At least one aspect, Ryan Bergert looks like ace

There is no perfect pitcher. Some people have an incredible ability to spin the ball, but there is nothing to throw at the top of the area. (Mitch Keller and Matt Brash come to mind.) Some pitchers draw four-shot fours, but never settle on a reliable secondary. (Ryne Nelson, I’m looking at you.) One thing usually means being insufficient in another.

Still, even without a perfect pitcher, some people are closer than others. The Prime Gerrit Cole comes with a carry-on heater and a solid slider with meaningful level breakthroughs. Jacob DeGrom? Same deal. Some people break our general understanding of the tradeoffs between certain pitch types. Most of these guys are Aces. One of them is Ryan Bergert – at least possible.

If the name rings the bell, it’s likely because Bergert played in the deadline deal, bringing him to Kansas City (along with Stephen Kolek, the fifth starter on Rock Fixed) in exchange for reserve catcher Freddy Fermin. Early in the post-trade, Fermin gave a good verdict, a bunch of basic hits and hits once.

Fermin is valuable – especially for fishermen-occupied Padres, although not particularly exciting. He has been under the control of the team for the rest of the decade, but he is firmly locked in the prototype of “a hitback car with excellent defensive skills.” Bergert, on the other hand, made me a serious rise.

At least as far as peripherals are concerned, the result is not yet there, but Bergt is able to do two things, these guys can’t usually be named Cole or Degrom, usually not: He can hit the fastball back, he can throw a firm breaking ball with a bunch of horizontal movements:

Bergert won’t blow you at speed. His four-slit fastball averaged 93.6 mph, almost one and a half below the right-wing average. (That’s probably why fuck+, pitchingbot and settpro all think his four sales are close to the league average.) But the shape is premium. Bergert scored nearly 19 inches of vertical break on the heater, ranking 9th among starters who threw at least 250 fastballs:

According to Alex Chamberlain’s dynamic dead zone estimates, Bergert’s top arm angle (50 degrees) and insignificant vertical close angle offset some of the deceptive effects of the tone, but it still gets about an inch and a half of accidental rides. Ryan Pepiot’s spin fastball is a reliable comparison. Even with the SO release characteristics, Pepiot’s heater still creates a bunch of swing strikes on the top of the area due to its vertical movement.

Like Pepiot, Bergert’s fastball plus ride is a function of his spin bias. His 95% fastball spin efficiency suggests that he belongs to the pitcher’s pronator class and tends to “lag behind” when it comes to issuing. Pitchers with this bias have difficulty pitching with seams (such as a washer or sinker) depending on the lower spin efficiency release. As a result, you usually don’t see a pronator throwing sweeper. It is difficult to reach the level of loss of effective speed without changing the grip on the ball.

Tyler Zombro discusses the speed trade-off that the front carrier must make in order to throw a glove-side break in the tread video I quoted earlier, titled “How to Customize Pronation vs. Supination vs. Supination”. Zombro notes in the section on the carrier: “If you are lagging behind the ball more and you work hard to get around it, you will need your Velo deficit [zero inches of horizontal break] Will be -8, -10 mph. ”

This is something special about Bergert. Even with pedaling characteristics (fastballs with high rotational efficiency and obvious full motion), he can sacrifice his shape with minimal speed. Bergert scored a level break of over 13 inches on the sweeper, with only a 10 mph speed deficit.

The following table shows the anomaly properties of the relationship with Bergert rapid sweep. To do this, I measured all the sweeping Velo differentials carrying fastball pitchers. Most of them will naturally not throw away the sweeper. Of these 27 pitchers, only three were less speeds between their quad fastball and the sweeper: Lake Bachar, Chris Brooke and Cade Povich. None of these guys did as much level exercise on the dissection like Bergt:

Is this enough in itself to make him a good pitcher? I’m not sure. His overall Arsenal score Baseball prospectusStephen Sutton-Brown, not impressive. His fastball has excellent action, but his slider or sweeper’s tunnel is not ideal. The speeds between speeds are relatively narrow. He doesn’t have a big curve ball to offset the hitter’s timing, and his change is still a work ongoing:

But I believe the royals saw the outline of a special pitcher. In the two starts after the trade, Bergt has increased his sweeping volume, especially for the left-handed batsman. In his first game, Bergert made a 5 2/3 inning effort at Fenway, where he allowed only two hits and two walks, continuing to whip that sweeper back door to steal the early strike. Since Bergert usually aims at the outer edge with his fastball, it is nearly impossible for a batsman to pull the trigger when he swings out of the sweeper outside:

The changes in these repertoire translate into early success. Bergert played on Sunday’s young career, hanging a slider for two home runs, but otherwise took the twins’ dominance in 5 2/3 innings and put his career high with eight 3-pointers.

Even with these advancements, Bergt was still relatively early in his journey to development. Just last season, he threw from a relatively traditional three-quarter seat. As Eric Longenhagen wrote in June.[Bergert] Padres successfully changed his delivery and pitch mix to make his fastball better than ever in 2025. Berget’s arm slot has been lifted and he added Velo’s tick bug, now sitting in 94 pure vertical movements thanks to his new release point. “Eric shared some double stats with me before the Bergert change in early 2024, he lowered the distance by four inches this year, he hiked, he hiked.

Adaptation is auspicious. If Bergert could develop his own changes, add slow curve balls, or start placing his heater over the area instead of on the outer edge, he might start to get closer to where he looks like a very good starting pitcher. At least, the fastball/sweep combo is a great starting point, perhaps the blueprint for his development to become ace.