What Happened in Chris Paddack's First Start?

The opening week for Minnesota Twins baseball has been frustrating, to say the least. Chris Paddack's first start was potentially the height of frustration or, dare we say, embarrassment in that stretch. His start resulted in nine runs from a White Sox team that was historically bad last season. 

Paddack's status has been in question for much of the offseason, and it's possible he is simply keeping his rotation spot warm for a younger pitcher currently in St. Paul. But the veteran has shown flashes of good performance. Is there more of that in Paddack if he is healthy? Is there anything we learned from Paddack in his outing on Monday that might show us a glimpse of something yet to come? Ultimately, it is a tiny sample size, but here are a few observations from Paddack’s first start. 

Fastball Movement
Paddack's arsenal starts with a 4-seam fastball. That was true for his career and Monday, as it made up 49% of his pitches thrown. The difference Monday was that his fastball was getting more upward carry. 

Movement is usually good when it comes to pitches. Paddack generally likes to throw his fastball high in the zone, so as long as he can keep his 4-seamer flirting with or hitting the strike zone, there is potential that it is a pitch that could generate a few more whiffs than it usually would have. Speaking of swings and misses, Paddack excelled at that on Monday, generating nine swings and misses out of the White Sox lineup. 

Changeup
The changeup has been Paddack’s second most utilized pitch in the past. It has also been his leading pitch when it comes to inducing swinging strikes. For some reason, Paddack supplanted it in favor of his slider. We can turn to the movement chart once again to see potentially why. 

Paddack didn’t seem to be getting the same movement we are used to seeing from his changeup, which isn’t all bad. The changeup typically would drop toward the ground, creating a similar but opposite movement to the new movement on his fastball. The changeup is now coming from a similar depth as Paddack’s fastball; the worry comes in where there is potentially something in the two deliveries that are not deceiving batters in the way Paddack and the coaching staff hoped it would. 

Arm Angle
While the weather could certainly be a culprit to movement effects, especially for an offspeed pitch like Paddack’s changeup, he also raised his arm slot four degrees from 46 degrees in 2024 to 50 degrees on Monday, which is the exact arm angle that Paddack used in 2022 before Tommy John surgery. That season, Paddack only made it five starts, but in those starts, he produced an 8.06 K/9, 0.81 BB/9, and had already amassed 0.9 fWAR. Returning to his 2022 arm angle won’t necessarily mean we are due for this exact sort of performance from the Sheriff. He has lost around two mph since then, but it seems to signal an attempt to recapture something old from 2022. 

This different arm angle could create a different or better ability to get vertical movement on pitches like the fastball. That more vertical angle, while positive for the fastball, could have created a loss in feel or confidence for his slider, Paddack’s horizontally moving pitch. While Paddack hasn’t used his slider in large amounts when facing left-handers, he completely abandoned it on Monday, according to Statcast data. In fact, he did the same with his curveball. 

It's not clear if the weather or an adjustment in his arm slot made it harder for Paddack to get the feel he would like for those pitches. What happened then was that Paddack became a two-pitch pitcher when facing a lefty, and one of them, Andrew Benintendi, was able to take advantage of that by taking a changeup to right field for a home run. If Paddack is going to succeed in 2025, he will need to find confidence in a third pitch or else left-handed hitters will be able to key in on one pitch, especially over multiple at-bats in a start. 

If Paddack tries to include his slider again when facing left-handed hitters, he may need to change how he locates his fastball. The Twins starter spent most of his first start throwing his fastball to his glove side or inside to left-handed hitters. Paddack's approach from Monday does set up his changeup well. If Paddack were more willing to throw his fastball to his arm side, it would set up his slider more. Unfortunately, such a change would likely expose or make his changeup less effective, so using the third pitch is even more important. Monday’s plan made him very predictable and Paddack needs to figure out how to work on another pitch. 

Paddack has been one of the more frustrating pitchers since he was acquired. Once again, there is plenty of potential for something good to happen with Paddack. Will he be able to put it together is the real question.