Baseball saw a new man in 2022. Kyle Wright had been sent to AAA Gwinnett in April and was told he would stay there so he could develop the consistency needed to succeed in the bigs. Mike Maroth, the AAA pitching coach also deserves a lot of the credit for getting Wright to buy into the program and keeping him on the straight and narrow. The 2021 results? 9:3 k/bb with 0.6 HR/9 and 51% ground balls.

While this is a good AAA line, why was it needed you ask. Well, in 71 MLB innings prior to 2022, Wright went 9/6 on the k/bb, 1.57 HR/9 and a 43% GB rate: in short, other than 1 great relief appearance in the playoffs, he was unplayable. Fortunately for the team, the 2021 work carried over. Wright looked good in spring and continued dominating into early May. A couple of bad starts had us wondering again but he soon righted the ship and turned in a good #2 starter’s season; 180 innings, 3.19 ERA (3.89 xERA), 9/3 k/bb, 55.6% GB good for 2.9 fWAR 3.6 bWar and a 10th place finish in the Cy Young voting.

The changes that Kyle made to achieve this are interesting in themselves.

He moved to the extreme left of the rubber to get a better angle to pitch righties inside. This also removed many of the center/center fastballs he used to groove while trying to pitch righties inside.

He threw fewer 4 seam fastballs but used his new angle to put them in better places.

He tightened up his 2 seam fastball so that it became a plus pitch, mainly because it used to be straight to lefties but now has movement away from them. Wish I had a picture!

He threw this pitch way more in 2022 as well.
Curves and changeups now represent 50% of his pitches! They happen to be his most effective offerings so this makes sense.

Pitch Info Pitch Type

SeasonTeamLevelFA%FC%FS%SI%CH%SL%CU%CS%KN%SB%XX%
2018ATLMLB51.6%6.3%19.5%22.7%
2019ATLMLB42.8%11.0%7.6%25.6%11.8%
2020ATLMLB15.7%32.6%14.3%24.1%13.1%
2021ATLMLB35.3%15.8%7.5%27.1%14.3%
2022ATLMLB19.4%24.0%15.4%7.2%34.1%
Total– – –MLB22.5%23.2%13.9%12.6%27.6%

Making Leo Mazzone proud he became much better at hitting the low and away corner. This resulted in 6.8% barrels against (good) and a 4 degree average launch angle (great).

The questions that remain.
Can he continue to be this good? Is there reason to think he can be even better? In my opinion the likelihood is that Kyle will continue to improve in 2023 but will likely see somewhat worse results anyhow. He got a bit lucky with his stranded base runners last year and had a likely unsustainably low percentage of his fly balls go for homers. Even if he does everything else better the reversion to the mean will drive up the ERA. On the other hand, I see no reason he cannot throw 200+ innings as Snitger yanked him early in 2022 in a lot of games.

We have Wright through the 2027 season so I do not anticipate a contract extension but you never know with AA. My prediction for 2023 is a 15-8 record, 201 innings with a 3.48 ERA. That would do.