One of the great enigmas this season has been James Paxton. Big Maple came over from Seattle with a lot of promise, but his season so far has left a lot to be desired. In 21 starts this year, he has pitched to a 4.37 FIP and a 3.95 SIERA. Neither of those are bad per se, but we all expected a little more from Paxton.
To understand what has been going on for Paxton this year, we can sum it up in basically one chart which shows his pitch usage by month:
All the way on the left is data from the end of his excellent 2018 campaign, and the months on the right show 2019.