The Dodgers Have Helped to Restore Michael Kopech’s Luster

Michael Kopech didn’t even crack the headline in our coverage of the three-way July 29 trade involving the Dodgers, Cardinals, and White Sox that sent him to Los Angeles, and we were hardly alone. Just about everywhere outside of Chicago and Los Angeles, the focus of the trade landed upon Tommy Edman and Erick Fedde, and rightfully so given the expectations that both would be starters in one sense or another. A fireballing reliever with a 4.74 ERA and -0.2 WAR switching teams may not have been a footnote given Kopech’s history and stuff, but he rated as more of a project than an obvious solution.

Yet even then it wasn’t hard to appreciate that there might be some method to the Dodgers’ madness. After all, in recent years the team has gotten strong results from similarly underwhelming pickups ranging from starters Tyler Anderson, Andrew Heaney, and Alex Wood to relievers Anthony Banda, Ryan Brasier, and Evan Phillips. As Noah Syndergaard’s tenure showed, not all of their salvage jobs were successful. “But more often than not,” wrote the Los Angeles Times’ Mike DiGiovanna in January, “the Dodgers have revitalized the careers of middling pitchers and optimized the production of pitchers they have, their ability to identify and acquire those with untapped potential and implement plans to maximize performance helping to fuel their run of five 100-win seasons in the last seven years.”

While the fact that he has one year of club control remaining probably factored into his acquisition, Kopech has paid immediate dividends. In the three weeks since the trade — a small sample of work all the way around, admittedly — he’s easily been the most productive of the five big leaguers in the three-way deal (the Cardinals’ Tommy Pham and the White Sox’s Miguel Vargas being the others apart from Edman and Fedde). The 28-year-old righty has flat out dominated opponents, allowing just one hit and one walk in 9.1 scoreless innings for the Dodgers, earning the trust of manager Dave Roberts. Last week, with their NL West lead whittled down to two games by the surging Padres and Diamondbacks, Roberts called upon Kopech to close out a pair of one-run games against the Cardinals, and he converted both chances. With the team concerned about overusing a “gassed” Kopech, Phillips and Daniel Hudson have been tapped for the two save situations since (both of them protecting three-run leads). Nonetheless, it’s clear that Roberts has another late-inning weapon, and a much-needed one at that.

It’s been a long road to this point for Kopech, a former first-round pick who gained renown for having thrown a 105-mph fastball as a minor leaguer back in 2016. The double whammy of a late-2018 Tommy John surgery and a COVID-19 opt-out cost him two seasons of development, and after showing some promise as a starter in 2022, he was torched for a 5.43 ERA and 6.46 FIP in 129.1 innings with the White Sox last year.

This year’s return to the bullpen — and Kopech’s first shot at closing games — hadn’t paid big dividends through the first half of the season, but then almost nothing the White Sox have done in the past couple of years has. When you’re on a team that’s looking up at the 1962 Mets’ .250 winning percentage, save chances are few and far between. Nonetheless, Kopech notched the White Sox’s last four saves before the team embarked upon its 21-game losing streak, including two in their final two victories, on July 5 against the Marlins and the first game of a July 10 doubleheader against the Twins, the latter with an immaculate inning. In between those outings, he also blew his fifth save of the season against Miami on July 7, allowing four ninth-inning runs via a Josh Bell double and a Jake Burger walk-off homer.

That July 7 outing, which raised Kopech’s ERA to 5.45 and his FIP to 5.42, was actually the last time he allowed a run. Despite Chicago’s epic losing streak, he was nearly untouchable in his final five outings with the White Sox from July 8–25. Only in the last of those, against the Rangers, did he allow a baserunner (two, one via a walk and the other via a single, in fact). Thus, his scoreless streak is actually 15 innings spread over 14 games, with two hits, two walks, and 21 strikeouts (42.9%). Yeah, that’ll play.

Prior to the trade deadline, the Dodgers noticed the changes to Kopech’s arsenal, with general manager Brandon Gomes citing “some usage stuff with Michael, which he actually already started to do over the last five games or so,” along with “one of the best fastballs in the game out of the ‘pen.” The changes involve Kopech dialing down the usage of that famous four-seamer, which has averaged 98.7 mph this season — up from 95.2 last year while making 27 starts and three relief appearances — in favor of his cutter and slider. Big-picture-wise, the usage change doesn’t appear nearly as dramatic as the difference in results:

Whoa. Kopech is throwing his fastball slightly less often, but to much greater effect, including a wOBA that’s dropped by 282 points and a whiff rate that’s up by more than nine percentage points. The whiff rate on his cutter has more than doubled, and while that of his slider has dropped sharply, batters still haven’t gotten a hit against it. Checking in on the specifications of each pitch before and after that July 7 date:

The big difference is higher spin rates across the board, which suggests some grip changes rather than adjustments to his delivery given that his release point and extension have been reasonably consistent on either side of the split, as has his fastball velocity. I do wonder if either the White Sox or the Dodgers spotted him tipping pitches, something he’s dealt with in the past.

Kopech’s heater is getting a bit less movement in both planes, but more spin. Our two pitch modeling systems differ as to whether the pitch was slightly better before or after the change, but either way, it grades out as elite. Meanwhile, his cutter is slower by 0.5 mph and is getting a fair bit more vertical movement, and again it has more spin. The pitch modeling systems diverge widely here, with Stuff+ grading the offering as below average but PitchingBot considering it the Platonic ideal of a cutter; I have no idea what’s driving that discrepancy at the moment. As for his splitter, it’s getting slightly less movement in both planes, but again with more spin; this time, both pitch modeling systems both show improved grades.

There’s more nuance to Kopech’s usage changes when we consider platoon splits:

Kopech’s reduction in fastball usage is much more drastic when it comes to righties, who are seeing a lot more cutters and sliders from him. He tends to rely on his fastball more to lefties, but even so, they’re seeing slightly fewer of them and more cutters. From either side of the plate, they’re having almost no success; his wOBA against righties has fallen from .380 to .065, while against lefties it’s fallen from .302 to .063.

With that rejiggered repertoire, Kopech is throwing a lower share of pitches in the strike zone, is getting batters to chase with greater frequency, and has boosted his swinging strike rate:

Within some increasingly granular splits — by date, by platoon, and in or out of the zone — two points emerge. Against righties, Kopech is throwing his four-seamer and slider out of the zone more often, with the former dropping from 54.9% to 49.2% and the latter from 47.5% to 41.2%. Against lefties, Kopech is throwing his cutter in the zone much less often, with a drop from 73.3% to 35.7%, a rate that’s back in line with the way he’s using the pitch against righties. Additionally, he’s throwing his slider in the zone more often (from 50% to 57.1%). Nonetheless, we’re talking some tiny splits here, with fewer than 20 sliders or cutters out of the zone for batters of either handedness, so I don’t want to read too much into the changes other than to note that Kopech has become less predictable. He’s found a mix of pitches that’s currently working both inside the zone and out, against both lefties and righties:

Here’s how it looks, location-wise:

Hitters from both sides of the plate are seeing a much greater share of pitches — fastballs, almost entirely — in Gameday Zone 11 (up and in to righties, up and away to lefties). So far in that area, they’re 0-for-11, with a 60% whiff rate and a 28.6% swinging strike rate.

Because their banged-up rotation has averaged just 5.09 innings per start overall (24th in the majors), the Dodgers have had to lean heavily on their bullpen, and particularly in July, it buckled under the weight, with a 5.65 ERA (26th) and 4.87 FIP (24th). Thanks to the addition of Kopech, a rebound from Phillips, and a hot streak from Banda, they’ve improved to a 3.25 ERA (ninth) and a 4.37 FIP (22nd) this month. They can hope that Brasier’s recent return from a three-and-a-half month absence due to a right calf strain — and possibly even a comeback by Brusdar Graterol, whose return from a bout of shoulder inflammation lasted just nine pitches before he suffered a right hamstring strain — will additionally fortify the unit. If the Dodgers are going to live up to the expectations created by their $324 million payroll and the additions of Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and others, they’re going to need their bullpen to be strong. Thanks to Kopech’s turnaround, they’re closer to realizing that goal.