Guardians Analysis: Luis Ortiz and a deep dive into arm angles

Meet the new Guardians starting pitcher!

Well, that was certainly an emotional roller coaster, huh?

Around dinner time last night, Jeff Passan dropped a massive trade involving the Guardians. Cleveland was sending its Platinum Glove-winning second baseman, Andrés Giménez, to the Toronto Blue Jays along with Nick Sandlin.

Initially, the return was Toronto’s rookie 1B/2B/cOF Spencer Horwitz and outfield prospect Mick Mitchell, which was a great return in exchange for Giménez and Sandlin, as Cleveland was set to shed all of its remaining money owed to Giménez and nab a potential day-one starter lefty bat.

That lasted for all of about three hours.

Horwitz was flipped to Pittsburgh for starting pitcher Luis Ortiz and starting pitching prospects Josh Hartle (#17 in PIT system) and Michael Kennedy.

Now, Hartle is absolutely a major piece in this deal, but Luis Ortiz is the name here.

Ortiz is a 6-foot-2, 235 pound right handed pitcher from the Dominican Republic and is just 25 years-old under team control through the 2029 season. Ortiz made his first appearances as a starter for Pittsburgh as a September call-up in 2022, and then subsequently made 15 starts in 2023 for the Pirates. The results were not great for Ortiz in 2023. Running an ERA that flirted with 5.00 across 86.2 innings, Ortiz’s strikeout rate (14.8%) was barely outpacing his walk rate (12.0%), and he was getting crushed. The Pirates and their pitching development team saw an opportunity with Ortiz.

Ortiz could run it up there with the best of them, touching 100 mph on his fastball in his debut against Cincinnati in 2022. However, command is something he constantly struggled with, and it created advantageous situations for opposing hitters, leading to a lot of pitches hanging over the plate.

In 2023, Ortiz began the season throwing out of the bullpen in a bulk role, and there was a noticeable change to his arm slot.

It may not seem like much, but nine degrees is a pretty aggressive drop in arm angle. So what were the results of this? Ortiz’s walk rate through May 29th was much of the same. 11.9% compared to the 12% the season before. The strikeout rate was a tick up at 17.9%, but if he wanted to work his way back to becoming a starter, he was going to have to cut down on the walks.

Pittsburgh continued making changes. Below is Ortiz’s pitch mix from the start of the 2024 season through the end of April:

From here, Ortiz began to tinker with his pitch mix a bit. This was Ortiz’s mix throughout May:

The overhaul to his arsenal made a world of difference. Ortiz’s walk rate dropped to 6.2% from the start of May to the end of June while the K-rate stayed roughly the same, and Pittsburgh felt good about where Ortiz was at, posting a 3.27 ERA as a reliever, and moved forward with Ortiz as a starter.

Ortiz made his first start on June 26 at Cincinnati, the same place he made his first ever start, and like that outing, Ortiz rolled the Reds, tossing six innings, allowing just one run and notching seven strikeouts with no walks. The Pirates had struggled getting much from their starters up to this point. Despite the debut of Paul Skenes in May, Pittsburgh’s rotation was running middle of the pack, and they lacked depth. This is where Ortiz came in majorly for the Buccos. Of Ortiz’s 15 starts on the season, he failed to go at least 5 innings just once, and despite coming out of the bullpen for close to half the season, Ortiz still accumulated 135.2 innings pitched on the season.

While Ortiz found more success from a lower arm slot, there are some overall worries that lay beneath the results. The extremes of differences between his arm slot when he’s throwing offspeed or breaking pitches versus when he’s throwing his fastballs is alarming and is something I worry could tip pitches. A degree or two is negligible, but an 8-degree difference between his slider and sinker in 2024 compared to a 4-degree difference the season prior is a bit disconcerting.

Ortiz’s peripherals are a bit underwhelming, but the overall metrics on his pitches are very positive. In MLB this past season, there were 16 pitchers who averaged arm angles between 20 and 24 degrees.

The pitch that the vast majority of this group throws predominantly is the sinker. Of the 16 pitchers, only Charlie Morton and Collin Snider throw it less than 20% of the time and a few relievers don’t throw one at all (duh). Of the pitchers in this group who throw their sinkers as a primary offering (20%+), Ortiz’s 17.9 degree arm angle on his sinkers was the lowest. His whiff rate ran at just 13.6% and his .375 xwOBA was the second worst behind only Tanner Houck.

I do think this should be a main directive of what the Guardians do with Ortiz this offseason. His sinker, despite its lower release, still found great downward movement (27.2 inches) on top of already producing good arm-side run at 15.7 inches. If he could stabilize his release angle closer to where his cutter averaged, which was at 22.9 degrees, then this becomes a legitimate plus offering that will give more drop and both miss some more bats while inducing weaker contact. With Ortiz already abandoning his changeup midway through 2024, a more consistent arm slot for his heater and sinker to the rest of his arsenal would do him a world of good. The overall movement on the pitch is so good that he could mold his sinker into something similar to Logan Webb’s.

On the whole, this is a hard-throwing young pitcher with a year of positive results to build upon who will now get to come into Cleveland’s ‘pitching lab’ and work with Carl Willis and Brad Goldberg among others as he continues to flesh out his path as a major league pitcher. Expectations at minimum are a guy who can slot into the middle of this rotation and provide needed length that this team just didn’t get last season, similar to a Cal Quantrill in 2022. There’s also a world where Ortiz figures out his fastball and sinker and finds a way to induce swing and miss with more than just his slider, and that would completely change the game. The irony of trading Andrés Giménez and taking the long way to nab a pitcher whose arsenal screams groundball archetype is not lost here, but it was a much needed move for a team in dire need of starting pitching. Welcome to Cleveland, Luis! Let’s just hope ownership can use the money saved to continue to add.