San Francisco Giants: What should we expect from reliever Ryan Dull?
Can the San Francisco Giants get anything out of the Ryan Dull reclamation project? What exactly should Giants fans be expecting from the former Oakland Athletics reliever?
Though many headlines will have you thinking that the trip ahead for Ryan Dull — who was claimed off waivers by the San Francisco Giants from the Oakland Athletics — will be a short drive over the Bay Bridge, it’s not quite that simple.
In reality, he’ll be packing his bags in Las Vegas, where he has spent the vast majority of the season with the A’s Triple-A affiliate Aviators, and catching a flight to Sacramento, where he hopes to regain the form that flashed three seasons ago.
Dull is no stranger to the change in scenery. Last season, he split his time between Oakland and Nashville. The year before that, short-term stints on the disabled list put a damper on an otherwise decent encore to his breakout 2016 season.
But it’s hard to ignore the fact that Dull — once a key bullpen prospect for the 2016 A’s — couldn’t find his way into an A’s bullpen that has looked at a slew of candidates to fill out the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings this season.
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It’s hard to make much of a case for a 29-year-old minor league bullpen arm who’s put up a 12.00 ERA, even if the sample size this season is limited.
The more advanced numbers aren’t too kind either — 18.4% of the time, batters are barreling up Dull’s pitches, nearly a 12% increase since that breakout season and a 10% jump since just last year.
With it, the hard-hit rate has jumped from 25.4% all the way up to 45.7%. That’s solid contact on nearly half of the pitches being hit. And while the advanced metrics for the minors aren’t as readily available, a 5.45 ERA with the Las Vegas Aviators hasn’t exactly warranted another call-up.
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But maybe Dull has had a tough wrap this season. Sabermetrics point toward balls in play falling in for hits at a much higher clip than they should be — though we’ll pretend that isn’t because they’re coming off the bat harder.
His other metrics have actually remained around what they were in his breakout season — a slightly lowered launch angle decently maintained exit velocities on batted balls.
So what is it? The shoulder strain? The uptick in walks and men on base? Did the league just figure Dull out after they couldn’t touch him for 70 innings in his age 26 season?
Perhaps Farhan Zaidi has the answer.
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In truth, Ryan Dull is worth a look. He’s never going to blow batters away with his fastball, but what made him so successful in 2016 was his sequencing between his four-seamer and slider.
Keeping batters off balance by establishing a sneaky fastball before breaking off a nasty slider for his putaway pitch was the recipe for success three seasons ago.
His third pitch, a changeup, has gotten significantly worse over the past few seasons — plummeting both in vertical and horizontal movement — and has virtually limited Dull to being a two-pitch bullpen arm. He’s going to have to harness some of that deceptiveness between the two pitches that have worked for him.
The stuff is there, but the repertoire is fairly limited. Ryan Dull, Farhan Zaidi, and the San Francisco Giants are going to have to work with what they’ve got if they want to boast a successful reclamation project.
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For now, it’s off to Sacramento.