The Philm Room: Using Tunnels Against a Hitter’s Approach

Here are two great examples of how pitchers use tunneling against a hitter’s approach.

If you’re familiar with baseball Twitter at all, you have probably seen Rob Freidman aka “PitchingNinja” upload these overlay videos.

That video can sum up the basic explanation of pitch tunneling. A pitcher throwing two pitches out of the same delivery, same arm slot, that look the same until they break. This is very effective because the hitter does not know what the pitch looks like in the milliseconds it takes to decide whether to swing or take.

On the other hand, tunneling inherently can also give the hitter a slight edge in making a proper guess. You have a 50/50 chance of being right and putting a good swing on the right pitch in a two-pitch tunnel.

Take Bryce Harper against Robert Suarez back in the 2022 NLCS for example. Harper took a nasty changeup and knew Suarez would try and sneak a fastball by him out of the same slot.

Sometimes a hitter will guess right, but the pitcher still carries the baseball. How can we use tunnels in a specific sequence to make an educated guess about when a hitter will or won’t swing?

Using a hitter’s patience against them

Every approach requires the hitter to give something up. If you want to make a lot of contact, you will sacrifice power and vice versa. If you want to work walks, you might take a lot of strikes in the process.

In this example, Aaron Nola used Pavin Smith’s patience against him by reading exactly what Smith was willing to give up. Nola missed a sinker off the plate away for ball one, but then quickly stole a low strike with a fastball to even the count 1-1.

Nola then missed a curveball over the middle of the plate, but Smith fouled it off. It became clear that Smith might not swing at a pitch on the outside part of the plate. J.T. Realmuto tried another curveball, but Nola missed it inside. That pitch is irrelevant to the sequence.

Since Smith has seen multiple pitches starting away, Realmuto calls a changeup to see if Smith would bite.

Nola and Realmuto had Smith right where they wanted him. He blatantly confirmed he was giving up the outside part of the plate. The next pitch looks like a direct tunnel off of the changeup right before and Smith was always going to have the same reaction.

Smith has a 19.9% chase rate, 91st percentile in the sport. He has a walk rate of over 20%. In other words, Smith is a very patient hitter but sacrifices parts of the plate to work that approach.

Nola’s command allowed him to execute this sequence properly and Smith had no chance.

Using a hitter’s aggressiveness against them

Bryce Harper’s approach deserves a breakdown (maybe in the future…). To quickly sum things up, he swings at the first pitch over half the time and chases a lot but works walks and avoids strikeouts because he gets more patient as the count goes on. It’s an oversimplified way of explaining a calculated and complicated approach.

Here, Brandon Pfaadt challenges Harper’s aggressiveness by throwing a changeup down and away on the first pitch.

Pfaadt then tries a fastball high, but Harper had to back off. Since the pitch missed too far out of the strike zone and Harper is fishing for something to hit, Pfaadt goes back to the starting point and executes another beautiful down and away changeup.

What Pfaadt knows about Harper is that as the count goes on, Harper gets more patient. After chasing two changeups, Harper might eliminate pitches starting away. Diamondbacks catcher Gabby Moreno recognizes this and calls for a fastball away because Harper will take it.

Tunneling is great for flipping over what a hitter already knows about the sequence and what he wants to avoid going forward. In both sequences, the pitcher and catcher use the hitter’s approach against them and get a backwards strikeout as a result.