Milwaukee Brewers: 3 Bright spots from tough 2020 season

Devin Williams

If you want to talk about hitters leaving the batters’ box shaking their heads, look no further than Devin Williams. In contrast to Burnes, who has a plethora of pitches to choose from, the Milwaukee Brewers’ rookie keeps it simple with a fastball-changeup combination. It’s really a changeup-fastball combination, though, as he throws the changeup 53.7 percent of the time and the fastball 40.7 percent.

As good as Burnes’ slider and cutter are, Williams’ changeup is even better. Opposing hitters are whiffing on 61 percent of their swings and hitting .018 against it. For reference, Ben Sheets, a notoriously awful hitting pitcher, had a career batting average of .076. That means when Williams throws this pitch, hitters are four times worse than Ben Sheets.

Ron Herbel, who SB Nation named the worst hitting pitcher of all time in 2011, had a career average of .029! However, even these comparisons don’t feel like I’m doing it justice, so I’ll just show you.

You might also notice in that clip that he threw a 97 mile per hour fastball. His average velocity for the season is 96.5, and it’s a pretty good compliment to his nasty changeup. Hitters are batting .190 off of it, so you could say it’s by far his worst pitch, but even that is far below league average.

Looking at Williams’ baseball savant page is absolutely wild because he’s in the top 1 percent in eight of their Statcast categories, including opponent exit velocity, expected batted average, slugging percentage, and strikeout percentage. His strikeout percentage, by the way, is 54 percent. Yes, he’s striking out over half the batters he faces and is striking out 18.4 hitters per nine innings, or over two per inning.

Williams is a legitimate candidate for both Rookie of the Year and Reliever of the Year. His biggest competition for the rookie award is starting pitcher Sixto Sanchez of the Miami Marlins, and his competitors in the reliever category are A.J. Minter, Adam Kolarek, and some guy named Jeremy Jeffress. Williams could very well take home both awards and be a league-wide recognized name if he continues his dominance in these last few games.

Ok, one more changeup video.

Do you think that Corbin Burnes has a chance at the Cy Young or Williams at either award he’s vying for? Let me know that or any Milwaukee Brewers thoughts that you have in the comments below or on Twitter @DairylandXpress.