Does anyone reading this need any reminders about how the NLDS ended in 2025? Didn’t think so.
Orion Kerkering’s 2025 season was disappointing after a very good 2024 where he seemed primed for a future late-inning role. The Phillies let Jeff Hoffman walk for Jordan Romano with the idea that Kerkering would fill a bigger role.
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Kerkering struggled to with throwing quality strikes and getting consistent chase. He has always had a knack for generating weak contact but he walked more hitters and struggled to keep the ball on the ground as he did so well before.
There were greater concerns with the overall profile. He backed off throwing his patented sweeper because it wasn’t as good of a shape. He lost three inches of drop and a few more inches of horizontal break in an attempt to throw the pitch a little harder.
Velocity gain is generally a good thing, even on pitches like sweepers that require more movement but it just didn’t play as well. Opponents slugged 81 points better against the offering than they did in 2024 and he was not getting as much chase. The trade off just wasn’t worth it.
He also probably needed another secondary pitch to lefties, even if it was just for show. Left handed hitters had a .738 OPS against him which forced Rob Thomson to utilize him differently. Since Kerkering wasn’t a great option to trust for three hitters, they asked him to pitch dirty innings against certain matchups.
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After all of that, Kerkering needed to do at least two things for a better 2026: get the sweeper back to it’s 2024 shape and to develop a second off-speed pitch.
The sweeper profile is now much closer to 2024 with roughly the same amount of vertical drop and only slightly less horizontal movement. Kerkering’s outlier sweeper movement worked not just for getting whiffs but for generating soft contact because hitters don’t often see a pitch like it.
He then developed a splitter. It’s not a great pitch since it has well below average drop but it’s another look for left handed hitters and he can locate it.
With a four-pitch mix, the Phillies now have the flexibility to use his arsenal differently than in the past.
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Kerkering’s best strike pitch is without question his sweeper, so he is now throwing it more over the plate to get ahead in counts. Given the movement profile, it’s not as risky a bet because hitters generally don’t hit the pitch hard. Despite the middle-middle location, opponents have a hard hit rate of only 17.9% against his sweeper
(image from BaseballSavant)
With the pitch ending over the middle of the plate a lot, the fastballs should be higher in the zone to stay within the sequence tunnel he is working.
It’s risky, especially since Kerkering does not possess a plus fastball but he throws it at 97.4 mph and hitters will be late when it’s sequenced with the sweeper.
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The sinker is more fascinating He is landing the pitch on the inner third of the plate to right handed hitters like he has in the past but it’s higher in the zone. Instead of working a traditional east-west approach, throwing the sinker high and in works off the tunnel.
(image from BaseballSavant)
Finally, there is the splitter that can work below the zone to keep hitters honest. He is throwing it 14% of the time to lefties and it forces them to stay honest on the outside part of the plate.
There are some indicators that a 2.49 ERA is probably on the high end of outcomes. He is not getting the groundballs he once generated in 2024 and is riding the highest strand rate of his career. But this is a pitcher figuring out who he is in real time and getting results in the process.
