Dylan Dodd throws a shallow sinker. It also doesn’t have much horizontal movement. For all intents and purposes, it is completely shallow. Despite being classified as such, the pitch works like a four-seamer delivered with a seam-seam grip.
Label aside, it works fine. The 27-year-old southpaw has thrown his signature pitch 87 times (59.6% usage) this season for a .158 allowed batting average and a 26.3% strikeout rate while making seven appearances in the Atlanta Braves bullpen. Limited to 10 2/3 major league innings due to a previous stint on IL due to thoracic spine inflammation, Dodd walked twelve batters, allowed seven hits, and issued just one free pass.
I learned about his usual “sink” when the Braves visited Fenway Park late last month. What I knew before our interview was that Dodd’s player page showed that he had switched to a four-seamer machine, and that doing so was yielding good results. Curious about the reason for the change – and the process behind it – I began by asking him if what I saw was accurate.
“That’s right,” answered Dodd, who entered the current campaign having appeared in 36 major league games since it began in April 2023. “It actually sinks, but the motion profile is more like a four-seam. I create something called a reverse gyro. I’m a big hitter. I’m in baseball, so I get a quick result when I throw two balls.”
“I always threw four stitches,” Dodd continued. “When I went through the seam-seam grip, the vertical break went up. I didn’t understand why. This year we did a deep dive, and what causes the seam-shift orientation.
That would be accurate. Metrically, Atlanta’s third-round pick in the 2021 draft out of Southeast Missouri State College averaged 17.1 inches of vertical break, the most of the 280 pitchers who threw at least 50 sinkers (as classified by Baseball Savant). In addition, his 9.6-inch horizontal break is the smallest of all but three pitchers.
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Not only does his “sinker” perform like a four-seamer, it has better 4-foot movement than his classic fastball. Dodd explained that his old four-seamers usually had 14 inches of vertical clearance and anywhere from 8 to 10 inches of horizontal clearance, leaving it in “dead space.” The change was good. As it happens, those efforts unexpectedly led to what is now his best weapon.
Dodd was working with Wes McGuire, then Atlanta’s coordinator and now the organization’s Triple-A coach, when the acquisition was made.
“This was last spring,” Dodd recalled. “The first thought was it was going to sink or run but it didn’t, I don’t think we even knew why it was moving like it was but he told me to keep throwing it. After dealing with the ups and downs of it for a year, I came to spring training and learned why the pitch does what it does.”
Jeremy Hefner knows exactly why he does what he does. Asked about Dodd’s “sink,” the Atlanta coach offered a brief explanation that closely matched what the left-handed hitter had told me.
“It’s pitched two-seamer, but it has the characteristics of a four-seamer,” explained Hefner, who played for the New York Mets in 2012 and 2013, then became the team’s manager from 2020 to 2025. “He’s got a reverse gyro. A two-seam fastball. There were a few guys who did what Josh Hader did, before we understood what gyro meant – or at least, before I understood what gyro meant.
Hader is an excellent host. The Houston Astros lefty has only taken the mound once this season because of biceps tendinitis, but last year he averaged 18.5 inches of vertical break and 9.4 inches of horizontal break — numbers very similar to Dodd’s.
“He’s a natural pronator, so he gets inside the ball,” Hefner continued. “If you overshoot a four-seamer, it turns into a bad sinker. If you put a two-seamer in their hand, and they throw it the same way, it ends up getting a carry. It’s an anomaly in a lot of ways. A lot of people are supinators, so they come into the position with their hands towards their face, but some guys naturally move away from their face.
