What's up with Tanner Houck?

   

    In 30 starts last year, Tanner Houck ended with a 3.12 ERA and the second most WAR on the team at 3.9. In a widely under-appreciated season, Houck pitched like an ace for us. This year, Houck was slated as the number 2 starter, behind offseason addition Garret Crochet. Coming off of a rough spring, Houck's struggles continued into the regular season, allowing 4 runs against Texas and 3 runs against Baltimore, while really struggling to keep the ball in the park. So what is up with Houck, and how should we view his strong start Wednesday against Toronto?

    Through 3 starts, Houck's sweeper has lost about 2 inches of horizontal break. Even with that loss, the sweeper has still been his most used, and best, pitch. Hitters are so far hitting .208 off it, with a 36% whiff, 6% higher than last year. Houck's struggles so far lie in his secondaries. While his splitter, his best secondary last year, has maintained its vertical drop, it has lost half an inch of arm side run, leaving it league average in that aspect. Quite simply though, it's just being squared up more. The line drive percentage off the splitter has increased by 10%, while the contact % has gone up 7%. This has resulted in a .385 BA against the splitter. The sinker has been arguably worse for Houck. The slugging % against it has gone from .327 to .600 with a hard hit rate of 60%. Houck has transition pretty much to a 3 pitch arsenal, and when 2/3 pitches are being hit above .300, something isn't right. 

    Despite that, Houck turned in a strong start in Wednesday night's loss against Toronto, going 6.2 allowing 1 run on 5 hits. The big thing that changed was looking at Houck's sinker. While Houck wasn't able to land the backdoor sweeper as consistently as he wanted to, he got 13 swings on arm side sinkers (inside to RHH outside to LHH). Once again though, Houck didn't generate nearly as many whiffs as he was last year, with just 2 on the sweeper and 2 on the sinker. It was the quality of contact that kept the Blue Jays at bay. The sinker had an exit velo of 83, down from 98 and 89, while the sweeper generated a great exit velo of 78, down from 92 and 95. While the profile of both pitches remained the same, Houck was locating much better Wednesday, a good sign that some early season rust is wearing off.

    Disappointingly though, the splitter was still downright awful. Houck threw it 20% of the time, in line with his first 2 starts, but once again the pitch was hammered, with an avg exit velo of 99. Once again, it was location that killed Houck. The splitter had a movement profile very similar to the splitter he was throwing in his Maddux against Cleveland last year, but the location was way off. With that splitter, he wants to get that ball down and in against righties, playing off the heavy sweeper and tighter sinker. But Houck didn't land one splitter in that area last night, with 10 of his 20 splitters being left right over the plate. Comparing that to that Maddux, Houck threw 9 of 32 splitters in the zone. When he misses with the splitter, it comes in like a BP fastball in the high 80s. That's going to get crushed 10/10 times.