Uh-oh, Camilo Doval

Not the season anyone wanted from him

Now that the Giants have completed their annual tradition of embarrassing themselves, their fans, and the National League in the All-Star Game, we can turn our attention back to the regular season. And in the Giants’ regular season, there is reason to hope, and reason to worry.

We can hope because the offense has been a bit above average, and the rotation, beleaguered as it’s been, will soon get reinforcements from Alex Cobb and Robbie Ray. The extra innings the team will get from them should take some pressure off of the bullpen, allowing them to get more rest and therefore be more effective when they come into a game. Add in a healthy and effective Blake Snell, and you’ve got a rotation that could scare the whole league. Yes, if things go the way they should, everything will fall into place and the team will be ready to go on a run.

We can worry, though, because there have been a lot of underperformers. We can talk about Jorge Soler being just barely better than average offensively — you need more when you’re talking about your highly paid DH — or the awful years Wilmer Flores and Thairo Estrada have had at the plate — come on, Thairo, a .252 OBP? That won’t do at all — but they’re not the most frustrating players on the team. No, that title has to belong to the guys most responsible for pulling defeat from the jaws of victory. That title goes to the closer. That title goes to Camilo Doval.

So why the hell has he gotten so much worse this year, anyway?

Last year, Doval was himself an All-Star, a lockdown closer who inspired equal parts “He sure throws fast!” and “Why won’t this guy show an emotion on the mound?” This year, that’s become “He sure is hittable” and “Is it normal to give up this much hard contact?” In 2024, Camilo Doval’s ERA has gone up from 2.93 to 4.38, and he no longer exudes unhittable closerness.

So what’s different? To put it bluntly, Doval is doing just about everything worse than he did last year. He’s striking out fewer batters, and walking way more. He’s allowing more homers than he did in 2023, and allowing a higher opponent’s batting average, and giving up more hard contact. In short, he’s just hittable in a way that he never has been before.

But why? Certainly the high walk rate — 14%, by far the highest of Doval’s major league career — doesn’t help, and neither does the decrese in his strikeout rate, to 28.7%, down from 31% last year. But it’s the .347 BABIP that really jumps out at you, a strikingly high number. But in a way, that’s good, right? A high BABIP indicates bad luck more than bad skill, and so you can expect Doval to turn the corner without having to change too much.

Except…not exactly. Usually, luck would be a major factor, but in Doval’s case, he’s giving up much harder contact than he ever has before. His average exit velocity is 90.4 MPH, a 1.5 MPH increase from last year and a dramatic 4.5 MPH increase from his 2022 season. He’s allowing hard hit balls 47% of the time — that’s in the bottom 5% of the league — and giving up barrels on 9.2% of batted balls, almost twice as many as he allowed in 2023. When you put all that together, you can see how a dramatically higher BABIP might be a result of bad process instead of bad luck.

But let’s dig deeper. What exactly is Doval throwing that’s so hittable? He only has three pitches: a cutter, a slider, and a sinker. The sinker has never graded out particularly well, but the cutter was a good pitch for Doval last year, and he’s built his career on that slider. All three have lost effectiveness this year. It’s not velocity: all three pitches are coming in at basically the exact same speed they did in 2023.

Doval has lost movement on the cutter and slider, though, with the total movement on each pitch decreasing by multiple inches. Pitches that don’t move as much don’t get nearly as many swing-throughs, and Doval is seeing that too. The whiffs have decreased significantly, especially on the cutter, which has gone from being one of Doval’s strengths to a glaring weakness. In 2023, batters hit .175 and slugged .212 against Doval’s cutter; this year, they’re hitting .260 and slugging .500. That just won’t work.

So is there a solution for Doval? Uh, I don’t know. Maybe try to get some of that old movement back and see if that helps? Call up Andrew Bailey and ask how he made Doval good? Just spitballing here. You can’t really point to anything Doval is doing better than he did last year. Sure, he’s getting more ground balls, but they’re being hit a lot harder, so they’re going for hits. This seems like a mechanical problem, one for Doval to work out with pitching coach Bryan Price.

For now, though, he’s still the closer and the team and its fans have to hope he turns it around soon. Camilo Doval’s performance in the first half of 2024 has been significantly below his standards, and if it continues going forward, he’ll have to be removed from the closer role. A lot is riding on his ability to right his own ship, for both Doval and everyone surrounding him.