Can Pitchers Succeed With A Command-Over-Stuff Approach In Modern Day MLB?

Image credit: (Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

Don’t you love watching a pitcher paint the corners of the strike zone?

Below, we’ll be taking a look at a very successful big league starting pitcher who is a master with his brush strokes. Thanks to impressive command, his pitch plots are things of beauty.

As a reminder, control for a pitcher refers to the ability to simply throw strikes. Command, however, is the pitcher’s ability to precisely locate a pitch in a specific location, such as up/down in the zone or on the corner. It’s an important distinction.

So, let’s take a look at some strike zone art provided by this mystery pitcher and see if you can guess who it is.

Some Pretty Pitch Plots

We’ll begin with his changeup pitch plot according to Baseball Savant. This is a Picasso. He throws his changeup most at the very bottom corner of the zone. He never misses in the middle of the zone. Time after time, he finds that corner:

And here’s his cutter. He wants this to be a weak-contact pitch. Again, I don’t know how a pitcher could command this pitch more consistently just off of the edge of the strike zone:

This righthander relies heavily on his knuckle curve, and his ability to locate it is precise. Many pitchers struggle to command a knuckle curve, but not this guy. It’s a pitch he can land in the bottom of the zone for a strike or below the zone for chases/weak contact:

And here’s how he throws it when he’s ahead in the count:

And here’s how he uses it when he’s behind in the count. It’s his best pitch, and one he can command to steal a strike or throw just below the zone to get an aggressive hitter to offer at it in a near un-driveable location:

We haven’t talked about his fastballs yet, but he has both a four-seamer and sinker.

With his four-seamer, he likes to run it away from lefthanded hitters (that red dot on the edge of the zone) and he likes to elevate with righthanded hitters to the very top of the zone. If there are some complaints here, you can see a little less command with this pitch, as he does have more blue all through the zone.

But again, the heat maps of where he locates it the most are right on the edges of the zone:

And here’s his sinker. He uses this pitch very differently against lefties and righties. Against lefthander hitters, he wants to come up and in. He does that well, while mixing in a sinker down and away on the very edge of the zone to keep them honest. He almost never ends up in the heart of the plate:

And against righthanded hitters, it’s a pitch he keeps down in the zone, working in and out, but almost always in the bottom third of the strike zone:

And The Mystery Pitcher Is…

So, here we have a veteran righthander who hits his spots time after time. He paints on the corners and almost never finds the heart of the plate. From a command perspective, this is what you want to see.

His results, however, are a perfect example of how command needs to be matched with stuff, as these are the 2025 pitch plots belong to none other than Phillies righthander Aaron Nola.

Nola, 31 years old and a former all-star, currently has a 6.16 ERA this year. He has a 5.04 FIP. His expected ERA is 4.96. Nola has been a well below-average starting pitcher this year, and it’s hard to say he’s been unlucky.

Command Without Stuff

So what’s wrong? Command without stuff is just a way to run up your pitch count. If you can’t miss bats, modern hitters are just too good. They will make you pay if you can’t get outs in the strike zone.

Nola’s average four-seam fastball velocity is 91.4 mph this year, which is down 1.1 mph from a year ago. His sinker averages 90.3, down 1.2 mph from last year’s 91.5 mph. Every single pitch he throws is down roughly 1-2 mph from where it was last year.

Even at his peak, Nola always thrived with, at-best, average velocity. In 2022 when he dominated, he did so with a 92.8 mph four-seamer and a 92.1 mph sinker. Nola has long been able to succeed with fringe-average stuff and exceptional pitchability.

But his struggles this year show what can happen when a pitcher used to operating with fine margins loses a tick of stuff.

Nola remains a well above-average strike thrower, as is 66% strike rate in 2025 is above the league average of 63.7%. And his command is well above-average, as the pitch plots demonstrate.

But the swings and misses are not there now. Nola has generally gotten a 20-24% whiff rate on his four-seam fastball. This year, it’s 14.2%. Batters are hitting .279/.326/.860 against his four-seamer. They are hitting .312/.450/.562 against his cutter.

On Wednesday, Nola gave up 12 hits and nine runs in 3.2 innings against the Cardinals. He gave up three home runs in 24 batters faced.

Here are the pitch locations for all the hits he gave up, per Synergy Sports tracking:

Nola can still avoid the middle of the zone. He rarely misses his spot. But he topped out at 93.0 mph with his hardest pitch. He threw 26 pitches 91-93 mph and 23 pitches softer than 80 mph.

Here are all the swings and misses he got in that game:

Of the six true swings and misses (not counting foul balls), five came out of the strike zone. Nola does not have the stuff to generate swings and misses inside the strike zone with his fastball. Of his 105 true swings and misses this year, only 28 have been in the strike zone. Nola is trying to survive when he’s ahead in the count, and if he’s behind or even, he’s getting rocked. When batters are ahead in the count, they hit .310/.500/.548 against him. In even counts, they are hitting .321/.329/.654.

“Command without stuff is batting practice” Spencer Strider said in an interview with Rob Friedman. Nola is currently an example of that in practice.

It’s hard to say that Nola can get much better in pitch location or even pitch selection. If he’s going to turn this around, it almost assuredly will be because he figures out how to throw harder.

Command is a key part of a successful big league pitcher, but even the best command from the savviest of starters has to be backed by stuff. And if you can only have one of the two, stuff without command gives you a chance.

As Nola is showing, command without stuff is a nearly impossible puzzle for even the best pitchers to solve.