so taking a dive into his statcast and fangraphs data there are a couple of things:
he has lowered his rlease point - so presumeably his arm angle - maybe in search of more FB velo - which he got, BUT, the velo on his change and cutter have increased more than his FB velo - so his overall delta Velo is DOWN. Dirks mentioned this the other day as well. Not only is delta velo down, but the delta vertical break between his pitches is also down - probably for the same reason - less delta V. To me, if you lose delta V and delta break, more barrels would be the expected result. Now the brain trust *must* know this, and maybe they think this is transitional on the way to something better - like maybe he gets to where he keeps the FB velo and the cutter/change drop back to where they were, or maybe they want him to use his curve more for speed change. IDK. Or maybe the arm angle change was based on an biomechanics analysis that said it would reduce the risk of further injury to his arm and they can only hope he can eventually make it all work. And after all, he was supposed to be in Toledo where he could work out all these details without the consequences being suffered in Detroit. (Or maybe we've been conned with techno jargon and they really don't know what they are doing? 😱)
This reminds me of Verlander's mess in 2017. There was a lot of talk about his slider being 'rediscovered' by Houston's geniuses, but I still don't buy that line. What the charts say happened is that JV had changed is arm angle in the off season chasing the velo he lost when he had the abdominal weakness and it took the life off his FB. By about mid May he started moving back to his old release point and as the FB life got better, the Slider became more effective. I'm always little skeptical about talk of better and worse sliders because the real key to any breaking ball is how good the FB it's being played against is.