If you’ve been following Brayan Bello’s season, you’ll know that as a starter, he has a 9.68 ERA, and as a reliever, he has a 0.71 ERA. The Section 10 podcast gang speculated that it’s because Bello is putting too much pressure on himself to be perfect with this offense, and when the opener gives up four runs in the first inning, that pressure is alleviated.
If you’ve followed my Over The Monster career, you’ll know that I am a nerd. If you’re new here, the fact that I’m a nerd will become apparent
over the next several hundred words. As such, I tend to deal with the tangible better than the intangible. I don’t really have an interest in speculating on what might be going on in a professional athlete’s head, because there’s no way of knowing without him speaking about it, and there’s no way he’ll ever admit to being more focused out of the pen or whatever. I am, however, interested in what changed with Bello over his last two outings. So, if the headline drew you in and you’re looking for that answer, you’ve come to the wrong place, because I don’t know, and I don’t have a way of knowing. If you’re still interested in what’s made Bello successful in his last two outings, stick around as I try to get to the bottom of it.
I’m going to focus on his last two appearances, because that’s where the biggest change he made started. Over those two outings, he’s thrown a combined 12 innings and allowed two runs, neither of which was earned. He’s struck out 21% of hitters (10/48) and walked 2% (1/48). In his first nine starts of the season, he struck out 12% and walked 11%, so we’re moving in the right direction. The aforementioned change that you’re probably dying to know about is his arm angle. Over his first nine appearances, his arm angle averaged 42 degrees. Over his last two, it’s down to 33 degrees. Last season, when he posted a 3.35 ERA over 166.2 innings, his arm angle averaged 33 degrees.
Now, simply dropping his arm angle doesn’t mean he’s fixed. There have been encouraging signs given his new angle, however. For one, his velocity was up significantly in his last outing. His sinker averaged 96.2 mph, up 1.6 mph from his season average and 0.9 mph from his 2025 mark. I’m not going to pretend to know about all the biomechanical things at play, but I feel okay saying that the change in mechanics and increase in velocity are likely related. Again, that still doesn’t explain the drastic change in performance, but 96 mph sinkers are more difficult to hit than 94 mph sinkers, so I’ll assign it some credit for the improvement.
Onto the actual pitches themselves. A few short weeks ago, I urged Bello to use the entire plate against left-handed hitters. To that point, he had almost exclusively thrown his sinkers to the front hip while throwing back-door cutters. That approach netted him a .440 wOBA against left-handed hitters. While he hasn’t fully followed that approach, he’s throwing the sinker away from lefties again. He’s also backed off his cutter, but he’s keeping it mostly away from lefties, in the same location as the changeup.
It’s just a two-game sample, but with the sinker thrown more across the whole plate, hitters can’t see a pitch starting at them and wait to tee off on it. It’s been down in the zone more often and landing for more strikes. From this lower arm angle, he’s also getting more sink on the sinker, which has led to ground balls. Some days, those ground balls will find holes and create traffic, but it’s still better than line drives and fly balls off and over the wall.
But wait, there’s more! The decrease in cutter usage had to be picked up somewhere else, and Bello opted for more changeups and four-seamers. I’ve gone back and forth on the four-seam. The shape isn’t anything special, and it gets crushed when he leaves it down in the zone, but for a two-strike offering thrown up, I guess I’ll allow it.
The changeup is what I really want to talk about. It was a really great pitch when he first came up, and over time, it got worse and worse. This year, the strike rate is back up to about 63%, and it hasn’t been hit hard. I’ll attribute some of the whiffs to hitters being ultra aggressive as they looked to hammer his fastballs, but his feel for the pitch on Friday was as good as it’s been in years.
It landed below the zone and on the arm side, away from areas where it could be punished. He generated five whiffs, three of which were strike three. Here’s a look at one.
Again, it’s still not a perfect pitch. The velocity is probably a little too close to his fastball, given how similar the movement is, but when he has a feel for it, it’s a weapon against lefties. It’s one more look to keep hitters off of his other pitches. It’s weird to say he’s a command over stuff pitcher, because the command isn’t consistent, but the stuff isn’t overpowering enough to get by with just one pitch landing for strikes. The changeup was there on Friday against Cleveland, and Bello cruised through seven innings. There are going to be ebbs and flows, but he’s looked sharper recently, and it’s not just because he’s not pitching the first inning.
In my previous piece about Bello, I barely touched on right-handed hitters, simply stating that he should continue to throw sinkers at their hands and wait for his batted ball luck to turn. In his last two outings, he hasn’t seen many righties, but he’s throwing a lot of sinkers, keeping them down, and has seen his batting average on balls in play against them go from .425 to .000. Keep it up, it’s that simple!
He’s lined up to face Baltimore on Thursday. It’s a day game, and there are questions about his effectiveness during the day that I can’t answer, but it’s also a difficult lineup to navigate as a righty with platoon split questions. Gunnar Henderson, Samuel Basallo, and Adley Rutschman are all solid left-handed bats. Colton Cowser and Jackson Holiday have shown flashes as well.
I finished my last Bello piece by saying that I don’t trust his ability to consistently execute a game plan where he lands pitches on both sides of the plate. I still don’t trust his command, because it’s always come and gone through his career, but with the shift in arm angle and subsequent velocity increase, among other things, I feel a lot better about him grinding through outings even when he’s not spotting his pitches perfectly. If he can command his changeup as he did on Friday, I might have to get on my soapbox and start screaming that he’s back. For now, I’ll be cautiously optimistic about his bulk days, regardless of if he’s starting or coming out of the pen.
