Brody Hopkins works the angles

The geometry of a pitching prospect

The first thing to understand about Brody Hopkins, who was traded to the Rays along with outfield prospect Aidan Smith and a PTBNL for star outfielder Randy Arozarena, is that he is an athlete. An outfielder and pitcher in college, he only concentrated fully on pitching in his final year at Winthrop. He is broad and long at 6’4”, and his pitching motion is explosive. His fastball can reach the upper 90s.

The second thing to understand about Brody Hopkins is his geometry. In modern pitching, geometry matters, so let’s consider the triangles.

While Hopkins reportedly can throw five distinct pitches, all of which sound like they could play in the majors, let’s concentrate on his four-seam fastball. There are two numbers that I want to pull out from Lance’s breakdown:

• 5’ release height
• 15” IVB

Release height is how high above the ground the pitcher’s hand is when he releases the ball. Hopkins’s is very low, and it is especially low for a tall pitcher with long arms.

IVB stands for “Induced Vertical Break,” which simply means how much a pitch rises in comparison to a theoretical completely straight, spinless pitch. So a 15” IVB means that Brody Hopkins’s fastball arrives at the front of the plate fifteen inches higher than you would expect it to based solely on its time in the air and the effect of gravity. This number is just slightly below average. Except that in context it’s actually not.

Get on your Fastball and Ride

There have been many innovations in pitching approach over the past decade, but one of the more important ones has been more fully understanding the importance of fastball ride — that quality of the pitch that allows a pitch to look hittable but still find its way above the swing.

Pitch tracking technology has helped teams identify and develop pitchers who put large amounts of efficient backspin on their four-seam fastballs, making the pitch “rise” (it doesn’t actually rise, but it drops less than is expected, which we perceive as rise). The Rays have had more than their share of this type of pitcher, led by reliever Colin Poche, who’s getting 18.8 inches of IVB in 2024. The current leader, taken from Alex Chamberlain’s excellent pitch tracking leaderboard, is Los Angelas’s Alex Vesia, who is averageing 20.3 inches of vertical movement.

These riding fastballs are good at producing both whiffs and popups, but they’re most effective when located at the top of the strike zone. This is in part because of a thing called “Vertical Angle of Approach,” or VAA, which means how steeply the ball is moving in the vertical dimension when it crosses the front of the plate. How exactly VAA matters is complex, but it does — for four-seam fastballs, flatter is generally better.

And location is very important for VAA. Throwing to the top of the zone creates a flatter approach angle than throwing to the bottom.

So while VAA is dependent both on pitch location and pitch movement, there’s also a third component that’s not always as obvious: release point. Just as throwing to a higher point makes the approach angle flatter, throwing from a lower point does so as well.

Release it Low, but Spin it High

The way to maximize VAA is to throw from a low release point, use backspin to make the pitch rise, and throw to the top of the strike zone. But the problem is that IVB and vertical release point aren’t independent.

The way that most pitchers with low release points get their hand low is by throwing sidearm. If the arm extends to the side it’s not extending upward. Think of Kevin Kelly or Ryan Thompson as extreme examples who have pitched for the Rays.

But from this angle it’s difficult to get large amounts of backspin on the ball — the four-seam spin comes out as sidespin instead, which is why Kelly has 12 inches of vertical movement on his fastball and Thompson only seven.

Which brings us back to Hopkins: 15” IVB from a 5’ release height.

Hopkins has something like a ³⁄₄ arm action, but a major way that he’s getting his arm low is by bringing it far forward before releasing the ball — it’s about the extension. High extension is a positive for pitches in its own right (throwing from closer to the batter makes the ball arrive sooner, as if the pitch were faster). But reaching that low release point through extension also gives pitchers like Hopkins unique pitch characteristics. It allows him to throw with average vertical movement from a low release slot, which in turn makes that average IVB play nothing like average. The standard bearer for this kind of fastball in the majors for the past few years has been Paul Sewald, and Hopkins isn’t quite that low. But if these reported numbers are accurate, he’s every bit as extreme.

Back to Alex Chamberlain’s leaderboard, there is only one pitcher in 2024 who is throwing from a lower slot while getting more IVB: Craig Kimbrel. The most similar pitcher from the standpoint of fastball release level, vertical break, and velocity is probably Bryan Woo.

These are both pitchers with excellent fastballs, whose game is carried by the way their fastball plays both in and at the top of the zone. And it’s an exciting tool to see from a 22 year old in just his first year as a pro and only his second year as a full-time pitcher.

Conclusion

Brody Hopkins is a long way away from becoming an impact major league starter, and there’s with a strong probability he never gets there. Pitching is hard. Prospects will break your heart.

But to even have a chance at fronting a major league rotation you need to have tools, and Brody Hopkins has athleticism in buckets and geometry to dream on.