{"id":95783,"date":"2025-02-17T19:23:01","date_gmt":"2025-02-18T00:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=95783"},"modified":"2025-02-17T19:23:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-18T00:23:01","slug":"nick-lodolo-possible-breakout-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/02\/17\/nick-lodolo-possible-breakout-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Nick Lodolo Looking to Have Breakout Season for Reds"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>27-year-old Cincinnati Reds lefty Nick Lodolo is entering his fourth MLB season, which could very well be his best to date. Other than Lodolo\u2019s 3.66 ERA <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/12\/30\/best-padres-rookie-seasons-all-time\/\" target=\"_self\">rookie<\/a> season back in 2022, he has been underwhelming, especially considering his stuff that is seemingly unhittable. With his fourth season approaching, maybe there are signs that the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2019\/05\/11\/nick-lodolo-2019-mlb-draft-profile\/\" target=\"_self\">2019 draftee<\/a> can put it all together and become an ace-caliber starter in Cincinnati for years to come.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Live BP Sunday in Goodyear Nick Lodolo v. Will Benson <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/LQTrkgNlHo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/LQTrkgNlHo<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Mike Petraglia (@Trags) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Trags\/status\/1891248024925409345?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">February 16, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Nick Lodolo Could Have a Breakout Season<\/h2>\n<h3>Lodolo\u2019s Under the Hood Stats Last Season<\/h3>\n<p>While Lodolo recorded the most amount of innings in his career in 2024, it still fell short of expectations for a starter. Limited <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2024\/06\/25\/nick-lodolo-blister-injury\/\" target=\"_self\">by injury<\/a>, he threw just 115 1\/3 innings and posted a mediocre 4.76 ERA. However, his 3.72 xERA and 3.95 FIP suggest his numbers may have been inflated a bit.<\/p>\n<p>Looking at his <a  href=\"https:\/\/baseballsavant.mlb.com\/savant-player\/nick-lodolo-666157?stats=statcast-r-pitching-mlb\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Baseball Savant<\/a> page, it is evident that he had solid to above-average metrics in 2024, with multiple categories being above league average. Lodolo generated ground balls well, with a 44.9 GB% (63rd percentile), and also held walks at a respectable 7.5 BB% (57th percentile). Perhaps most impressively, he generated lots of swings and misses, with a 24.7 K% (64th percentile), 28.1 Whiff% (70th percentile), and a 30.2 Chase% (67th percentile).<\/p>\n<p>A tall lefty with an across-the-body delivery who generates missed bats and ground balls at an above-league-average level is something the Reds pitching lab can continue to tinker with as he experiences more and more innings at the big-league level.<\/p>\n<h3>Struggles in 2024<\/h3>\n<p>Despite some good metrics, there is a specific area in Nick Lodolo\u2019s game that he struggles with: opponent contact quality.<\/p>\n<p>Opponents had an average exit velocity of 89.2 MPH, as well as an 8.2 Barrel%, which places him in the 39th percentile among qualified MLB pitchers in both metrics. His 38 Hard-Hit% places him in the 55th percentile, which is better than the prior two marks, but still improvable.<\/p>\n<p>Lodolo struggled with this even in his 3.66 ERA rookie season. In that year, he was 26th percentile in Hard-Hit% (40.6%), 18th percentile in Barrel% (9.1%), and 45th percentile in opponent average exit velocity (88.7 MPH).<\/p>\n<p>With these numbers slowly creeping towards league average as his career progresses, there is hope that this weakness in his game can be flipped to a strength in the future, and at worst a manageable level.<\/p>\n<h3>Notable Splits in 2024<\/h3>\n<p>Lefty-on-lefty is usually the most difficult matchup in baseball for hitters, and Lodolo dominated these matchups in 2024, as he surrendered a whopping zero home runs in these matchups.<\/p>\n<p>He also tended to struggle out of the gate, surrendering 13 earned runs in 21 first innings (5.57 ERA). Despite the immediate slow start, he was rather decent against lineups in his first time through the order with a 3.94 ERA. However, as the game goes on and hitters see him more often, he begins to get knocked around, with a 5.09 ERA against the lineup the second time around, and a 4.91 ERA the third time through.<\/p>\n<p>A final impressive stat with Lodolo was his success after getting ahead in the count. After going just 0-1 in the count, opponents slashed .178\/.261\/.278. While pitchers generally succeed more often when ahead in the count, Lodolo embodies the statement, \u201cthe best pitch for a pitcher is strike one\u201d.<\/p>\n<h3>Can Lodolo Become a More Successful Big Leaguer?<\/h3>\n<p>It is difficult to predict Nick Lodolo\u2019s 2025, party due to his small sample size of workload, but also due to the disparity of performance throughout it. Judging by his numbers and analytics, he should be able to flourish in the big leagues one day.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 Albert Cesare\/The Enquirer \/ USA TODAY NETWORK<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>27-year-old Cincinnati Reds lefty Nick Lodolo is entering his fourth MLB season, which could very well be his best to date. Other than Lodolo\u2019s 3.66 ERA rookie season back in 2022, he has been underwhelming, especially considering his stuff that is seemingly unhittable. With his fourth season approaching, maybe there are signs that the 2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5447,"featured_media":95870,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28,1071],"tags":[2613],"class_list":["post-95783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reds","category-mlb","tag-nick-lodolo"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5447"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95783"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95783\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95871,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95783\/revisions\/95871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}