The Milwaukee Brewers called Robert Gasser up to the big leagues and he made his MLB debut on Friday, May 10 against the St. Louis Cardinals. Gasser was the prized pitching prospect in the Josh Hader trade. This day likely would have come sooner had an elbow issue not kept him sidelined for the first few weeks of April.
Gasser starting on the hill for the Brewers marked the 10th different starting pitcher used by Milwaukee this season. He also became their fifth rookie to make their MLB debut. His performance Friday night ended up being a good one as he pitched six scoreless innings.
Here are three takeaways from Milwaukee Brewers LHP Robert Gasser’s dazzling MLB Debut.
Takeaway #1: Robert Gasser has a filthy sweeper.
Statcast read Robert Gasser’s most utilized pitch as a sweeper. He threw this pitch 36 out of 79 total pitches and he did not give up a hit when throwing it. Opposing St. Louis Cardinals batters whiffed on the sweeper 46% of the time and the pitch averaged 37 inches of vertical movement and 15 inches of horizontal movement.
Robert Gasser, Filthy 80mph Sweeper. 😷
Petition to change his name to Robert Sweeper. pic.twitter.com/g4Q5pq95Ia
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) May 11, 2024
Takeaway #2: St. Louis Cardinals batters had a difficult time generating hard contact against Robert Gasser.
In an era where advanced metrics such as exit velocity and hard hit percentage are valued it is very noteworthy that Robert Gasser did not give up a lot of hard contact. The average exit velocity against him during his MLB debut was just 79.5 MPH (MLB average 88.5). He did not give up a batted ball with an exit velocity over 100 MPH all night as the max exit velocity against him was 98 MPH.
Takeaway #3: Robert Gasser threw a lot of strikes, but there is one caveat.
In the box score Robert Gasser’s line will read 79 pitches thrown with 55 of them being strikes. That’s equivalent to throwing strikes 69.6% of the time. Impressive as that is he also managed to throw a first pitch strike 75% of the time during his MLB debut.
The caveat to all this is that of his 79 pitches thrown 51% of them were truly in the strike zone. Opposing batters chased pitches outside the strike zone an outstanding 36% of the time. It is highly unlikely that MLB batters continue to chase that much against him, so his ability to be in the strike zone in future starts will be worth keeping an eye on.
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