Darius Vines Toys With the Rockies

In his major league debut, Vines shows why the Braves were high on him

Darius Vines has been in the shadows, preparing himself for whatever challenge may be in his way. He waited as other arms received their shot to impress the Braves and played their way back to the minors. Vines stayed focused, knowing his chance was going to come. On Wednesday evening, in the unforgiving mile-high conditions, Vines showed that he might just be ready to stick around.

Over six innings, Vines allowed just two runs over four hits to the Colorado Rockies in Denver. He became the first visiting pitcher to do that in their major league debut. The only other pitcher who accomplished the feat was Kyle Freeland, the guy who took the loss in the same game Vines started. Over 82 pitches, Vines struck out five Rockies, walked one, and hit another batter. That meant of the 25 Rockies he faced, just seven reached base.

And yes, it's worth mentioning that these Rockies are, simply put, very bad. Even offensively, something we assume the Rockies will be good at due to where they play, these particular Rockies are just not good. They're 12th in runs scored, 12th in home runs, and dead last in the National League in OBP. The 2023 Rockies are an ugly mismatch of young players trying to find their way and average veterans.

Nevertheless, the multi-year park factor for Coors Field is still 115 for pitchers. Anything over 100 favors hitters so that number really favors the guys holding bats.

Yet, Vines prevailed. Let's dive a little deeper into how he was so successful and whether or not that success has a good chance of continuing.

Pitches

Vines threw mainly a three-pitch assortment Wednesday evening, throwing 29 cutters, 24 four-seamers, and 23 changeups. He also sprinkled in six sliders. Not living off velocity, his four-seamer only averaged 90.0 mph with his highest velocity coming in the first inning at 92.1 mph. Interestingly, his second-highest velocity came on his final pitch, clocked in at 91.7 mph. So, Spencer Strider, Vines is not.

His four-seamer averaged 19.7 inches of vertical drop. To put that into perspective, that would be the seventh-highest average in baseball behind, funny enough, Kyle Freeland. It's slightly more break than Charlie Morton averages. In terms of horizontal break, Vines averaged just 3.7 inches. That's somewhat less than the 65th-best total among qualified pitchers. That's held by his teammate Bryce Elder. So, effectively, in his one start, Vines showed a four-seamer with the same drop as Morton and the same break as Elder. Does that make it a dominating pitch? Certainly not, but it does give us a glimpse into how Vines was so successful with it despite not having great velocity.

And it's worth mentioning that, along with any pitch, the conditions of playing in Denver hurt his fastball's spin and movement. We'll have to see if the numbers trend toward a more positive result in a bit more normal conditions.

While Vines' didn't get too many whiffs on his fastball, of the six plate appearances that ended with the four-seamer, two were strikeouts. The xwOBA was .234. Not too shabby. It also highlights that Vines kept the four-seamer from getting pummelled in the middle of the zone.

Vines' primary choice was his cutter. He averaged 86.1 mph on it, 28 inches of vertical drop, and 1.7 inches of horizontal break. The vertical drop average would have him tied with Aaron Civale for 21st while the horizontal break would be good for 24th between Marcus Stroman and Jesus Luzardo. In fact, his cutter was very similar to Stroman's in terms of movement, which has been one of the Cubs' righty's best offerings this year.

The Rockies didn't have much trouble putting the cutter in play, but that was for the benefit of Mr. Vines. Ten plate appearances ended on a cutter with just two Rockies getting a hit and the average xWOBA being .256. It was a nasty pitch that led to a bunch of weak contact.

Vines also utilized an 81.3 mph changeup. He averaged 34 inches of vertical drop and 8.8 inches of break. When comparing it to his fastball, he absolutely died at the plate. To compare it to Elder again, the other Braves righty averages the same amount of vertical drop as Vines. It's an elite number. The horizontal movement is a bit on the substandard side.

But in terms of results, the changeup was not quite as effective as the cutter and four-seamer, but don't take that to mean the pitch was hit hard. Vines induced his most whiffs, the rest of his strikeouts, and only allowed a .313 xwOBA off his changeup.

I will skip the slider since we only have six pitches to work with.

Outlook

The great news is that Vines' performance should provide optimism about his success moving forward. But let's compare his solid first major league start to his minor league run.

One thing that might stand out is that Vines gave up eleven flyballs to just seven groundballs. But four of those flyballs were classified as line drives so that leaves Vines with a 1-to-1 groundball-to-flyball ratio. That's pretty close to the pitcher he was in the minors. If anything, Vines is more likely to get more groundballs than flyballs, but if he's hitting that even distribution between the two, that's a good sign as he needs to get his fair share of weak groundballs to be successful.

Strikeout-wise, five in six innings is perfectly reasonable for Vines. Yes, he doesn't have great velocity, but he still struck out 366 in 327.1 minor-league innings. It should be expected that his strikeout numbers will show some regression versus his minor-league numbers. After all, the similar Bryce Elder carried a 9.3 K/9 in the minors and has a 6.8 K/9 in the majors.

If there's one stat that makes you wonder if Vines was a little lucky, it's the lack of dingers. Vines has surrendered a decent amount of homers during his minor league run. He averaged over one per nine innings throughout. So, maybe he was fortunate that these Rockies are shockingly powerless.

In the end, it was just one start. That's clear. There's a reason why Vines was the tenth-rated prospect in a system that isn't one of the better systems in baseball.

But Vines also showed everyone why the Braves decided to put him on the 40-man roster last winter and refused to give him away for nothing even when the 40-man roster occasionally needed some massaging. He has some real potential to be a contributor at the major league level.