WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Washington Nationals right-hander Josiah Gray has always liked to tinker, going back to his days as a player at Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. The challenge was always finding ways to get better every day. He would implement new approaches. He would watch videos online about what to add or subtract from his game.
Now, the 26-year-old has more resources at his disposal.
“I love to tinker,” Gray said. “I love to figure out what I can do with the baseball, just because of how the game is and how the seams of the baseball work.”
Baseball is a game of adjustments. Pitchers tweak their arsenals from season to season. They use in-season bullpen sessions to fine-tune their pitches. They alter their game plans. Anything to get an edge.
Gray is no different. He added a cutter, a sinker and a sweeper to his repertoire last season. He dropped his four-seam fastball usage significantly from the previous year. He used two different windups to maintain a proper direction to the plate.
Gray is coming off an all-star season in which he made significant strides. So now the question becomes: at what point does the tinkering stop? At what point will Gray find the right mix of pitches? And, if he keeps tinkering, will Gray ever find who he is as a pitcher?
“You have to look at it in the big picture,” Nationals pitching strategist Sean Doolittle said. “[Just because] you feel a little off on a given day doesn’t necessarily mean you go into the video room and look to start tinkering with things. It’s hard to do as a player because you’re constantly trying to get better, constantly trying to make adjustments to stay ahead of the league.”
Gray was exhausted after a long 2023 season. He spent most of October watching postseason baseball. Toward the end of the month, he felt the urge to get back to work. He had a strong first half, pitching to a 3.41 ERA. But his 1.435 WHIP signaled that a regression could come. He had a 4.76 ERA in the second half of the season. He cut down his home runs per nine innings nearly in half from 2022 to 2023, but still walked more hitters per nine innings. So some more tinkering was necessary.
Gray also changed his delivery in the final month of the 2023 season, starting it as if he was working out of the stretch. He plans to stick with that approach this season, saying it gives him more stability. But he likes certain aspects of his old delivery, so he could revert to the technique.
Gray spent most of the offseason at a sports performance facility in Florida. Gray tweaked his sinker, hoping to generate more horizontal movement than vertical. He had a lot of success with his sinker in his final start of 2023, and wanted to build off it. He threw the sinker primarily to righties last season, but wants to throw it more to lefties this year.
“I kept on tinkering with it and I think it’s in a good spot where I’ll roll it out early in games here and see what we’ve got,” said Gray, who is expected to make his first start of spring training Monday.
Pitching coach Jim Hickey wanted Gray to throw his change-up more. Gray altered his grip this offseason, widening his hands for more of a split change-up grip versus a traditional change-up. He wants to release it off his fingers differently. The hope is that the change-up will have more drop.
Gray said feedback from Nationals hitters in West Palm Beach will help determine whether the changes have helped. He wants to have multiple pitches at his disposal, but also wants them to fit in his arsenal. Having an improved change-up or sinker doesn’t mean he has to significantly raise the usage of either pitch if it doesn’t fit into his game plan.
Nationals Manager Dave Martinez wants Gray, who can deploy seven pitches, to develop three or four he can throw really well. One could argue that in order for Gray’s secondary pitches to be more effective, he needs to establish his four-seam fastball early in games. Gray threw his fastball 38.9 percent of the time in 2022, though it was often ineffective. Last season, that percentage dropped to 17 percent.
“I’m hoping that he understands coming in this spring who he is and what makes him really good,” Martinez said. “And I’m hoping that, by talking to him, that a lot of the tinkering is going to go away this year.”
