbers but the results have yet to surface.

4-Seam Fastball

The fastball numbers aren’t as staggering but the heat maps tell a similar story. The four-seamer is also experiencing regression. Opponents slugged just .272 on the fastball in 2022. Slugging percentage sits at .523 this season. Hard contact is down. Spin is up. Where is the problem? I think it’s all location. In 2022 the 4-seam lived on the black, arm side in Zone 6. This year it’s up and center cut. Not fastball specific, but a metric that stands out to me is First Pitch Strike%. He’s not far off league average at 56.9% (60.8) but that number is nearly ten percent lower than his two previous seasons. After an 0-1 count (30 PA), batters are slashing .200/.200./.300 (.500 OPS). After a 1-0 count (25 PA) the line looks more like this, .409/.480/.682 (1.162 OPS). It’s not new information that it’s beneficial for pitchers to pitch ahead, but you can really see how numbers begin to unravel in the splits below. He’s also dealing with reverse splits. Lefties are slugging .667 in 2023 (.285 career).

                                                                       
Split            G PA AB R H 2B 3B HR BB SO   BA  OBP   SLG   OPS BAbip
1-0 Count        4  4  4 1 3  0  0  0  0  0 .750 .750  .750 1.500  .750
0-2 Count        6  7  7 0 1  0  0  0  0  3 .143 .143  .143  .286  .250
1-2 Count       11 13 13 2 3  0  0  1  0  6 .231 .231  .462  .692  .333
2-2 Count        9 12 12 2 2  0  1  0  0  6 .167 .167  .333  .500  .333
Full Count       5  5  3 2 1  0  0  1  2  1 .333 .600 1.333 1.933  .000
After 1-0       12 25 22 6 9  1  1  1  3  6 .409 .480  .682 1.162  .533
After 2-0        6  6  3 0 1  0  0  0  3  1 .333 .667  .333 1.000  .500
After 0-1       14 30 30 5 6  0  0  1  0 10 .200 .200  .300  .500  .263
After 0-2       11 16 16 0 1  0  0  0  0  7 .063 .063  .063  .125  .111
After 1-2       13 22 22 5 5  0  0  2  0  9 .227 .227  .500  .727  .273
After 2-2       12 17 15 4 3  0  1  1  2  7 .200 .294  .533  .827  .286
Two Strikes     14 37 35 6 7  0  1  2  2 16 .200 .243  .429  .672  .294
Batter Ahead    10 13 10 3 5  0  0  1  3  1 .500 .615  .800 1.415  .500
Pitcher Ahead   13 24 24 3 5  0  0  1  0  9 .208 .208  .333  .542  .286

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 5/2/2023.

Changeup

A changeup is only as good as the hard stuff that it plays off of so believe it or not, the numbers aren’t great here either. Nothing too substantial as he’s only thrown 30 of them this year, but the K% is down almost 15% from 2022. He seems to favor the change every other year, 2023 being a down example (12.5%) in favor of the cutter but it’s probably too early to put much stock into this offering. The xBA sits at .191 and he’s under performing his expected slugging by about 150 points, so there is certainly some room for optimism. It all starts with the fastball and I expect this to follow suit and play up when things get back on track.

Contrary to what recency bias would lead you to believe, A.J. Minter is not a bad pitcher. Has he been particularly sharp this season? Absolutely not. We’ve seen these bouts with mediocrity before in 2019 and 2021, although I do find it strange that the regression monster would attack so hard after such a great 2022 campaign. He’s also been operating in the closer role amidst the absence of Raisel Iglesias. Minter’s career ERA in the 9th inning sits at 4.67. In the 8th? 2.98. Perhaps the mental angle plays a much bigger role than it would seem when cast through a television screen. I’ll never know. Minter was one of the best set up men in baseball last year and that’s what we need him to be. These past couple have weeks haven’t been very pretty but Minter is also subject to relatively slow starts, as the splits would indicate. Highest career earned run average by month? March/April (5.33). Lowest, August (1.45). Next lowest? September/October (2.31). I can live with a slow start if that’s what Minter can provide coming into the postseason and we know that he can.