A New Beginning in the Steel City: Chase Shugart
Exploring Chase Shugart's Potential with the Pirates: What He Brings to the Table and Key Adjustments for Success
Opening
Coming off my last post about Burch Smith and his possibility to possibly break camp with the Pirates, they go out and make another under-the-radar move for Chase Shugart. In this deal the Pirates sent out Matt McShane, who was their 13th-round pick in the 2024 draft, who has yet to make his pro debut. I don't really know much about McShane besides that he pitched at St. Joseph's University for three years and managed a 3.76 ERA over 119.2 innings pitched. Besides that, in this post I want to take a deep dive into Shugart in particular.
Just last season Shugart made his Major League debut at the age of 27 and wasn't horrible, posting a 4.15 ERA, 3.31 xERA, and 3.86 FIP on a limited sample size of 8.2 innings pitched. Although this is a small sample to work off of, I think it still showed the Pirates some characteristics that Shugart has that they could possibly use in 25’. Some of these characteristics that I'm alluding to are Shugart's expanded arsenal, low release height, and ability to produce effective velocity despite his size. Throughout this blog I'm going to be expressing my thoughts on what he does well and ways that I think could help him improve.
Delivery Characteristics
Before getting into the arsenal breakdown, I want to take a look at Shugart's delivery characteristics. Shugart is a stock-slot tricep-dominant supinator due to the fact he can only produce an 89.6% spin efficiency on his FF and has the ability to produce an effective supination triangle. Shugart stands at a mere 5'10”, which is rather small for a major league pitcher, but he is still able to produce effective velocity. The reason for this is due to his ability to produce a very fluent and efficient delivery down the mound. He first starts by utilizing the “drift” phase to get his momentum going down the mound and into his delivery. Prior to landing, he's able to rotate his hips and produce good hip-shoulder separation, where from there he is able to use his lead leg block as an effective planting point to rotate around into delivery and ultimately transfer the energy into the throw. All of this, paired with his smaller stature, allowed for Shugart to get down to a below-average 5.4’ release height.
Positives for Pirates
The reason I really love this trade for the Pirates is that they get yet another ¾ supinator option out of their bullpen from Shugart. With the game of baseball ever expanding, it's becoming more and more prevalent that most teams are looking for pitchers with the ability to produce multiple shapes at the major league level. This ability typically ties to supination bias but hinders a few pronators toeing the line as well. What's great about this ability is it allows for pitchers to make hitters account for multiple shapes and areas of the zone, which in turn makes pitchers increasingly more random. It's exciting to see the Pirates go out and get two pitchers with this capability in Smith and Shugart to hopefully bolster their bullpen in 25’.
Addition of Curve
One of the main additions I would like to see Shugart make is to add some sort of a curve. Of course his stint with the Red Sox was very small, only posting 8 and 2 thirds of work, but in those innings he utilized his sweeper over 16% of the time against lefties. Typically, using sweepers against opposite-handed hitters isn't the greatest idea due to the fact they generally don't generate depth to get off the plane of the hitter's bat. To add onto that, the utilization of this pitch really only serves as a way to backdoor and steal a strike or try to get a swing and miss inside. To me, I feel like the addition of a curve and the utilization of this pitch in the place of his sweeper could really take his arsenal to the next level of development, which he's currently lacking.
A comparison to a shape that I could see Shugart pulling off, which coincidentally happens to be in the same organization, is Mitch Keller. The shape that Keller is able to pull off from his similar 35-degree arm angle is a 13.0 iVB and 13.4 iHB, which fared well in 24’ with a .233 AVG, .310 wOBA, .280 xwOBA, 28.3 O-Sw%, and a 29.3 Whiff%.
Of course I don't know if Shugart will be able to pull off this exact shape, but I would love to see some sort of depth added to his currently limited mix of breaking pitches. What gives me lots of hope that he'll be able to produce some form of this shape is due to the Pirates having experience with the experimentation of it with Mitch Keller and his decreased arm angle throughout his career.
One thing that may hinder his ability to produce this pitch effectively is his tricep dominations. I hinted at this previously, but because he has a tricep bias at release, he tends to have a harder time producing effective breaking ball shapes. This can be seen in his limited amount of breaking pitches in his arsenal, as well as in his below-average speed on his sweeper.
This may come as a surprise to some fans, because typically a supination bias means that a pitcher has an ability to produce an array of breaking ball shapes. Although this is his bias, it's important to understand that tricep and bicep domination should be viewed on a spectrum like supination/pronation. Meaning that even with the tricep bias, it doesn’t rule Shugart out of the ability to produce a curveball. Due to this, I believe it's still in his best interest to produce a curveball to use against lefties in place of his sweeper.
4-Seam Usage
One very intriguing thing about Shugart is his ability to produce a low release height of 5.4’. Of course, this is in large part due to his smaller frame allowing him to get down to this release, but that's besides the point. What's so great about this low release is his ability to use it to produce deceptive angles, which allow him to produce such a low VAA of -3.9 on his 4-seam. This low VAA gives his FF great swing and miss possibilities at the top of the zone even with a relatively average shape.
What makes me excited about the change of scenery from Boston to Pittsburgh for Shugart is the possibility to increase 4-seam usage. It's no secret that Boston is anti 4-seam, throwing one of the lowest total amounts in a season in league history, which is explained in this video by Lance Brozdowski (link). Knowing this, it's no surprise why Shugart’s usage of 15% with this pitch in 24’ (the lowest of all pitches) was so low despite this outlier ability to produce such a low VAA. With the Pirates, I expect this usage to increase to around 30% to utilize his ability to produce a flat approach angle at the top of the zone and increase swing and miss possibilities.
Conclusion
All in all, this is a very intriguing trade for the Pirates. They go out and get bullpen help from a rather untested arm in Shugart at the major league level in exchange for a 13th rounder from the 24’ draft. There are many positives that could come from this change of scenery, like the increased usage of his 4-seam and utilization of his ability to produce a low VAA at the top of the zone. Add this on with a possible curveball to attack lefties with; we could see Shugart blossom into a very productive pitcher in 25’. Knowing all this, I'm very excited to see how Shugart fares in 25’, and you should be too!
Thanks for reading!
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Sam, you absolutely cooked!