Dodgers closer Edwin Diaz is another power pitcher who has lost his way. Since coming back from an elbow surgery, Diaz has allowed eight earned runs and 18 baserunners in 6 2/3 innings.

The problem is Diaz’s command, which he speculated is probably due to a “posture” problem. He may be on to something.

Here are two fastballs from Diaz, before the IL and after, at the point of deceleration, when the hand continues across the body after release. Two factors to notice here:

1. Early in the season, Diaz finished more toward home plate, which you can see by the lower head and flatter back. Since returning from the IL, he is coming out of his delivery earlier, likely the “posture” problem he referenced.

2. His hand position is lower. In March, by keeping his posture, his hand stayed above the waist as it decelerated against his body. Now it decelerates against his lower left hip.

The bottom line is that Diaz needs to fix his posture to ride his fastball to the top of the zone, where it works best. As you can see here, Diaz needs to find more velocity and more height on his fastball:

Diaz Fastball Metrics

In visual form with these heat maps of Diaz’s fastball, you see he is not getting his fastball to the top rail since coming off the IL.

Breakdown of the Week

The Phillies may have fixed Andrew Painter, who looked like a broken pitcher when he was demoted to the minors in June with a 7.06 ERA. Painter, 23, suddenly looks like a different pitcher, much more like the top prospect Philadelphia has been waiting on for years. You can see the transformation here.

In three starts since returning from the minors, Painter is 1-0 with a 2.93 ERA. The batting average against him has declined from .316 before the demotion to .151 since. The slugging has dropped from .526 to .245.

What happened? The Phillies tweaked his mechanics — with a slightly lower arm slot, Painter is better at repeating his delivery — and trimmed and overhauled his arsenal. Formerly a six-pitch pitcher who mastered nothing, Painter has transformed mostly into a four-pitch pitcher who leans more into his sweeper and less into his slider and sinker.

The biggest change, however, is that he essentially junked his splitter and curveball in favor of a new pitch, the changeup. Look at the old and new versions of Painter:

Painter Pitch Arsenal

The changeup has been a difference-maker. In his first three starts with the pitch he threw 55 of them and did not give up a hit. In just three starts the pitch he didn’t have has become his best pitch. 

You can see here how his changeup has more movement than did his splitter:

Painter is creating more deception by better clustering his release points. Before the demotion, as seen in his release point graph of March 31, the curveball (light blue) and splitter (green) did not come from the same height as the four-seamer (red). Compare that to August 10, where the changeup (green) is near the four-seamer.

Overall, you see a tighter cluster of release points — and bit lower. The goal for any pitcher is to get those release points as close as possible, as you can see with Zack Wheeler, one of the masters of making every pitch look the same out of his hand.

TV on TV This Week

Thursday, Aug. 20, Washington Nationals at Texas Rangers, 8 PM (FS1).

Nationals slugger James Wood is an outlier in many ways. He is having an historic season, especially for a 23-year-old. He is on pace for 130 runs to accompany his 30+ home runs, joining only Mel Ott (1929), Joe DiMaggio (1937), Ted Williams (1939, 1941 and 1942), Joe DiMaggio (Alex Rodriguez (1996) and Albert Pujols (2003) to do so at such a young age.

Then there is his height:

Most Runs by Players 6-5 or Taller

*Projected

And there are also the swing and misses. Wood has the fourth most strikeouts through 350 games but nonetheless approaches the productivity of Aaron Judge.

Most Strikeouts, First 350 Games