Keys to Brandon Beachy Keeping Up His Torrid Pace

Memorial Day has longed marked Major League Baseball’s first milestone of the season.

With roughly one quarter of the season in the books, there are some cautionary whispers that Brandon Beachy’s season is beginning to look Cy Young Award-worthy.

Currently leading the big leagues with a 1.77 ERA, Beachy recently tossed his first career shutout against the division rival Miami Marlins.

He is also among the league leaders with a 0.94 WHIP (sixth in MLB), a batting average against of .182 (third in MLB) and opponents on-base plus slugging of .507 (third in MLB).

Even with those numbers, there is apprehension among many baseball analysts that this type of success will be unsustainable as the season progresses.

Beachy was listed No. 4 in the rotation on Atlanta’s depth chart coming into the season—not nearly the status of the elite pitchers he is keeping company with on the leaderboards thus far.

As an undrafted free agent from little-known Indiana Wesleyan University, Beachy lacked what scouts would consider front-line stuff.

All he did was perform well enough to jump three levels in both 2009 and 2010, eventually break Atlanta’s rookie record for strikeouts with 169 in 2011.

He managed to strike out 9.97 batters per game in the minor leagues, a rate that he was able to increase at the major league level until this season.

Adopting a more pitch-to-contact philosophy, Beacy's K/9 has dropped dramatically from 10.6 in his first 28 major league starts to 6.95 in 10 games this season.

Predominantly a fly-ball pitcher in the past, this new approach has allowed Beachy to induce more ground balls.

A 33.8 ground ball percentage in 2011 has increased to 42.5 percent in 2012, whereas his fly ball rate has decreased from 45.2 to 39.8 percent.

 In turn, he has also lowered his HR/9 from 9.8 percent to 5.4 this season.

These aforementioned trends have helped offset his decrease in strikeouts and allowed him to accomplish another other goal of pitching deeper into ballgames. He has been able to go one full inning further per start than last year.

One particular stat that could become worrisome is his opponents’ batting average on balls in play (BABIP), which measures how many balls in play against a pitcher go for hits.

Beachy’s league-leading .212 BABIP is a far cry from last season’s average of .307. With regression in this area expected, he must continue to maintain his current ground ball rate so those extra base runners have less chance to score.

Although fly balls historically produce more outs, ground balls allow fewer runs per out (R/O) than fly balls by a 0.08 R/O margin.

If the fly ball ratio levels out along with the expected rise in BABIP, he will need to again lean on the strikeout to help maintain a below league average ERA.

He has thrown his fastball 3.2 percent more often this season in an effort to implement this pitch-to-contact strategy. In doing so, he has thrown his slider less, which has been his most effective swing-and-miss pitch (40.13 percent Whiff/Swing).

It will be nearly impossible for Beachy to maintain this current pace. For him to remain mentioned among some of the elite pitchers in the game, he will need to find a way to combine his former approach with his current pitching philosophy.