Yankees James Paxton has yet to fare well in the Bronx

After six seasons in Seattle, James Paxton was shipped to the Yankees in hopes of winning a World Series. Now several months after his pinstripe debut, Paxton hasn’t looked much like his former self.

Although James Paxton’s 4.01 ERA with the Yankees may not suggest he’s too far from his norm, (career 3.48 ERA), his 1.428 WHIP indicates otherwise.

A predominantly fastball pitcher, Paxton hasn’t deviated from that approach much; throwing around 65 percent fastballs as a Yankee, compared to his 64 percent the past two years.

An almost unnoticeable increase in four-seam fastballs, yet a more drastic change in his usage rate of supplementary pitches. Over his career, Paxton’s curveball is sporting a .191 BAA and a .298 SLG. Likewise, his cutter stands at a similar place, .192 and .303, respectively.

Yet, compared to the two prior seasons, of which Paxton pitched noticeably better, Paxton has relied on his knuckle-curve around 8 percent more often, while throwing his cutter 7 percent less.

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Paxton’s final pitch in his repertoire is a change-up, which he mixes in from time to time but has almost entirely vanished from his game plan since putting on the pinstripes.

His superior reliance on his fastball has seemed to come around to bite him. Before 2018, Paxton was a ground ball heavy pitcher, but since 2018 his fly ball rate has seen a drastic increase.

While this may not be all that bad of a thing in Seattle, where the Mariners T-Mobile Park restrains fly balls from leaving the yard — in his new home of Yankee Stadium, these same fly balls often find their way into the crowd.

To add to his impressive performance last season, in which fly balls got the best of him, his line drive rate was still lower than it stands as a Yankee.

With the ever-increasing power of hitter’s in this, the age of launch speed, Paxton has never been hit harder than this season.

A 37.4 percent hard hit ball rate this season, the highest of his career, shows just that. And, compared to his stellar 2017 season, ground balls, fly balls and pop ups hit off Paxton have all increased in launch speed.

This has led to 13 percent of his ground balls resulting in doubles, compared to just 2 percent in 2018 and 3 percent in 2017.

Not to mention how much his 22 percent line drive rate has hurt him. Already a high enough percent of all batted balls, line drives given up by Paxton this season have resulted in hits almost twice as often as outs, 1.9-to-1. As opposed to just 1.2 hits for every out off line drives in 2018 and 1.4 in 2017.

Paxton’s reform into a fly ball pitcher these past two seasons have hurt him tremendously, likely because of his increase in fastballs, both four-seam and cutters.

The Yankees main weakness this season remains to be their rotation. Minimal help from recent acquisition James Paxton has only furthered their efforts towards a better staff.

However, if Paxton were to mix in more breaking pitches in effort to induce more ground balls, I’d hope, and expect him to regain former, top of the rotation form.