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Great article from The Athletic on Dobnak's addition of a slider.
Randy Dobnak started throwing his slider differently three weeks ago.
It began with an idea from the Twins research and development department, as their analysis showed that Dobnak’s trusty sinker paired very well with his slider, if only he could figure out a way to add more break to the breaking ball.
Always willing to try something new, the 26-year-old right-hander altered his mechanics so that he threw the slider with his hand facing up rather than down — supinated instead of pronated.
First, he tinkered with it during a bullpen session on March 4 and noticed an immediate change in how the pitch moved. The next day Dobnak threw his new, supinated slider in a game versus the Braves. He got a bunch of swinging strikes in 2 1/3 scoreless innings. He was a believer.
Dobnak worked more on the pitch and then took it into another game, versus the Rays on March 13. Three scoreless, one-hit innings and six strikeouts later, it was obvious he had something. So obvious, in fact, that Dobnak was asked in the postgame media session about his newfound bat-missing ability.
“I’m actually a strikeout guy,” Dobnak joked. “New year, new me.”
But he’d looked so good against Tampa Bay, and his slider generated so many swinging strikes, that even his usual self-deprecating humor couldn’t mask his excitement about the new-look pitch.
“I’ve been working on getting more break on my slider,” Dobnak said. “I guess it was working pretty well. I’m pretty happy with the results.”
Pressed on what he meant by “working on,” Dobnak revealed the timeline.
“Just something we kind of worked on the day before my last start,” Dobnak said. “Like, ‘Hey, try this. Play catch with it, throw it in a bullpen, take it right into a game.’ My last outing was last Friday, so I guess it started last Thursday. So what’s that? Nine days? Eight or nine.”
At that point, he must have noticed some shocked looks from media members on the Zoom session, because Dobnak went back into self-deprecation mode.
“Did you like it?”
Six days later, he put the new slider to the test again in another matchup with the Braves. No earned runs and just one hit allowed in 3 1/3 innings. And five more strikeouts, bringing Dobnak’s total to 13 strikeouts in nine innings since the word “supination” entered his life.
“He’s looked great,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “His spring training has gone phenomenally. Obviously. Visually, it’s impressive. The numbers, if you were to look at them, they’re impressive, but how he’s throwing the ball, how he’s going about his business, is typical Randy Dobnak form. Couldn’t be more impressed with what he’s been able to come in and do.”
“I mean, don’t they say strikeouts are sexy?” Dobnak said.
Dobnak has no plans to abandon his bread-and-butter pitch, a heavy, groundball-inducing sinker that he rode to the majors as an undrafted free agent out of Division-II Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia.
“That pitch is a weapon to me,” Dobnak said. “I just try to throw it down the middle, and more times than not, they’ll swing over the top of it a little bit and I’ll get a groundball.”
Last year, Dobnak threw his sinker 44 percent of the time on the way to a 6-4 record and 4.05 ERA in 10 starts, providing a much-needed boost to an injury-wrecked Twins rotation. He led all of baseball with a 62.5 percent groundball rate, allowing just three homers in 46 2/3 innings, but Dobnak managed only 5.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
Throwing strikes, and keeping the ball on the ground and in the ballpark, is a straightforward, proven recipe for competency. But it’s also a pitch-to-contact approach that limits upside, because it relies so much on the defense turning balls in play into outs and leaves a pitcher vulnerable to variance, randomness and just plain bad luck.
That’s where the new slider comes in.
“He’s playing with and fiddling with that slider, and finding ways to make it do some slightly different things,” Baldelli said. “But the way he’s spinning it right now is obviously really, really nice.”
Dobnak and the Twins envision it as a put-away weapon, particularly against right-handed hitters, taking advantage of the similar way the sinker and slider appear to come out of his hand or “tunnel” from a batter’s perspective.
“I’m just kind of re-finding it and perfecting it to dive out of the zone rather than staying in the zone a little longer,” Dobnak said. “We’ll get more swings and misses rather than the late foul balls that run up the pitch count.”
He’ll also utilize the slider a little against left-handed hitters as a “backdoor” look, but the basic plan is for Dobnak to complement his worm-killing sinker with sliders versus righties and change-ups versus lefties.
“He’s continually looking at speed differentials, making his off-speed pitches do different things,” Baldelli said. “He does have the ability to manipulate the ball very well. He has a lot of different tricks. He can do different things with the ball. And when you have guys like that, who have tremendous feel, the sky is the limit.”
No matter how good his new slider looks, or how many strikeouts he racks up in spring games, Dobnak is almost surely destined for either the Twins’ bullpen or the Triple-A rotation to begin the season.
On the Twins’ rotation depth chart, he’s behind five veteran starters, each with guaranteed contracts. But that’s nothing new for Dobnak. This time last spring he was no higher than seventh on the same depth chart, but then several of the veterans ahead of him got hurt and Dobnak found himself starting the second game of the season. He ended up making the third-most starts on the team.
“Dobber will be there and will be ready to go when his name is called,” Baldelli said. “He’s obviously been a guy that’s established himself as a quality member of our pitching staff. One way or another, wherever he slots in, however he gets his innings, I’m pretty sure we’re going to find a way to get him involved and to let him pitch us to some wins.”
Dobnak has minor-league options remaining, so he can be sent back and forth from the majors to the minors all season if that’s how the Twins decide to use him. However, with a 3.15 ERA in 75 career innings as a big leaguer, it’s hard to make the case that Dobnak isn’t deserving of an Opening Day job, and even harder to make the argument that he has anything left to prove in the minors.
But such is life as a sixth starter, and as a 26-year-old former non-prospect no one ever expected to be in this position.
“He’s really willing to do pretty much anything and doesn’t complain,” Baldelli said. “Dobnak just continues to move forward no matter what he’s doing. That is really helpful and allows us to spot him in there in different ways. He could help us out of the bullpen, he could help us in two-to-three-inning stints, he could help us on days where we may involve two starters.”
Quotes like that from the manager certainly make it sound likely that Dobnak will be on the Opening Day roster, perhaps in a long-relief role to provide bulk innings as the entire pitching staff tries to reacquaint itself with the workload of a six-month, 162-game grind.
Dobnak is preparing for either role, starting or relieving.
“Obviously, if I get to a two-strike count, the goal is to put them away with a swing and miss,” Dobnak said. “But as far as going for the swings and misses early on, I’m still trying to get early contact, especially if I’m starting, so I can get deeper into the games. But if the opportunity ever comes up to strike a guy out, obviously, I’m going to try and strike him out.”
But seriously, is he a strikeout pitcher now?
“It’s kind of sad you bring it up,” Dobnak said, “because I was trying to do it last year, too.”
New year, new slider for Twins’ Randy Dobnak — ‘Don’t they say strikeouts are sexy?’
Randy Dobnak started throwing his slider differently three weeks ago.
It began with an idea from the Twins research and development department, as their analysis showed that Dobnak’s trusty sinker paired very well with his slider, if only he could figure out a way to add more break to the breaking ball.
Always willing to try something new, the 26-year-old right-hander altered his mechanics so that he threw the slider with his hand facing up rather than down — supinated instead of pronated.
First, he tinkered with it during a bullpen session on March 4 and noticed an immediate change in how the pitch moved. The next day Dobnak threw his new, supinated slider in a game versus the Braves. He got a bunch of swinging strikes in 2 1/3 scoreless innings. He was a believer.
Dobnak worked more on the pitch and then took it into another game, versus the Rays on March 13. Three scoreless, one-hit innings and six strikeouts later, it was obvious he had something. So obvious, in fact, that Dobnak was asked in the postgame media session about his newfound bat-missing ability.
“I’m actually a strikeout guy,” Dobnak joked. “New year, new me.”
But he’d looked so good against Tampa Bay, and his slider generated so many swinging strikes, that even his usual self-deprecating humor couldn’t mask his excitement about the new-look pitch.
“I’ve been working on getting more break on my slider,” Dobnak said. “I guess it was working pretty well. I’m pretty happy with the results.”
Pressed on what he meant by “working on,” Dobnak revealed the timeline.
“Just something we kind of worked on the day before my last start,” Dobnak said. “Like, ‘Hey, try this. Play catch with it, throw it in a bullpen, take it right into a game.’ My last outing was last Friday, so I guess it started last Thursday. So what’s that? Nine days? Eight or nine.”
At that point, he must have noticed some shocked looks from media members on the Zoom session, because Dobnak went back into self-deprecation mode.
“Did you like it?”
Six days later, he put the new slider to the test again in another matchup with the Braves. No earned runs and just one hit allowed in 3 1/3 innings. And five more strikeouts, bringing Dobnak’s total to 13 strikeouts in nine innings since the word “supination” entered his life.
“He’s looked great,” manager Rocco Baldelli said. “His spring training has gone phenomenally. Obviously. Visually, it’s impressive. The numbers, if you were to look at them, they’re impressive, but how he’s throwing the ball, how he’s going about his business, is typical Randy Dobnak form. Couldn’t be more impressed with what he’s been able to come in and do.”
“I mean, don’t they say strikeouts are sexy?” Dobnak said.
Dobnak has no plans to abandon his bread-and-butter pitch, a heavy, groundball-inducing sinker that he rode to the majors as an undrafted free agent out of Division-II Alderson Broaddus University in West Virginia.
“That pitch is a weapon to me,” Dobnak said. “I just try to throw it down the middle, and more times than not, they’ll swing over the top of it a little bit and I’ll get a groundball.”
Last year, Dobnak threw his sinker 44 percent of the time on the way to a 6-4 record and 4.05 ERA in 10 starts, providing a much-needed boost to an injury-wrecked Twins rotation. He led all of baseball with a 62.5 percent groundball rate, allowing just three homers in 46 2/3 innings, but Dobnak managed only 5.2 strikeouts per nine innings.
Throwing strikes, and keeping the ball on the ground and in the ballpark, is a straightforward, proven recipe for competency. But it’s also a pitch-to-contact approach that limits upside, because it relies so much on the defense turning balls in play into outs and leaves a pitcher vulnerable to variance, randomness and just plain bad luck.
That’s where the new slider comes in.
“He’s playing with and fiddling with that slider, and finding ways to make it do some slightly different things,” Baldelli said. “But the way he’s spinning it right now is obviously really, really nice.”
Dobnak and the Twins envision it as a put-away weapon, particularly against right-handed hitters, taking advantage of the similar way the sinker and slider appear to come out of his hand or “tunnel” from a batter’s perspective.
“I’m just kind of re-finding it and perfecting it to dive out of the zone rather than staying in the zone a little longer,” Dobnak said. “We’ll get more swings and misses rather than the late foul balls that run up the pitch count.”
He’ll also utilize the slider a little against left-handed hitters as a “backdoor” look, but the basic plan is for Dobnak to complement his worm-killing sinker with sliders versus righties and change-ups versus lefties.
“He’s continually looking at speed differentials, making his off-speed pitches do different things,” Baldelli said. “He does have the ability to manipulate the ball very well. He has a lot of different tricks. He can do different things with the ball. And when you have guys like that, who have tremendous feel, the sky is the limit.”
No matter how good his new slider looks, or how many strikeouts he racks up in spring games, Dobnak is almost surely destined for either the Twins’ bullpen or the Triple-A rotation to begin the season.
On the Twins’ rotation depth chart, he’s behind five veteran starters, each with guaranteed contracts. But that’s nothing new for Dobnak. This time last spring he was no higher than seventh on the same depth chart, but then several of the veterans ahead of him got hurt and Dobnak found himself starting the second game of the season. He ended up making the third-most starts on the team.
“Dobber will be there and will be ready to go when his name is called,” Baldelli said. “He’s obviously been a guy that’s established himself as a quality member of our pitching staff. One way or another, wherever he slots in, however he gets his innings, I’m pretty sure we’re going to find a way to get him involved and to let him pitch us to some wins.”
Dobnak has minor-league options remaining, so he can be sent back and forth from the majors to the minors all season if that’s how the Twins decide to use him. However, with a 3.15 ERA in 75 career innings as a big leaguer, it’s hard to make the case that Dobnak isn’t deserving of an Opening Day job, and even harder to make the argument that he has anything left to prove in the minors.
But such is life as a sixth starter, and as a 26-year-old former non-prospect no one ever expected to be in this position.
“He’s really willing to do pretty much anything and doesn’t complain,” Baldelli said. “Dobnak just continues to move forward no matter what he’s doing. That is really helpful and allows us to spot him in there in different ways. He could help us out of the bullpen, he could help us in two-to-three-inning stints, he could help us on days where we may involve two starters.”
Quotes like that from the manager certainly make it sound likely that Dobnak will be on the Opening Day roster, perhaps in a long-relief role to provide bulk innings as the entire pitching staff tries to reacquaint itself with the workload of a six-month, 162-game grind.
Dobnak is preparing for either role, starting or relieving.
“Obviously, if I get to a two-strike count, the goal is to put them away with a swing and miss,” Dobnak said. “But as far as going for the swings and misses early on, I’m still trying to get early contact, especially if I’m starting, so I can get deeper into the games. But if the opportunity ever comes up to strike a guy out, obviously, I’m going to try and strike him out.”
But seriously, is he a strikeout pitcher now?
“It’s kind of sad you bring it up,” Dobnak said, “because I was trying to do it last year, too.”
