Cincinnati Reds: Anthony DeSclafani has turned his season around

Anthony DeSclafani has really turned around his 2019 season. The Cincinnati Reds starter goes to the hill tonight against the Washington Nationals.

The Cincinnati Reds rotation, as currently constructed, contains four different pitchers who have been named to the All-Star Game since 2017. At the top of the rotation, Cincinnati has a legitimate Cy Young contender in Luis Castillo. Considering the last several years of dismal starting pitching, it is exhilarating to type those two sentences. However, as a result of that success, one pitcher’s success has flown under the radar, that pitcher being Anthony DeSclafani.

The 2019 season has been a successful campaign for DeSclafani, based solely on the fact that he has stayed on the mound for the duration of the season. The right-hander missed the entire 2017 season while dealing with issues in his right elbow. After making three Spring Training starts to begin 2018, DeSclafani suffered an oblique strain, pushing his 2018 debut back until June. This season however, the right-hander has remained healthy, making 22 starts thus far.

The beginning of the season did not go as well as DeSclafani or the Reds had hoped. Through the end of May, opposing hitters were hitting .258/.321/.516, for an OPS of .837 against DeSclafani. The 29-year old’s ERA was an underwhelming 4.97. At this point, there was mounting concern that DeSclafani would be replaced in the rotation when Alex Wood eventually made his Cincinnati Reds debut.

However, since the beginning of June, DeSclafani has become a different pitcher on the mound for the Reds, holding opponents to a slash line of .260/.306/.411. Opponents’ .718 OPS during that time is over 100 points lower than the first two months of the season.

Examining the National League leaderboards, DeSclafani’s 3.43 ERA since his first start of the month of June on the 6th, places him 14th out of qualified National League starters during that time period.

In that same time frame, DeSclafani’s 9.86 strikeouts per nine innings rank 12th, while his 1.4 WAR sits 10th. According to WAR, DeSclafani has been the most valuable Reds starter over the last two months, and has outranked some of the best pitchers in baseball, such as Hyun-Jin Ryu, Mike Soroka and Madison Bumgarner.

So, the question becomes, what has changed for Disco over the last two months? According to Fangraphs, DeSclafani’s groundball percentage has increased significantly since the middle of May, rising eight percentage points from 32.5% to 40.5%.

Obviously, one of the reasons for this could be that DeSclafani throws the sinker for 17.8% of his pitches, according to Baseball Savant. However, another reason could be the increased usage of his slider, which has become his second most frequent offering, behind the fastball.

While it can be very difficult, even in the times of an almost constant media presence, to know if DeSclafani has worked with pitching coach Derek Johnson on making the slider more of a priority in his repertoire, it certainly seems like a viable possibility, especially considering the steps that Johnson has helped pitchers such as Sonny Gray and Luis Castillo take in 2019.

With the first four starting pitchers in the Cincinnati rotation being as accomplished and talented as they are, DeSclafani has flown under the radar in 2019 as a perfectly capable starter at the back end of the rotation.

Not only does that speak to the depth of the Cincinnati Reds pitching staff, but it could also point to the Reds’ success on the mound as being sustainable in future seasons as the organization looks to return to the postseason.