Sometimes it takes some adversity to get a player to make the necessary changes.

Too early to judge. It was his 1st taste. 

Look at some of the early returns from quality pitchers like Berrios & Gausman. You can even go back in time and look at Glavine & Clemens (no suggesting he is that good but for debuts). 

The reality is that pitching requires major adjustments coming from AAA to the Majors. Unless you have otherwordly stuff like Skenes, you have to make adjustments to your stuff to keep missing bats. He's going to go down and work on much of this as the straight fastball is already a known issue. Sacrificing a little velocity for more movement I would assume is the way here. 

You should take a look at Stuff+ on Fangraphs. It combines things like spin rate, direction, movement and the movement difference from fastball to, say, changeup. Festa's fastball overall is 104, a little better than average. His slider is even better at 120. The changeup, though. Offda. 66. That's not an MLB caliber pitch.

I tend to feel Festa's fastball's complete lack of horizontal movement is going to be a problem for him, even if Stuff+ doesn't think so. If a hitter only has to pay attention to 1 axis, it feels like a pitch will be much easier to deal with. Still, Stuff+ is supposedly an excellent predictor in general.

One quick correction. You don't want a 4 seam fastball to drop, you want it to "rise" even though that's technically impossible. Hitters are expecting a ball to curve downwards in an arc. When the spin of the fastball causes it to drop less than expected, it's harder to hit. League average drop rate is 13.4"

The other issue for Festa is he's wild. He was clearly trying far too hard to avoid issuing walks (54% zone rate), but many of his pitches were still way outside the zone. He needs better control over his pitches, and he needs that changeup to work.

In his 2 starts, he had a 32 K% against RHB, and a 7% against LHB.  This compared to 38%/30% in AAA.  

In both AAA and the majors this year, the ball has been leaving the yard with a 24% HR/FB.  He was only at around 13% last year between AA and AAA, so need to figure out why hitters are crushing the ball when they make contact.

We might see Festa out of the bullpen come September, but he will be a starter in 2025.

2 hours ago, bean5302 said:

You should take a look at Stuff+ on Fangraphs. It combines things like spin rate, direction, movement and the movement difference from fastball to, say, changeup. Festa's fastball overall is 104, a little better than average. His slider is even better at 120. The changeup, though. Offda. 66. That's not an MLB caliber pitch.

I tend to feel Festa's fastball's complete lack of horizontal movement is going to be a problem for him, even if Stuff+ doesn't think so. If a hitter only has to pay attention to 1 axis, it feels like a pitch will be much easier to deal with. Still, Stuff+ is supposedly an excellent predictor in general.

One quick correction. You don't want a 4 seam fastball to drop, you want it to "rise" even though that's technically impossible. Hitters are expecting a ball to curve downwards in an arc. When the spin of the fastball causes it to drop less than expected, it's harder to hit. League average drop rate is 13.4"

The other issue for Festa is he's wild. He was clearly trying far too hard to avoid issuing walks (54% zone rate), but many of his pitches were still way outside the zone. He needs better control over his pitches, and he needs that changeup to work.

Awesome additions - thanks!

1 hour ago, SaberNerd said:

In his 2 starts, he had a 32 K% against RHB, and a 7% against LHB.  This compared to 38%/30% in AAA.  

In both AAA and the majors this year, the ball has been leaving the yard with a 24% HR/FB.  He was only at around 13% last year between AA and AAA, so need to figure out why hitters are crushing the ball when they make contact.

We might see Festa out of the bullpen come September, but he will be a starter in 2025.

Yeah, I noticed the massive k% drop off for lefties as well. I think you are right that he will be starting for us in the future, but there are clearly some approach and / or mechanical things he will need to solve for first in order to be effective.

Ummm.. it was his first start in the Majors... Take a deep breath and relax. He is good. 

AAA is players trying to get to the show and AAAA players ... pitching at the show is an adjustment and he should be fine given time and the opportunity which he will get eventually. 

Be patient... know that is tough in our have it all right now society but ... be patient!! 

Great exposure for Festa, hopefully takes information learned and makes necessary adjustments in AAA. Next chance, Festa will be more prepared, has MLB stuff but needs refinement.

It was only two starts, Festa will be fine. Needs to work on his command and his changeups which got crushed. He also either needs another pitch, or figure out a better way to attack lefties. This was his first cup of coffee in the majors, I think Festa will be pitching for the Twins for many years still.

On 7/8/2024 at 4:13 PM, bean5302 said:

You should take a look at Stuff+ on Fangraphs. It combines things like spin rate, direction, movement and the movement difference from fastball to, say, changeup. Festa's fastball overall is 104, a little better than average. His slider is even better at 120. The changeup, though. Offda. 66. That's not an MLB caliber pitch.

I tend to feel Festa's fastball's complete lack of horizontal movement is going to be a problem for him, even if Stuff+ doesn't think so. If a hitter only has to pay attention to 1 axis, it feels like a pitch will be much easier to deal with. Still, Stuff+ is supposedly an excellent predictor in general.

One quick correction. You don't want a 4 seam fastball to drop, you want it to "rise" even though that's technically impossible. Hitters are expecting a ball to curve downwards in an arc. When the spin of the fastball causes it to drop less than expected, it's harder to hit. League average drop rate is 13.4"

The other issue for Festa is he's wild. He was clearly trying far too hard to avoid issuing walks (54% zone rate), but many of his pitches were still way outside the zone. He needs better control over his pitches, and he needs that changeup to work.

Stuff+ is an awesome tool but I'd pump the brakes a bit it is notably not a great tool for evaluating changeups. It often undervalues them as they are much more location dependent than (not captured by stuff+) and sensitive to the characteristics of the primary fastball (partially captured by stuff+) they are "changing up" on. The average stuff+ rating for any changeup is 87 (as of march 10, 2023).

The only analytic I need is to remember that he's a rookie who has made TWO starts in the bigs.

There were positives and negatives in his two starts.  He got exposure with the big club and gave us 2 starts where we went 1-1 in those games, so not a bad day.  He had one bad inning in one the starts where some plays could have been made in support, so his ERA took a blow.

If he learns from the mistakes and capitalizes on the positives, works hard, we will see him again.