How Bailey Ober is Staying One Step Ahead of Offenses, Even With Diminished Velocity

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © David Richard-Imagn Images

It would take a special talent for burying one's head in the sand not to notice, by now. Bailey Ober's velocity is down in 2025. He's generally been a starter who shows his best heat early in seasons—often, even during spring training—but unless he's made a drastic change to favor holding back his real fastball until June this time around, there's simply something missing. His average four-seamer now comes in on at less than 91 miles per hour.

You can see similar trends in his other pitches, too. Though he's not even 30 years old yet, the late-blooming Ober is a bit closer to going over the velocity cliff than we tend to remember. Given his huge frame, too, he could just be starting to lose a bit of raw stuff. As frustrating as that would be (for him, most of all, since he's yet to get a chance to cash in as handsomely as most pitchers in his class of performer do), it wouldn't be terribly unusual in the context of the modern game.

Don't sing him too sad a song of woe, though. Ober dominated the Cleveland Guardians Monday night, and is still very much a reliable mid-rotation starter. He's just having to rely less on the hard stuff. His four-seam fastball accounts for under 37% of his pitches thrown so far this year, which would be the lowest usage rate of his career. He's introduced a sinker this spring. He's relying a bit more on the breaking stuff.

In fact, over the last two seasons, Ober has cultivated two versions of the slider: a harder, tighter true slider, and a wider-moving sweeper. He's using both this year, again, as well as the curve—although in the early going, we've seen less of the sweeper than one might have expected.

"Yeah, [but] the sweeper the last two games has been feeling a lot better," Ober said at Target Field last week, before his latest outing. "It's also matchup-based, kind of seeing what guys—like if I can throw a hard spin better to people, or is big spin better? So it's just kind of seeing matchup-based and kind of going off that."

Because his raw stuff is not dominant, Ober needs to have a sound gameplan going into every start he makes. He's learned, though, how to make pivotal adjustments within games. The depth of that repertoire gives him, his catcher and Twins coaches options, so when one thing isn't working, they can usually find something else that will do.

"I mean, if you're going to need that certain pitch, you're going to have to find it," Ober said. "That's just how it is and that's part of pitching. But usually when you have four, five, six pitches, you're able to find which ones are going to be on that day and be able to use them and be effective."

In Cleveland, on Monday night, that pitch turned out to be the changeup. As always, the Guardians had their lineup chock-full of opposite-handed hitters, and early on, Ober realized (in the course of normal approaches the first time through the order) that the batters were all trying to sit on and attack the fastball. That demanded an adjustment, so the Twins made one. Ober used his changeup more often than in any other appearance this year.

It's not just how often he threw the change that's telling, though, but the way he leaned into it as he reached the middle innings and discovered Cleveland's plan against him. Then, once they did start trying to hunt the change, he went to the fastball for quick outs in the late stages of his outing.

Asked whether such contingency plans can be plotted out in advance or must be charted afresh to meet the exigencies of each contest, Ober broke it down.

"A little bit of both," he said. "There's always stuff you see mid-game, the conversations in the dugout are key to kind of adjust and make sure you and the catcher are on the same plan. But yeah, during our meetings, we have multiple ways of how we want to pitch guys and how we want to sequence guys. So there's always different plans and then obviously, like I said, if something shows up in-game where we're like, oh, this is actually open. where we thought it wasn't, then we can go from there and adjust."

Monday night was a clinic, in that regard. It was also further proof that, with his wide mix and his elite extension making up for some of the missing raw speed, Ober can excel without even approaching the mid-90s. His average fastball for the game was just 90.4 mph. More all the time, he's flirting with working in the 80s, but so far, he's been able to make that work. An impressive degree of pitchcraft, command, and mental toughness have brought him this far, even as his stuff wanes. There's a long season left, though, and the Twins would love if he rediscovered just a bit of the juice on his fastball as the weather warms.

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[thelanges5]

Smart dude with a good pitch mix. If he didn’t start with a blow up in Missouri every year he’d have some better numbers 🤣 Solid 3-4 guy in the rotation. Is he becoming the workhorse of this staff?

[bean5302]

Ober's absolutely elite in terms of locating his pitches this year. Combined with a huge extension to help his limited fastball play up and a bunch of pitches to keep batters guessing, it's just enough. Contact rates, hard hit rates and exit velocities are right at the edge of sustainable.

I'd be pushing to trade him to a contender at the deadline because he doesn't look like a guy who is going to age well at all.

[DJL44]

If he was a lefty, people would call him "crafty".

[mikelink45]

I love the crazy fascination with the FB because great pitchers have not always been fastball freaks.  Randy Johnson was a contrast to Maddox, Spahn contrasted with Koufax.  It is the fastball that seems to be taxing the arms of pitchers in this era, so maybe Ober has a longer shelf life than this article might suggest.  

[tony&rodney]

4 hours ago, bean5302 said:

Ober's absolutely elite in terms of locating his pitches this year. Combined with a huge extension to help his limited fastball play up and a bunch of pitches to keep batters guessing, it's just enough. Contact rates, hard hit rates and exit velocities are right at the edge of sustainable.

I'd be pushing to trade him to a contender at the deadline because he doesn't look like a guy who is going to age well at all.

As always, any trade depends on the return. Most trades in July tend to return prospects. I'm interested to hear if anyone has a specific name or names of prospects that could be a return for any of the Twins top three pitchers. Does this mean a major rebuild?

Seems to me that the Twins missed a golden opportunity in the last two offseasons, but since Falvey has stated on numerous occasions (apparently against his will according to some) that he has put together the team he wanted it is unlikely to expect much in the way of future trades based just on the past.

[Vanimal46]

13 minutes ago, tony&rodney said:

I'm interested to hear if anyone has a specific name or names of prospects that could be a return for any of the Twins top three pitchers. Does this mean a major rebuild?

I don’t think it would be considered a major rebuild trading one of the top 3 pitchers considering we have SP waiting in the wings in AAA and AA. 1 step back to take 2 steps forward potentially. 

I don’t have a specific name, but if any of the top 3 can return a SS, CF, or C that’s projected to stick at these positions, it’s something to seriously consider. Soon enough, Correa and Buxton will age out of the premium positions and need to slide over to the corners. 

[LambchoP]

Twins upper minor league talent is very lacking. Trading some veterans this year for upper level guys would be a good way to replenish some AAA depth. Everyone knows we need offense, guys who can hit. We also are desperately in need of one or two viable catchers that we can pair with Jeffers next year. We've also seen how horrible our infield has become with injuries,having to start guys like Julien, Bride and Clemens.... We're not going to compete this year. I say play potential trade tickets like France, Bader, Julien, Miranda and pitchers such as Paddack, SWR, and maybe one of our top 3 starters. Relievers like Coloumbe, Varland or Sands. All these guys should be able to bring something of value back if they play well enough. Use the rest of the season to show off available trade options and audition young talent for next year. See what we have in Zebby, Festa, and Morris. Give Mccusker a shot. See if Olivar can stick as a catcher. 

[bean5302]

A rebuild? As it stands, this team has under a 10% chance for winning the division right now and we're setting records for poor attendance. The farm has a bunch of talent which is either scouted as mediocre or injured absolutely just all. the. time. Like all the time. Does it matter if the Twins lose 90 games or 95? They're already bad, and if this continues to the deadline, just how much worse is the team if they "rebuild?" What positions are we confident will deliver 3+ WAR this season? Maybe Buxton depending on how much time he spends on the IL? In the rotation, probably Lopez? Ryan and Ober combined have done it once in their careers.

The term "rebuild" gets tossed around here like somebody yelling "shark!!! shark!!!!" at a popular children's beach in Florida trying to scare the crap out of people whenever some fan favorite (read: any player with more than 1 successful year on the team) has their name mentioned as a potential trade chip to fix this broken franchise.

This Twins team looks very much like a team that needs a rebuild, and the only surplus value the Twins look to have is in the pitching staff.