Article: The Four-Seam Fastball Is the Key to Brayan Bello’s Success

[Alex Mayes]

Brayan Bello had an incredibly up and down season in 2024. Reintroducing his worst pitch of 2023 seemed to unlock something in him. 

The 2024 season got off to a rough start for Brayan Bello, but it ended with him finding his groove and becoming the one Red Sox starter who could be counted on to toss solid innings every five days. I’ve written before about the first few months of Bello's season and the bounce-back process after Alex Cora gave him a few extra days rest before a July start in Miami. In that start, his four-seam fastball reemerged. It’s no secret that the Red Sox threw fewer fastballs than any team in baseball, saving them to mess with hitters' timing. This new approach worked for almost everyone in the starting rotation, but Bello started the season slow. He was knocked around quite a bit and seemed like he couldn’t find his footing with any of his pitches. What should have been a deadly combination of an above average slider and a nasty change up wasn’t working like it should have been. What was different to start the year in 2024?

For one thing, Bello's arm angle rose throughout the season. The biggest change, however, came to his pitch mix. Bello completely scrapped his four-seam fastball to start off the season. In fact, he didn’t throw a single four-seamer until July. The reasoning behind it was fairly simple: it got hit hard in 2023. In 2023, Bello threw 540 four-seamers. The pitch gave up a below average 20% whiff rate and a disastrous .413 wOBA. It's not hard to see why he would scrap it completely. However, the it seems like the plan was always to reintroduce the pitch at some point during the season.

 

That point came on July 3, 2024. Bello turned in his best start of the season against the lowly Miami Marlins, setting him up for success through the end of the season. The success didn’t lie specifically in the four-seam fastball, though. Adding that pitch back into his arsenal allowed his sinker and changeup to play off it. Suddenly, instead of sitting on and waiting for a sinker followed by a changeup with an occasional slider thrown in, batters had to take the four-seamer into account.

Suddenly, instead of glimpses of the pitcher the Red Sox hoped Brayan Bello could be, we saw extended stretches of it. Reintroducing the four-seamer to his pitch mix allowed Bello to take the next step in his development. Should this continue, Bello will be heralded as the most successful homegrown Boston starter in quite some time. Hopefully, Tanner Houck can challenge him for that title, but that’s a conversation for a different article.

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[mvp 78]

1 hour ago, Alex Mayes said:

Suddenly, instead of glimpses of the pitcher the Red Sox hoped Brayan Bello could be, we saw extended stretches of it. Reintroducing the four-seamer to his pitch mix allowed Bello to take the next step in his development. Should this continue, Bello will be heralded as the most successful homegrown Boston starter in quite some time. Hopefully, Tanner Houck can challenge him for that title, but that’s a conversation for a different article.

 

Right now, Bello is so far behind Houck that he's not even in the same conversation even if you just go back his second half stats. Houck's 2024 > Bello's second half in ERA+/WHIP/HR9/SOperBB. Let's not anoint Bello as the best anything until he at least appears in an AS Game.