Landen Roupp Switches Sides | FanGraphs Baseball

It’s not apparent why Landen Roupp is nice, however it’s in all probability time to seek out out.

Roupp’s 2.54 xERA is seventh amongst certified beginning pitchers. He’s putting out batters, getting groundballs, and dealing deep into video games. He’s tied for fifteenth within the majors with 0.9 WAR. That’s about 70% of what he was projected for by FanGraphs Depth Charts within the preseason. It’s one of the crucial stunning performances of April.

Most pitchers “get good” as a result of they miss bats, or assault the zone, or each. That doesn’t apply to Roupp this 12 months. His 25.1% whiff charge is in regards to the median amongst certified pitchers, and his 37.1% zone charge is backside 5. Frankly, he doesn’t throw a ton of strikes.

The underlying “stuff” metrics aren’t any extra spectacular.

Roupp doesn’t throw significantly laborious, or show outlier motion, or place close to the highest of any leaderboard I do know to examine. And but, he excels. The place is all that worth coming from?

Nicely, he occurs to be the final certified pitcher of 2026 who has not allowed a barrel. His 25.0% opponent hard-hit charge is one of the best within the majors, and his .277 xwOBACON allowed is second greatest, simply behind Max Fried and simply forward of Shohei Ohtani. Batters appear incapable of squaring him up, pounding grounders into the grime 56.0% of the time, or in any other case getting jammed on gentle lineouts.

This contact suppression all begins with the sinker. He throws its about 40% of the time, no matter batter handedness. It’s been price seven runs above common to this point in 2026, tied for third among the many simplest pitches of the season. It doesn’t have outlier velocity or motion, however it nonetheless reveals that heavy, bowling-ball motion that’s confirmed to be fairly efficient at getting grounders.

It’s price mentioning Roupp has gotten a bit fortunate with that sinker up to now, with only one hit allowed on 20 grounders — xwOBA thinks his sinker is among the many luckiest pitches on contact this 12 months. Nonetheless, the contact he’s allowed is gentle, on the bottom, and usually non-threatening. Just a few extra singles right here and there shouldn’t affect his line a lot going ahead.

The opposite pitch he options is an enormous, flexible curveball. It’s merely super, and it all the time has been. Actually, Eric Longehagen and Travis Ice gave it an 80/80 grade of their report on Roupp on the 2024 Giants High Prospects checklist (regardless of a extra modest 40-FV grade general). He throws it about 29% of the time, which is definitely down fairly a bit from his days as a prospect, when he was among the many uncommon primary-hook pitchers (one thing he mentioned with David Laurila final 12 months).

The pitch has tons and tons of motion, particularly towards the glove aspect. It’s nice at getting whiffs, it’s nice at getting chases, it’s nice at inducing gentle contact. I imply, simply take a look at it:

What’s fascinating is none of this has actually modified. He had the sinker and curveball final 12 months, in addition to the less-used changeup and cutter. Granted, the cutter is a bit completely different now, with a contact extra motion to the glove aspect. However, basically, the stuff he throws and the way in which he throws it’s an identical — it simply occurs to be working swiftly.

To be clear, Roupp wasn’t unhealthy by any means final 12 months. His 3.92 FIP was greater than satisfactory as a mid-rotation starter, even when a bout of minor elbow irritation and a comebacker off the knee lower his season brief. However he definitely wasn’t a top-10 pitcher within the majors, or somebody you’d have guess on changing into one.

Right here’s the one actual change I may spy:

Roupp is releasing the ball practically a full inch farther from third base than he was in 2025. Once more, the arm angle is similar, and he’s not releasing the ball a lot otherwise. As a substitute, he’s moved from smack-dab in the midst of the rubber to standing as far off to the aspect as a right-handed pitcher can probably stand. Take a look at the 2 screenshots beneath, with this season on the left and final 12 months on the correct:

The query then turns into, does this matter? I don’t know. Really, this beginning spot is the one change that I may discover, until we’re counting the tweaks to the cutter (which he’s thrown solely 12.4% of the time). The one different factor I can consider is, you recognize, small pattern dimension, and that’s simply not a enjoyable reply.

However the principle of change right here is tough to wrap my head round. My preliminary thought was maybe this new stance is permitting Roupp to throw to higher spots. That isn’t actually the case. In some methods, his command has gotten worse this 12 months — walks are the one factor he hasn’t performed effectively to this point.

As a substitute, what I believe is occurring is Roupp has modified the angle at which his pitches method the plate horizontally. The sinker particularly is getting into the zone from a far steeper left-to-right angle, leaping from a Seventieth-percentile method angle in 2025 to a Ninety fifth-percentile one in 2026, based on Baseball Prospectus. To be clear, I’m not Alex Chamberlain, who wrote the primer on horizontal (and vertical) method angle for this web site years in the past. I’m additionally not any of the opposite authors who wrote about method angle and pitcher stance a number of years in the past. That is removed from my space of experience, however my understanding of what’s taking place right here is it’s sophisticated, with such a change having a wide range of causes and results.

Nonetheless, I believe this is sensible intuitively for 2 causes. One might be the obvious: A unique method angle goes to discover a completely different a part of the bat, and that a part of the bat to this point has been fairly actually every thing however the barrel.

However I additionally marvel if this adjustments the way in which batters see the pitch coming in. Roupp doesn’t rating effectively by the varied arsenal and tunneling metrics from BP. His sinker and curveball seem like two distinctly completely different pitches out of hand, and batters must be fairly good at guessing which is which. Final 12 months they had been.

Perhaps switching sides of the rubber adjustments that perspective. As an illustration, righties at the moment are seeing the sinker from the primary base dugout and lefties are seeing it zip in from behind their ear. Then there’s the large, gradual hook, transferring violently in the wrong way. Combine in Roupp’s funky-hitch windup and low arm slot, and he creates a weird, relatively excessive look from a repertoire that’s something however.

Take this outing towards Bo Bichette. Roupp will get him within the first inning on a backdoor sinker that Bichette is clearly in between on.

Then, in his subsequent at-bat, Roupp begins Bichette with the curve, roughly in the identical spot, getting a wild chase and miss.

I like this notion principle due to this subsequent desk. One of many issues we all know in regards to the pitcher-hitter matchup is that hitters begin to acquire a bonus as they get conversant in an arsenal. This was a problem for Roupp final 12 months as a result of, once more, he struggles to disguise his pitches along with his launch level, with out the uncooked stuff to make up for it. As soon as the batter will get a glance, the jig is up.

This 12 months, wouldn’t you recognize it, Roupp is definitely changing into simpler as he works into the sport.

Once more, not a lot has actually modified about how he’s releasing the ball, and neither has his tunneling or stuff. My hunch is it’s merely the way in which the ball seems to batters that’s making them miss, serving to his sinker play up whereas the curveball lurks menacingly.

If this represents a brand new degree for Roupp, I can’t assist however discover this amusing. He’s unremarkable in so some ways, and shifting to the opposite aspect of the rubber is in regards to the easiest change a pitcher may probably make. And but, generally that’s all it takes.