What can Yankee Fans Expect from Jameson Taillon?

Jameson Taillon was traded to the Yankees in late January 2021 from the Pirates. 2018 was his best season, Taillon was considered to be one of the best pitchers in the National League.

Generally speaking, he has league average strikeout rates, low walk rates, and league average hard hit rates. What he lacks in strikeout rates he makes up for in ground balls, as Taillon has a 50% ground ball rate (a high ground ball rate is not surprising for a Pirates’ pitcher).

During the 2019 season, Taillon moved on and off the injured list due to elbow issues. That offseason, Taillon underwent Tommy John surgery and has not pitched competitively since.

There is a lot to look forward to from Taillon, let’s take a look.

Diverse Pitch Mix

Taillon throws 5 pitches and knows how to use them in a way that deceives hitters:

• Slider
• Fourseam
• Sinker
• Curveball
• Changeup

If we look at his pitch movement diagram from Baseball Savant, we can see that the movement on his pitches overlaps (with the exception of the curveball).

Usually we want to see a gap in the movement of pitches (otherwise they will look too similar to each other and not be as effective). In Taillon’s case, however, he is able to execute them efficiently to different edges of the zone.

We can better visualize this concept by looking at the heat maps from Baseball Savant below:

Each pitch is thrown to a unique part of the zone.

Taillon is attacking the zone, and using each of his pitches to target a unique section.

Going one step further, there is also a velocity difference between groups of these pitches.

The fourseam and the sinker have similar velocity, as well as the slider and change-up.

Fourseam and Sinker

The fourseam and the sinker may have the same velocity and similar movement, but they are being thrown to different sections of the zone:

Taillon is also using the fourseam and the sinker differently against right-handed hitters (RHH) and left-handed hitters (LHH). He uses the fourseam more frequently against LHH and the sinker more frequently against RHH.

Why is he throwing the fourseam more frequently to LHH and the sinker more frequently to RHH? If we check out the opponent SLG against the two pitches, we can see that LHH are more successful against the sinker, which makes sense why Taillon would throw the fourseam more often. It is very typical for RHP to avoid throwing the sinker against LHH, as the movement of the pitch lines up with the bat path for a LHH.

However, RHH are more successful against the sinker, so why is Taillon throwing RHH the sinker more frequently than the fourseam?

I think this is in part due to the movement of his sinker being better than that of the fourseam, and the desire for him to induce ground balls. That being said, Taillon does get below average movement on his fourseam and sinker, meaning his two fastballs are both below average pitches.

Slider and Change-up

Looking back at the pitch movement diagram, the slider and the change-up have a clear separation in movement. Since they move so differently and are being thrown to opposite edges of the zone, it is not a big deal that they also have the same velocity.

It is also worth mentioning that Taillon very rarely throws a change-up against RHH. This is because the right handed hitter SLG against his change-up is the highest of all his pitches by far, at 0.917. He should maintain this method of avoiding the change-up against righties for this upcoming season.

The slider is a relatively new pitch that Taillon introduced in 2018. He used it 18% of the time that year, and 31% of the time in 2019. He gets above average break (horizontal movement) on his slider, and is has an opponent SLG of 0.396.

Curveball

Out of all five of his pitches, Taillon gets the most movement out of his curveball, which has above average vertical and horizontal movement.

His curveball also has the best SLG against, 0.339 for RHH and 0.256 for LHH. He uses it in optimal situations, when he is ahead and when he has two strikes against both RHH and LHH.

Concluding Thoughts

So what can Yankee fans expect from Jameson Taillon? Jameson Taillon is a great pitcher and a great addition to the Yankees starting rotation.

While it’s hard to tell if he’ll use his stuff the same way as he did with the Pirates, I definitely think we will continue to see the change-up primarily against LHH. This is something that will be interesting to come back to a few months into the season.

What it will really come down to, is Taillon’s capability to throw all of these pitches effectively post-surgery.  He has not pitched competitively since 2019 and may take a few starts before we start to see him back to himself.

It’s also possible that the issues with his elbow cause him to throw out of a different arm slot, which also may alter how often he throws certain pitchers (the movement of certain pitches may be affected by the change in arm slot).

Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions in the comments below!