Today, we’re going to be taking a look at the debut of Franco Aleman thus far for the Guardians. Aleman has gotten off to a very good start, putting up a 1.50 ERA in the big leagues so far. But there is a big caveat – he’s only pitched 6 innings so far for the team. It may seem like that’s hardly worth analyzing given the miniscule sample size, but there is some interesting stuff under the hood that’s worth digging into, even if it’s just to determine what to keep an eye on going forward to see if he can really be a high leverage arm for the Guards.

The 1.50 ERA is a bit better than the underlying performance so far. Going by FanGraphs, his xERA is 2.88. This is still very respectable, so no alarm bells are ringing here. His FIP and xFIP look bad (5.29 and 5.66 respectively), but because the K% has started fairly low (13.6) and he’s given up 1 HR in his 6 IP, it’s possible that has inflated those numbers a bit. I wouldn’t start worrying about the FIP/xFIP specifically, but the low K% is a bit shocking for a pitcher with his pitching profile. The last thing worth mentioning here is that his BB% and WHIP are both also acceptable, at 9.1% and 1.00 respectively.

Now that we’ve seen a bit of the big picture, let’s take a look at Aleman’s pitch mix. Aleman currently features a four-seam fastball averaging 97 mph, a slider that sits around 86 mph, and a changeup averaging around 89-90 mph. So far at the MLB level, he’s leaned heavily on the fastball, throwing it around 72% of the time, and the slider around 21%. The changeup comes in 3rd; he’s only thrown it 6 times so far at the MLB level. Right now, that tells us the changeup is likely in an experimental phase, so it’s going to be essentially impossible to draw any conclusions about it. Looking at the main two pitches, the velocity separation between the fastball and slider is pretty nice, at around 10-11 mph. The contact quality metrics look decent too. The xwOBA on the fastball sits around .300, and the slider at .181.

What’s interesting about this profile is it fits the archetype of a pitcher that would normally generate a lot of Ks and a lot of swings and misses, but when we look at Aleman’s whiff rate on each pitch, they’re fairly low. The fastball’s is 16.7 and the slider’s is 30%, which is better but not particularly high. So, if the pitcher has all the hallmarks of a high leverage high strikeout relief pitcher, why are we seeing such low whiff numbers and strikeout rates? And how is he still having the level of success we’ve seen so far? To answer those questions,  we’ll take a deeper look at his contact profile.

The first things that stand out are the Whiff% and the Swinging Strike%. Both are low, with the SwStr% being a bit closer to what we’d expect from this profile, but still very much on the low end. The next numbers are the more important ones. For a pitcher that throws at higher average velocities, it’s not uncommon to see some of them give up harder contact on average when contact is made. This can lead to higher average exit velocities and Hard-Hit%. But Aleman’s numbers are both lower than what you’d typically expect for this profile, and the real signal that sticks out here is the very low Barrel%. Aleman’s low Barrel% suggests that he’s been able to avoid hitters doing barrel level damage on his pitches so far. I added the ground ball rate as well because it’s fairly low, but with only 6 IP, that number is going to swing wildly for a while, so the actual number right now tells us very little. Lastly, I’d like to bring this all together with some data on Aleman’s command at the MLB level so far.

As we mentioned briefly before, the BB% looks acceptable. The first-pitch strike rate is a little lower than ideal, and while that’s not at all alarming in this sample size, it is worth monitoring for a potential high leverage arm candidate. The next two numbers stand out a lot, but in different ways and for different reasons. His Zone % (percentage of pitches in the ABS strike zone) is very high, and in fact, the only Guardians pitcher who had a higher Zone% this season was longtime Cleveland legend Kolby Allard (at 46%). The second number is “called strikes plus whiffs” – the general purpose is to show the percentage of the time the pitcher wins the pitch outright (by landing the pitch in the zone or by getting the hitter to swing and miss). 20.8% is very low by far the lowest of any Guardian this season.