Mixed Bag From Jeurys Familia in 2020

After a horrific return to the New York Mets’ bullpen in 2019, reliever Jeurys Familia transformed his body last winter. With that transformation also came expectations that he’d bounce back from the 5.70 ERA and -0.2 fWAR he posted in 60 innings.

For the Mets to have a top-performing bullpen in 2020 — which was the projection many moons ago back in December — Familia, Edwin Diaz, and Dellin Betances all needed to experience a rebound to varying degrees.

Only Diaz turned that hope into a reality this year.

If we simply look at Familia’s surface stats, though, he was at least better than last year. I mean, hey, his ERA dropped down virtually two full runs from the year before to 3.71 in 26.2 innings AND he owned a 2-0 record! However, some advanced metrics didn’t paint too fun of a picture for the right-hander. Just as he appeared to be slightly unlucky in 2019 (5.05 SIERA and 4.99 xFIP), he ran into some good fortune during this shortened season (5.28 SIERA and 5.32 xFIP).

Someone had to get some good fortune in 2020, right?

Still Walking Everyone

Despite improving his first-pitch strike rate from 55.1% to 62.5% over the past two seasons, Familia still couldn’t stop himself from allowing a ton of walks. While the sample sizes aren’t even, he actually allowed them at a higher frequency in 2020, which didn’t seem possible.

After handing out free passes to 15.3% of hitters he faced last year, this past season saw that number rise slightly to 15.8%. Among qualified regular-season relievers, that ranked as the seventh-worst rate in baseball. The opposition didn’t register nearly as many hits off him this year, which is why is WHIP fell from 1.73 to 1.46.

It’s not as if Familia still wasn’t working with plenty of runners on the bases, though.

Watching his average fastball velocity tick up to 96.6 mph was also a great thing, as that number settled in at 96.0 mph in 2019. Unfortunately, that didn’t help much when taking a peek at some swing-and-miss numbers. The righty produced just a 19.2% strikeout rate, which is the lowest it’s been since 2013 when he whiffed 15.4% of hitters in 10.2 innings as a second-year player.

While Familia has never seen his strikeout rate necessarily land among the elite throughout his career, he had typically found a way to produce a healthy enough strikeout-to-walk ratio along the way. Case in point is the five-year span between 2014 and 2018, where that percentage reached double digits on four different occasions. However, the past two years have gotten worse and worse. After posting a 7.7% clip in this department during the 2019 campaign, it went down significantly to 3.3% in 2020.

What Saved His Season

Even with bad peripherals, Familia had to be doing something right to end up with that 3.71 ERA, and that was true in this respect. There are three different statistics that saw substantial improvements when compared to the year before. Opposing hitters posted just a .204 batting average (.271 in ’19), while his BABIP allowed dropped nearly 100 points (.346 to .247) and his strand rate went from 70.0% to 79.1% (highest since 2015).

This was all a byproduct of how Familia handled the contact made against him. Here’s a look at his batted-ball profile over the past two seasons.

As we can see from the batted-ball events, there were some sizable shifts that took place. And although his soft-contact rate allowed barely moved, he still slashed the percentage of hard contact allowed.

This checks out when looking at his average exit velocity allowed, too. That number went from 87.5 to 85.9 mph. It was accompanied by a change in launch angle from 9.0° to 3.4°, which helps explain the extreme rise in ground-ball rate. According to Brooks Baseball, Familia’s splitter and sinker actually did what they were supposed to do this year when compared to last year: generate lots of ground balls.

Looking Ahead to 2021

Familia is set to enter the third and final year of his free-agent deal next season. Even if New York wanted to have him pack his bags, it doesn’t seem like he really showed enough to be an attractive option to other teams this winter.

The most I could see happening is some kind of bad contract/change-of-scenery kind of swap, if anything (although I’d be thrilled if I was wrong). More likely than not, the Mets are stuck with him and this contract for one more season. Of course, once Steve Cohen takes over the ownership duties, it’s not as if the $11 million Familia’s slated to earn in 2021 is going to prohibit the club from executing an offseason plan to improve the roster.

Can the righty find a way to get his control in check and start getting more whiffs again? It’s possible, but after two consecutive underwhelming performances, it’s something we’ll certainly have to watch happen before solely believing it’ll take place.