The Rise Of Matt Barnes

And a note on the death and life of the great Red Sox winning streak

Numerous legitimate questions faced the 2021 Red Sox coming out of camp, but maybe none so loud as who the closer would be. This isn’t the late 80s, so I won’t pretend the closer matters a ton, not compared with other things, and with the Red Sox expected to sit around .500 on the season it wasn’t something I personally spent much time thinking (or writing) about. The question did fester with some fans and media types though, and with good reason at least. The Red Sox bullpen wasn’t exactly brimming with talent. Was there anyone good enough to take over the roll of closer? Turns out, yes, there was.

It’s only been seven innings, so I won’t pretend this is anything but an extremely early and extremely partial snapshot in time, but Matt Barnes has been absolutely dominating in a way he has never been before.

Matt Barnes has always been a modern relief pitcher. He strikes out a lot of guys and he walks a lot of guys. For his career, 40 percent of the hitters he faced either struck out or walked. In 2019, that number was 48 percent. In 2019, that number was 51.9 percent. A full half of the hitters who faced Matt Barnes either walked or struck out. There was a reason for that. Barnes, if you’ve ever watched him, has fantastic stuff. His curveball drops straight down, right off the table. His fastball is quite fast! Throughout his career, Barnes curveball has always been towards the top of the league in vertical movement. His fastball averages 95-96 mph and that’s an average, so some of those are faster than that. Even today, that’s fast.

But as you might imagine by looking at his career walk rates, Matt Barnes throws a lot of balls. Pitches outside the strike zone are kinda his thing. He buries the curveball down, sometimes in the dirt, looking for swings and misses. He pairs that with a high fastball above the zone, again looking for the batter to chase. Both pitches are balls and so to be successful, both pitches depend on the batter extending the zone. Since his career began in 2014, Barnes has thrown 41 percent of his pitches in the strike zone. That means 59 percent of his pitches are thrown outside the strike zone. That’s not extreme and in fact during last year’s abbreviated season, Barnes threw more pitches in the zone than the league average pitcher. But generally, that’s how he works. Lots of balls, hope the batter chases. If the pitches are good enough, enticing enough, Barnes will have success. If not, he’ll issue a walk and move on to the next guy.

So let’s start here. Has Barnes been better this year than previously? Well, yes. His strikeout percentage is up from 40 percent to 60 percent, second best among relievers in all of baseball. A full 60 percent of the hitters he’s faced this season have struck out. That’s ridiculous. He’s walked two of the 23 total batters he’s faced and he’s given up… zero hits. That’s right. Not one batter who has faced Matt Barnes this season has so much as a single off of him. Barnes has already been worth 0.5 WAR, what he was worth the entire 66 innings he pitched in 2016 and almost half of the 1.2 WAR he was worth over 61.2 innings in 2018. So yeah, that’s seven powerful innings he’s thrown so far.

So now the real question: Why? Why has Matt Barnes been this good? Well, it could just be seven good innings. Seven innings is a pretty tiny sample, even for a reliever, and five of those innings have been against Tampa and Baltimore, neither a candidate to lead the league in runs scored. That could be a factor.

What stands out to me is Barnes’ first pitch strike percentage. That percentage for his career is 58.4 percent. This season it is at 87 percent. That’s a big jump. This stands out because it’s quite good strategy, if you can do it. Once hitters are behind in the count they’re more prone to chasing pitches outside the zone, which, again, is kinda Matt Barnes’ thing.

But that’s the funny thing about this. Barnes isn’t throwing more pitches in the strike zone. His overall percentage of pitches in the zone is about the same as always (44.3 percent if you must know, compared to a career average of 41.1 percent). That means Barnes is throwing a lot more first pitches for strikes, and then a lot more pitches after that out of the zone and depending on batters to chase.

Is that strategy working? If so we’d probably see his chase percentage jump up, right? So what percentage of pitches outside the zone do batters chase over his career? 28 percent. What percentage of Matt Barnes’ pitches outside the zone are batters chasing this season? 46 percent.

Well well well.

Now this could be a small sample blip. But it also makes sense, right? For a guy like Barnes who depends on getting batters to chase, getting strike one is a huge key. Once he does that, batters have to start paying more attention to closer pitches. Once he gets strike one, his pitches play up, and we’ve seen that in his strike out rate.

Matt Barnes has figured out the magic of strike one. And after that, he can take it from there.

The Winning Streak Is No More; Long Live The Winning Streak

All good things must come to an end and the Red Sox nine game winning streak was no different. Normally I wouldn’t throw a note on the back of a perfectly good Matt Barnes article, but I do think a nine game winning streak is a pretty impressive accomplishment and its passing is worthy of note.

The Red Sox last won nine consecutive games in 2018. That year they won 10 in row, in fact. But this streak was notable in its own right. The Red Sox won six of their nine wins on the road, they won six against 2020 playoff teams, and they won six against divisional opponents. The streak took them from last place in baseball to first place in the American League, second overall behind the Dodgers. Before the streak Boston had the worst offense in baseball and now they’re tied with the Dodgers and Reds for most runs scored by any team (admittedly that stat is through Thursday’s game, which they lost).

More than those numbers though, the Winning Streak really did awaken something in Red Sox nation, something that had been dormant since probably early 2019. It’s like Red Sox fans suddenly collectively woke up from a fog and remembered, “Hey, baseball is fun!” And it’s even more than that because for the first time since somewhere in 2019, the Red Sox are fun!

They’re probably not going to win nine in a row again anytime soon (thus this note), but then I didn’t think they’d do it once, so you never know. It’s looking like it will be an enjoyable summer.

Standings Are Fun (For Now)

I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do this, so let’s take advantage while we can right? Have a great Friday, everybody!