Righty reliever Robert Stephenson and the Angels are in agreement on a three-year, $33 million contract, the team announced on Tuesday.
In hindsight, maybe it’s not surprising that the Rays traded for Stephenson in a minor trade in early June and saw the right-hander immediately produce like one of baseball’s best relievers the rest of the year. It’s basically in Tampa Bay’s DNA to get the most out of acquired players.
In 38 1/3 innings with the Rays, Stephenson had a 2.35 ERA while striking out a whopping 60 batters and walking just eight. From June through the rest of the season, Stephenson boasted an absurd 37.1 percent strikeout-minus-walk rate — second-best among all pitchers (min. 30 innings) behind only Félix Bautista’s 37.6 percent mark.
After bouncing around teams with mixed results for the previous few seasons, the timing of Stephenson’s breakout couldn’t have been better in the stretch run of his walk year. A big part of Stephenson’s improvements boiled down to altering his most-utilized pitch with help from the Rays.
As documented by MLB.com’s Rays beat writer Adam Berry, Stephenson and Tampa Bay pitching coach Kyle Snider adjusted the grip on the righty’s slider and saw the pitch turn from a mid-80’s offering to a sharper upper-80’s offering. Labeled as a cutter by Statcast, Stephenson still referred to it as a slider, but regardless of the pitch classification, it had monstrous results in Tampa Bay.
From June onward, no pitcher had a higher whiff rate on a single pitch (min. 100 swings) than Stephenson’s cutter/slider, which generated whiffs on a remarkable 59.9 percent of swings. With this new elite swing-and-miss offering at his disposal to pair with an upper-90’s heater, good splitter and improved command, Stephenson looks like a real late-innings threat (reliever volatility may apply).
