There is something in my DNA that makes me prefer certain types of players more than others, which I am sure is true for all of you as well. What my inclinations push me toward are not a single loud skill, but rather the players who are kind of good at everything. I think it is underappreciated to be pretty solid with no major weaknesses because black ink was always a dominant theme of conversation. Fewer fans care about guys who are simply above average in many categories, but don’t excel in any one area. Offensively, Alex Gordon was one of these guys and a favorite of mine. Now, Daniel Lynch IV may have morphed into that style of pitcher. He has no particular standout skill but he has added quality to everything he is doing. And, more importantly, it is working.
Daniel Lynch IV was a heralded prospect at one point, even making some top 100 lists. He is tall and left-handed, though lacking a bit in velocity for modern baseball. His fastballs, especially the four-seamer, have always graded out pretty poorly both from a scouting perspective and from a run value perspective, leading to diminished usage. When he first made the big leagues, the 4-seamer made up over 40% of his pitches, but that has dropped and dropped until this year it is only making up 17.4% of his pitches.
He has adjusted by using the sinker a lot more, although still only about a quarter of the time. His changeup and slider make up nearly half of pitches now with the knuckle curve showing up every now and again to keep batters off balance. That pitch mix evolution has over time taking some pressure off of the four-seam fastball to improve its performance while become more a sinker, slider, change profile. That is not enough to explain how he has significantly i,proved, however.
The change in pitch mix may have helped Lynch become a viable middle-reliever, but it is the changes to the quality of his pitches have taken him to a higher level this year. Last year, pitch modeling metrics graded out his pitches at or below-average with only two minor exceptions – his change up and sinker. PitchingBot had his changeup as a 53 and Stuff+ put the sinker as a 103, both just barely above league-average stuff for those offerings.
This year, the modeling metrics are improved almost across the board. None of his pitches are elite but now PitchingBot has his four-seamer, sinker, and change at 54, 62, and 53 respectively along with a one-point improvement to his slider and knuckle curve. Similarly, Stuff+ now has four pitches above-average, with his sinker over a full standard deviation above-average with an above-average grade for his slider as well. Only the knuckle curve is still not favored sitting below the average 100. Both systems now have his composite stuff overall as above-average, which he has never done before. Beyond stuff, they think his command is around or slightly better than average now too and Stuff+ has his Pitching+ as above-average. Almost everything about what Daniel is doing this season is better than at any other point in his career and he is kind of a bit better than average at most things now. If you are better than the typical pitcher on stuff and command and process, it turns out good things happen.
None of this seems to be velocity-related. Some of it seems to be spin-related. His RPM values for the fastball, sinker, and slider are all higher than in any other season. The sinker, which has the biggest stuff value change, is now averaging 2,215 rpm is the largest difference more than 100 rpm above last year’s spin rate. This does not seem to change the movement a lot, but it might be shifting the shape of the pitch, later break or something along those lines. You can see below that the pitch movements, 2025 on left and 2026 on right, are not all that different. Sorry that the color-coding changes from one year to the next, Fangraphs is not perfect, but it does take a little time to read since the sinker is orange in 2025 and black in 2026 for instance.
There might be some subtle differences there and the clusters might be tighter, but that could just be a sample size effect. Whatever it is, the statistics models are picking up on the change, and the results can be seen on the field. Lynch has a strikeout rate of 9.91 per-nine innings this year, when his previous best mark was 8.34 back in 2022. He also has his lowest walk rate ever. Higher strikeout rates and lower walk rates are generally a good recipe. His average against and WHIP have also come way down, though a bit of this is BABIP luck, which is sitting at .239. I don’t think the 1.71 ERA is his true talent level, but his xERA, FIP, xFIP, and SIERRA are 2.67, 2.54, 3.63, and 3.02 respectively, so the improvement seems to be real. His home run rate is quite low, leading to his xFIP being quite a bit higher. Regardless, those are all much lower than any other season of his career as well.
His exit velocities, barrel rates, and hard-hit rates are all lower too. This does not look like a fluke. His whiff rate on the slider is the other exceptional change statistically. That pitch has gone from a 13.3% swing-and-miss rate to 23.4%, an 80% increase in rate. The slider whiff rate is up even more, nominally at least, going from 29.9% to 48.1%. So far, the knuckle curve is also way up, but since he has only thrown that pitch 32 times I would like to see more before I declare that worth paying attention to. He uses all of his pitches against right-handed batters and then against lefties 93% of his offerings are sinker or slider. This is similar but more extreme than his past mix too.
The Royals bullpen has many problems which has depleted it to the point where Alex Lange is closing games. Carlos Estévez and Nick Mears are hurt. Matt Strahm has missed time too and has not been as reliable as you would like. Lucas Erceg has struggled mightily. Basically, the entire back-end of the pen has not done well.
Luckily, there has been at least one arm step up and into that role to help cover some of the problems, Daniel Lynch IV. He still needs to remain where he is, I know some will want him to close games, but he should not. The splits are real and he needs to be aimed at lefties most of the time. Still, I am very impressed with the steps he has taken, and it is nice to have at least one guy we can depend on while the rest of it hopefully gets sorted out.
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