An Encouraging Note About Framber Valdez’s Opening Day Start

Troy Taormina-USA TODAY SportsEarlier this week, I wrote about Framber Valdez’s sinker and the changes to its movement profile in the last couple of seasons. In short, we saw less vertical movement as his velocity increased. His sinker became more two-seam-like with its horizontal movement profile instead of the sinker that helped make the left-hander one of the better starters in baseball. This change to this movement profile was crucial to some of Valdez’s struggles in 2023, especially as his groundball rate suffered.

Entering Opening Day, I was curious about how Valdez’s sinker would move. Last season, his sinker averaged around 20.5 inches of downward movement, a stark decline from 27.1…