Matt Strahm Is Getting Ahead

Matt Strahm making the All-Star team as a setup man with no saves is a bit of an anomaly. Especially because he didn’t take the Aaron Crow route — his team had its proverbial bases covered.

The Phillies are no. 1 in baseball in pitcher WAR. They’re no. 1 by a huge margin in starter WAR, and no. 2 (a tenth of a win behind a team that has both Emmanuel Clase and 16% more bullpen innings) in reliever WAR. So it’s no surprise that Philadelphia sent five pitchers to Texas among its NL record-tying eight All-Star representatives.

The fact that Strahm is third in his own bullpen in ERA, behind Jeff Hoffman and Orion Kerkering, is mostly a testament to how good that unit has been overall. Strahm is second among relievers in FIP and tied for third in WAR. It’s not bad for a player who was an afterthought when the Phillies acquired him on the free agent market in December 2022, the same week Trea Turner and Taijuan Walker joined the organization.

Three years ago, Strahm was just one of a gaggle of interchangeable Padres relief pitchers, because San Diego’s bullpen is like Project Mayhem from Fight Club, where if you join you have to get the same haircut as everyone else. But since he moved east, Strahm has been solid at the very least.

The Phillies’ excellent pitching staff comes from a variety of sources. Philadelphia has gotten the best out of veteran free agents (Strahm and Zack Wheeler), scrap heap guys (Hoffman, José Alvarado, and Spencer Turnbull), draftees (Kerkering and Aaron Nola), and unfancied international signings (Cristopher Sánchez and Seranthony Domínguez).

If there’s a unifying theme, it’s this: The Phillies love guys who throw non-four-seam fastballs, and throw them hard. Especially in the bullpen. Strahm doesn’t throw that hard — 93 for a reliever doesn’t make headlines anymore, even from the left side — but he does mix in three discrete fastballs. From a pitch usage standpoint, Strahm has made one change since joining the Phillies: Dumping his curveball and replacing it with a low-80s slider.

Strahm’s slider was already his best pitch last year. This season, he’s taken a couple miles an hour off it and — even accounting for the velocity difference — has coaxed a couple extra inches of movement from it on both planes. According to Baseball Savant, there have been 1,370 individual pitch types thrown 100 or more times so far this year. Strahm’s slider is tied for the seventh-lowest opponent xwOBA and the seventh-lowest opponent hit rate.

Strahm has cut his ERA and FIP in half from 2023 to ’24, but his xERA has dropped by less than a run, to 2.53 — still really good, but not quite as bonkers as his ERA. Strahm is indeed outperforming his batted-ball stats, but show me a pitcher with an ERA under 2.00 and I’ll show you a guy who’s outperforming his batted-ball stats. Strahm is still 12th out of 380 pitchers in opponent xwOBA, three spots ahead of Paul Skenes.

Why does FIP like him so much better? Well, let’s think about what goes into FIP: Walks, strikeouts, and home runs. Strahm’s K% has gone up three points in each of the past two years, and he’s cut his BB% from 8.8% in 2022 to 6.0% last year to 3.6% this year. In 2022, his K-BB% would’ve been 66th among relievers if he’d had enough innings to qualify. Last year, he was 10th, at 24.8%. This year, he’s at 30.7%, which is fourth, behind only Mason Miller, Josh Hader, and Jeremiah Estrada.

Strahm, who was always a strike-thrower, is working in the zone more than ever this season. He’s third among relievers in Zone%, with a rate of more than 60%. In addition to the obvious benefit of hardly walking anyone, Strahm is also working ahead in the count more than ever. Last year, he threw 32.6% of his pitches while ahead in the count. This season, that’s up to 39.9%.

That’s not a widely circulated stat, ahead-in-count percentage, or whatever you’d call it, so the raw number makes no sense without context. Here’s some context: Strahm has been working ahead in the count more than any of the 356 other pitchers who have thrown at least 500 pitches this season. By a huge margin: 1.5 percentage points over second place. Only five other pitchers are ahead in the count 37% of the time.

And when Strahm is ahead in the count, opponents are hitting .085/.100/.169, which is a wOBA of .118, the 16th-best mark in baseball in that split.

Now for the last component to FIP: home runs. This is a particularly salient point for Strahm, who’s one of the most fly ball-happy pitchers in the league. Among relievers this year, Strahm has the fifth-lowest groundball rate (27.7%), and the remainder isn’t just turning into popups. He also has the ninth-highest line drive rate, which is not something you’d expect to say about one of the top relief pitchers in the game.

So what’s happening to all of those balls in the air? Well, Strahm allowed 11 home runs last year, which isn’t a terrible number for someone who gives up that many fly balls and also — by virtue of starting the year in the Phillies’ rotation — threw a huge number of innings for a pitcher of his role (87 2/3). This year, Strahm’s HR/FB rate has dropped from 10.9% to 2.6%.

That’s a massive drop. If you say that kind of change in HR/FB% is predictive, especially for a reliever, Dan Szymborski will teleport to your house and whack you in the forehead with a cardboard wrapping paper tube. I’m open to the possibility that Strahm is getting weaker swings generally by working ahead more, or that his improved control is linked to some ineffable change that’s also helping him keep the ball in the yard, but insofar as his quality of opponent contact has improved, it doesn’t explain everything.

What is interesting about all this is that when Strahm gets to the top of a leaderboard, he usually has at least one teammate with him. Kerkering and Sánchez are actually allowing a lower opponent wOBA on fly balls and popups than Strahm is this year. So maybe there’s a team-wide approach that’s benefiting Strahm, or maybe Johan Rojas is the second coming of Garry Maddox.

But let’s assume that Strahm does regress to the mean in this one respect. The other improvements to his game — the bendier slider, the improved zone rate and walk rate — are much more within his control. Even if his ERA for the rest of the season is more in line with his xERA, he’ll still be one of the most effective middle relievers in baseball.