This mostly has nothing to do with the subject of this article, but humor me for a few seconds.
You’re not a real sports fan unless there’s this one player that you irrationally believe can be something special. It can be in any sport, but it’s usually someone who just never gets to that certain level. For me, as a young Knicks fan who couldn’t have fathomed a world where they’re on the verge of greatness tonight, that was Willy Hernangomez. He never did much in the league, but his impressive rookie
year as a beacon of light on a terrible team gave me hope.
It doesn’t have to be like that, though. My Yankees version of this is Albert Abreu. I saw that high-90s velocity and solid slider and changeup and thought this was the new Jonathan Loáisiga. Of course, that wasn’t too a high a bar due to ol’ Johnny Lasagna’s inconsistency, but I thought he had the stuff to be something special. As is the case with a lot of pitchers though, he never put it together and fizzled out. That’s not at risk to happening to Camilo Doval, who’s much more accomplished than any of the three players I’ve talked about so far, but there is some level of connection that he has.
Picture a reliever who can throw triple digits effortlessly with his cutter and sinker. He has an elite walk rate, almost never giving up a free pass. He gives up very few barrels. Most of the balls in play against him are pounded into the infield dirt. You’d imagine this reliever would be a tremendous high-leverage option, one that you would trust to hold a lead by not handing out free baserunners and frequently rolling double play balls when in trouble. While relievers are noticeably volatile and prone to small-sample variance (ahem Jeff Hoffman), more often than not, this is a winning archetype.
And then you look at Doval’s stats. In 29 appearances and 24.2 innings, his ERA is 5.47. He opened the season as the team’s primary set-up man, but has repeatedly been yo-yo’d into lower leverage, medium leverage, and back into big situations. He’s frequently on a short leash from Aaron Boone, something that’s problematic in a shallow bullpen.
So how is this possible? Well, it’s based on a few things.
Some of it is luck. While he doesn’t run an exceptionally high BABIP, he’s still allowing opponents to hit .260 off him, the highest rate of his career. Batters are hitting .261 on ground balls against him compared to the .246 league average, but all of this is within the regular realm of possibility.
The real culprit, in terms of luck, is his ridiculously high HR/FB%. A whopping 20 percent of his fly balls allowed have gone over the fence, a rate far above the major league average of 11.2 percent. Now, it’s not quite the highest in baseball, but he has by far the highest ground ball rate of any pitcher in the top 30 (min. 20 innings pitched). Well, except for his teammate, Tim Hill.
That’s not all bad luck, as sometimes you just get absolutely tagged, so let’s look at the four home runs he’s allowed this season.
A 3-2 slider at the knees that’s obliterated by a future Hall of Famer. This wasn’t a cheapie, this was a legend of the game getting exactly what pitch he wanted.
It was pretty chilly in the Bronx in mid-April, so Doval’s sinker was down a few ticks here. Vinnie Pasquantino grooves a ball in a similar spot, but it barely sneaks out over the short porch. This is something that, with better luck, is only a double. Instead, it’s a blown save.
Another slider at the bottom of the zone crushed to center field, this time by Joc Pederson.
Yet another slider that ends right down Broadway to a perennial Yankee killer.
Only one of these pitches I’d describe as truly terrible, but only one of these would also be classified as a wall-scraper. The clear trend here is just how flat and hittable his slider has been, which has been, by far, the worst pitch in his arsenal this season. Batters are 9-for-25 with three home runs and five extra-base hits against the pitch. He’s surrendering an average exit velocity of 92.6 mph and a .493 wOBA, but interestingly enough, the xwOBA is just .322. As a whole, Doval’s differential of 40 points between his xwOBA and wOBA makes him the second-unluckiest pitcher on the roster behind David Bednar (42 points).
Reliever sample sizes are so small that this stuff might never even out. 2024 Clay Holmes and 2025 Mark Leiter Jr. similarly suffered from bad luck, but theirs were more concentrated in grueling misfortune on ground balls and soft contact, while also suffering from bad defense. Defenders do have a -3 Fielding Run Value behind Doval this season, the worst on the team, but it isn’t Leiter-esque… yet.
While sometimes it just feels like a reliever’s struggles are something that feels unnecessarily cruel from the baseball gods, Doval can absolutely improve some things. For one, here’s a heat map of his pitches:
He’s been throwing his slider less and less lately after how much it got pounded in April, but his struggles have remained because of both location and his inability to change speeds. Some pitchers can make throwing almost exclusively fastballs work (hello Cam Schlittler), but when a hitter can equally time up an entire arsenal because of how close they are in velocity and spin, location becomes paramount.
And as you can see, you can probably gear up for 100 at the bottom of the zone when facing Doval. When it’s not at the bottom of the zone, his sinker creeps too much towards the belt, while his cutter spins towards the top. Being too predictable is the vice of every major league pitcher, and Doval isn’t exempt. His inability to properly locate or sequence has plummeted his strikeout rate, putting him at the whim of the defense behind him and Lady Luck herself.
I’m confident he’ll eventually stabilize as one of the better relievers in this bullpen, but the results aren’t there right now. I don’t really see a world where he gets to where he needs to be without that slider becoming a real weapon again, so until that happens, it’ll continue to be a maddening work in progress.
