Collette Calls: Is Quintana Back?

I wrote Jose Quintana's player capsule this year for the site and said the following:

Quintana's strikeout, walk and home-run rates worsened in 2018, yet his ERA came in a few points better thanks to him stranding more runners. The numbers could have been better had Joe Maddon exercised a quicker hook, as Quintana struggled mightily after two times through the lineup. Quintana's ERA went from 2.97 to 3.59 to 7.15 with each trip through a lineup. His home/road splits were rather neutral, but there does appear to be some gains to be made if Maddon goes to the bullpen a batter early rather than one too late in 2019. The Cubs exercised their contract option on Quintana to bring him back, so they too see something better here. If Quintana can cut the walks down and get the homers back in line, there will be some profit to be made. He has been a model of health and has not missed a start in seven seasons, but he is not throwing 200 innings any longer and his 174.1 innings could be cut down to 160 with better utilization.

Quintana is off to an overall strong start to the season, so let's dive in to see what is different in 2019 from last year.

Time Through The Order Troubles

Quintana had an extremely fortunate TTOP split in 2017 compared to other years, but 2018 was about as unlucky as it could get for him. Manager Joe Maddon appears to be paying more attention to Quintana's TTOP issues this year as 18 percent of Quintana's total pitches in 2019 have come after two times through the order compared to 21 percent of such pitches in 2018 and 27 percent of those pitches in 2017. The early results are below:

Quintana had difficulty missing bats and finding the strike zone with regularity last year the longer he stayed in the game, and opponents made him pay for both. Quintana has done better in both regards in the limited time during the TTOP as he has not walked anyone nor surrendered an earned run (he has two unearned runs) during that time. 

Mechanics

There are a couple of things in play. First, Quintana has moved toward the first base side of the rubber this year, adjusting his starting position on the rubber nearly a full foot from where he was last summer. This was and adjustment he began making toward the end of last season, when he was mostly written off by fantasy owners:

That movement has helped him with his sinker. The sinker was a pitch he used 25 to 27 percent of the time in 2016 and 2017, but dropped the usage of the pitch down to 18 percent last season. He has the utilization of that pitch back to 27 percent this season, and has relocated the pitch.

Better command of that sinker has led to Quintana increasing his groundball rate from 43 percent last season to 52 percent, and the pitch has simply performed better for him:

There was also a change that current pitching coach Tommy Hottovy (then run prevention coordinator) noticed with Quintana last year and his front foot (sub required). He noticed for most of 2018 that Quintana had his front foot pointing slightly upward last year upon leg left, which can lead to the delivery getting slightly out of whack and cause control problems.

Hottovy suggested Quintana make a deliberate effort to point his toes down toward the mound as he lifted his front leg. 

It helped him close the season strong with fewer walks and more strikeouts since he was not behind in the count as often:

As Hottovy put it:

"It's really a simple concept. Most guys when they lift their leg, if your toe comes up, you tend to lean back. It's very hard for people to lift their toe and stay over their back leg. If you lift your leg, you lean back and then you become super rotational. Just by him thinking about putting his toe down, it kept him over himself and he was able to drive to the plate. That little move is the difference between being over and being down is huge for him."

The pitch has certainly been effective for him this year, but it was not even the one he was primarily focused on improving in 2019. That honor belongs to his changeup. 

Better Pitch

Quintana wanted to work on his changeup re-expand his repertoire. He used the pitch seven percent of the time in 2018, which was his lowest utilization since his 2012 rookie season. He has used the pitch slightly more in 2019 at a nine percent clip, but it is behaving much better this year than it did in 2018:

The pitch has so far transitioned from a below-average one by whiff rate to an above-average one. Batters are swinging with more frequency at the pitch because Quintana is able to work more frequently with it while ahead in the count when batters are in two-strike protection mode. 

Tl;dr (too long; didn't read): Quintana has made some noticeable changes to his game and the changes are paying off. He has a 19.0 K-BB%, 3.59 ERA, 1.22 WHIP and .247 batting average against over his last 15 starts. That is a very serviceable pitcher in this run environment where we will likely break the season home record somewhere close to Labor Day. The ugly outing against Milwaukee is the only thing that holding his overall line back, because pitchers with 24.0 K-BB% numbers and 32 percent strikeout rates are tough to find these days. The risk with Quintana since he went to the Northsiders has always been the longball, but an increased groundball rate this year should help offset the damage that is being inflicted onto so many other pitchers in 2019 with the juiced baseball back in play.