Player review: Keaton Winn

Here’s 2,000 words on Keaton Winn you didn’t ask for

2024 stats: 12 GS, 55.1 IP, 7.16 ERA, 1.373 WHIP, 7.8 K/9, 3.3 BB/9, 1.5 HR/9, 50.3% GB%

Six starts into the 2024 season, Keaton Winn finally established residency in the win column.

After starting the year with a hat-trick of tough luck ‘L’s, he strung together three consecutive quality starts, giving up just one run each against the Marlins, the Mets, and Pirates to even his record at 3-3.

Late April were Winn’s salad days. Opponents hit on the interstate and struggled to find other ways on base against him. His 3.18 ERA was just a scooch higher than Logan Webb’s — its main affliction being the tendency of a fly ball to leave the park (14.3% HR/FB). A problem counteracted rather effectively by his 60.2% ground ball rate — just a scoochier scooch lower than Webb’s, and a half percentage point higher than the ascendent Jordan Hicks’s. Good luck trying to get airborne against the San Francisco Giants starting rotation with onslaught of concrete offspeed offerings and bowling ball sinkers.

Winn, in his first April in the Majors and the less-lauded of the rookie starting pitchers, appeared just as revelatory as Hicks. Here’s Brady after a masterful performance against Pittsburgh:

“He may have opened the year as a fill-in while the Giants waited for Alex Cobb to return to health, but Winn has now forced the issue, and feels like an immovable piece of the rotation.”

An apt analysis — on the day. But just like Van Morrison, a prayer is needed to “cast my memory back there, Lord” because April 29th feels like a helluva long time ago. So much so, I find it hard to fathom that, for a brief moment, this was the world we were living in: Winn’s promise as palpable, his presence foundational.

Of course, this impossible world shook. The reality is the 2024 season — or anything we’ll remember from it — happened in early May. Those weeks were defined by an earthquake of injury and its subsequent aftershocks of disappointment and surprise. And during that upheaval, Winn was razed, he got rocked and rolled by opponents before falling through the cracks for good.

All I can recall with any clarity about Winn’s season is the subsequent snark of headlines structured around his surname. His lackluster performances matched by lackluster puns: “Winn winless again.” A personal favorite: “Winn far from winsome in loss.” From May 1st to the end of June, Winn started six more games and lost five of them. In 21.1 innings pitched, he allowed 32 earned runs, good for a 13.50 ERA.

The tremors started abruptly. On May 4th in Philadelphia Winn was tagged for five runs and pulled before the end of the 1st inning. Against the Rockies, an efficient, scoreless outing devolved in the blink of an eye when Winn allowed the first six batters he faced to reach in the 4th — seven runs would eventually cross the plate. Forearm tightness in his throwing arm saved him from further harm after allowing 5-runs over 4+ innings against the Dodgers on May 14th. What was considered “mild” at first turned into a stint on the injury list and nearly a month away from the mound.

Winn’s return on June 9th started inauspiciously enough. His first pitch — an errant four-seamer — drilled Marcus Semien in the head.

The Rangers punched back with three runs in that frame, with Semien landing a blow of his own an inning later on a 2-run homer. Winn’s day ended in the 5th with seven more runs tacked to his name.

The next start was Winn’s best in this stretch, but the no-decision against the Angels in which he allowed three earned runs over six innings proved to be a brief reprieve. At Rickwood Field, in front of a national audience, Winn couldn’t manage his way through the 3rd in what would end up being his last appearance of the year. Two days later, he returned to the IL with a right elbow inflammation. After a month of recovery and an attempt to resume throwing, the discomfort never subsided, and Winn was placed on the 60-day IL and underwent ulnar nerve transposition surgery at the end of July.

So what happened? His Hard-Hit rate jumped to nearly 50%, his average exit velocity shot up to the highest in the league, while his essential groundball rate plummeted to 38%. Baseballs suddenly had liftoff, and a shocking number of them were leaving the park (2.53 HR/9, 21.4% HR/FB) — a problem he ran into in 2023.

It feels safe to assume that if Winn was inducing less ground balls than something was up with his splitter. If we were to cut his twelve starts down the middle, hitters’ hit that signature pitch at the same hard-hit rate and a similar average exit velocity across both halves, but the average launch angle jumped from 3 degrees to 10 degrees and the batting average increased from .162 to .262.

The split certainly lost some of its effectiveness, perhaps because of its predictability. His usage dropped from 55% in ‘23 to 40% in ‘24, but it still spearheaded his attack. In an even count, if the batter was behind in it, Winn was probably going to throw it. That’s obviously not a terrible strategy to have with your best pitch, but his control with it still left plenty to be desired.

We can see that at least in that start against Philadelphia. In multiple two-strike scenarios, Winn couldn’t coax a swing from either Kyle Schwarber or J.T. Realmuto, dismissing multiple errant splitters to work walks that jump started their rally (Winn’s walk rate nearly duoubled from last year). The Phillies hitters stayed disciplined against the pitch. They knew when it was going to be up and stay in the zone and when it would fall out of it. That stinginess forced Winn to rely on other offerings — offerings that Winn didn’t necessarily feel great falling back on.

Therein lies the problem. Yes, Winn still had some wrinkles to iron out on the splitter, but he’s still at his best when he throws it. And the splitter is at its best when it’s playing off other pitches. Without a solid back-up of fastball (4-seam, sinker) and breaking ball (slider), there was nowhere to hide. The split became more exposed, and with the split more exposed, the secondary pitches became weaker…

Maybe the most significant decline in terms of pitch-type was seen in his four-seam fastball. Over his first six starts, opposing hitters batted .115 against the fastball with a Hard-Hit% of 38% and a 36 K%. It’s an essential part of his North-South attack with his splitter, relying on it a quarter of the time, and it has a decent horizontal run to it. After Jurickson Profar deposited a Main-Street fastball onto the arcade for a first inning grand slam on April 6th, Winn didn’t surrender a hit with the pitch for the rest of the month.

When the calendar flipped to May, the heat started to burn him. The BB% rose from 7% to 17%. Opponents hit .375 with contact qualifying as hard hit 69% of the time. The velocity dipped nominally, the concern with the pitch came with its inconsistency in location. The misses often missed down. Easy takes, or right over the heart of the plate. The sinker was a worse fastball overall for Winn, but it was the dip in four-seamer performance that had a greater effect.

Then there was Winn’s slider — his newest pitch-type selection. Adding a breaking ball was a necessary move. Not that I think Winn is an avid reader of the site, or that it was that “revolutionary” of an idea to begin with, but I did gently suggest beefing up the slider usage in my player review last year. He did! And it worked…kind of…for a time.

Winn used the slider sparingly in April — mainly to right-handers. It wasn’t some great wipe out pitch like many sweepers are, but it led to some ineffective swings. Opponents went 4 for 19 against Winn’s slider with zero extra base hits.

The slider is a gyro. A Greek meat dish wrapped in a pita — is it a sandwich? Winn’s slider looks a lot like a flat split-finger. Similar speed, similar drop — the main difference is that while his split tends to break in on right-handers, the slider stays true with maybe the slightest glove-side lean. It’s splitterish, just not as wonky, which makes it wonky. There’s value in that different look, sowing a seed of doubt, harvesting an unbalanced swing.

I imagine it takes a fair amount of confidence to throw a pitch like that since it’s negatively defined. It is what it isn’t, which means without comparison, it’s pretty forgettable.

Case in point.

There are some things you can get away with in this world, that kind of slider in that location to that man will never be one of them.

Here’s another. Same pitch, different person, same result.

As it is with the splitter, the slider is no good elevated. It’s not dynamic or vivacious enough to hang about the center of the zone like that. If that pitch is going to be consistently worth anything, it needs to be down. It also probably needs to develop some distinguishing characteristics of its own.

Can we chalk all of this up to Winn’s inexperience? He still hasn’t passed the century mark in terms of innings pitched in his career. He’s got some compelling tools that don’t operate to their fullest potential thanks to basically user error. The stuff is unwieldy because Winn needs more time to figure out how to wield them. Does he need to shuffle about his usage? Is he still throwing the splitter too much? Does he need to shake things up facing a line-up for a second / third time? The wheels didn’t fall off against the Rockies until the 4th. Same deal against LA.

More resilience in tougher situations comes with exposure as well. One learns how to handle their heart-rate, how to not let adrenaline and “the moment” overwhelm them through hands-on experience. He fared way worse than the rest of the league with runners in scoring position (196 sOPS+), as well as when pitching ahead in the count (164 sOPS+).

The sense I get sometimes watching Winn pitch is there’s a lack of a “killer instinct” while on the mound. Confidence doesn’t exude from him when he takes the hill. That hang-dog look draped over his face reveals a deep insecurity. It’s an Eyeore-like acceptance of the perceived inevitability of flat sinkers and floated splitters.

Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports

The other probably more realistic explanation for Winn’s 2024 collapse is beyond his control. The red flag is waving — the human form has failed again. All the trouble he dealt with in his throwing arm (which is something he also had to manage in 2023) portends future soreness. The first sign of fatigue is not a dip in velocity but missed locations. Over-throwing to overcompensate for discomfort. Four-seamers at the belt and not up at the letters. Offspeed at the thighs or a foot in front of the plate rather than dipping just below the knees. The splitter is a feel pitch. How is Winn going to feel it into scraping the bottom of the strike zone if he can’t even feel his elbow?

I agree with Bryan that it he’s a “could-be” starter. There’s potential. We saw it in 2024, but realistically, a regular rotation role will require some leaps and bounds in terms of command (possibly) and health (eh).

My gut: There will be more post-Aprils than Aprils; more losses than wins in Winn’s future.