Boone Logan’s work this season has been a huge lift to a bullpen that’s suffered two pretty significant injuries, and late last week Lucas Apostoleris of The Hardball Times looked at why the left-hander has been so effective: his slider. Simply put, Boone has been using the pitch much more frequently (48% of all pitches at the time of the writing) and is generating a ton of swings and misses (59% of all swings). Easy enough.
Logan has struck out 27 of the 76 batters he’s faced this season (35.5%) including 17 of 46 lefties (37.0%). I always worry about extreme breaking ball guys (like 50%+ of all pitches, not 25%) because anecdotally, they seem to break down or decline quickly — Brad Lidge, Carlos Marmol, Luke Gregerson being primary examples. Maybe I’m wasting my time worrying about relievers given their short shelf lives, who knows. Anyway, Boone’s been highly effective this season and I hope he continues to pitch this way going forward.
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