Would the real Huston Street please stand up.

Over the last couple of months, Huston Street has completely disappeared. He's been extremely inconsistent and many times horrendous. Since June 20th, he's been in 17 games with an ERA of 7.11 giving up 15 ER, 12BB, 14 K, and 26 Hits in only 19 IP. He has blown the lead (either blowing the save or losing the lead) 6 times since that time.

In the previous 29 appearances, he only gave up the lead twice, with giving up 11ER and 8BB, 35K, in 31.1 IP. He gave up 22Hits in these 29 appearances.

K/9 of 10.12 and a BB/9 of 2.32 before
k/9 of 6.63 and a BB/9 of 5.68 after

That's quite a difference in control.

What's causing it though? I personally believe he's injured or in a "pre-injury" period where the body isn't functioning properly but there aren't any symptoms. Looking at the PFX data only confirms what's I'm fearing.

To me I want to show the most damning pieces of evidence first. I want to look at the vertical movement over his season to see if there has been any drop off.






You can clearly see in all 3 graphs there is a general downward trend in the vertical movement of his pitches, especially his change-up and slider. This is a very bad thing. The pitches are basically coming in on a straight plane and there is a much less of an adjustment that the hitter needs to make. Eventually they'll start coming in like a batting practice pitch and of course it's going to leave like it too.



His pitches are also slowing down but not nearly as dramatically as the downward trend of the vertical movement. His fastball pitch is slowly decreasing which is not a good sign.

Next, I want to look at how many pitches he's throwing in each outing.

Ever since the middle of the season his pitch counts are basically trending upwards. He's less efficient, getting hit harder, and not being as effective as he should be. Going along with this you can see the general upward trend of the percentage of pitches that were thrown for balls. This means he's losing his control of his pitches, which is often a sign of injury.

Throw all of these together and to me it's troubling. I think there is something going on. It may be fatigue, but it may also not be fatigue. It could be an injury that we don't know something about. It could be a trunk injury, it could be a shoulder injury, or it may be an elbow injury.