Embrace Van Scoyoc Ideology

Pitching is both an art and a science. A mashup of beautiful human achievement and the physics that are involved in the makings of all things. Within each science, there is a solution. Believing that pitching is something to solve is inherently part of what drives anyone to pick up a baseball. Even if it’s impossible to really solve, because of the art part. That hasn’t stopped people from trying, of course. And, if we’re being honest, they have gotten pretty close. It is probably harder to hit a baseball now than in any other time in the modern era. Not since pitchers were allowed to use nail files on baseballs and dent them against the side of the stadium have they moved like this. There is a distinct formula that pitchers are using to succeed now, miss bats, spin the ball, strike guys out. It’s gotten to the point that people wonder if they’re too good at it. We saw a surge of “torpedo bats” that gave hitters a scientific advantage to try and counter it earlier this year. People are beginning to ask if we should restrict the science of pitching and try to restore the art.

Well, what if I told you there’s one guy who might already be doing that.

In June 2023, the Rockies traded Mike Moustakas to the Los Angeles Angels for Connor Van Scoyoc. A righty that had bounced around the lower minors of the Angels system for about five years, Van Scoyoc was what many in the business call a “lottery ticket”. Not a lot had really clicked for him in his time since he was drafted in the 11th round of the 2018 draft, but Mike Moustakas on the flip side was no longer very good. The Angels were hoping to convince Shohei Ohtani they would try to win, so they made a bunch of moves like this, and the Rockies were happy to turn a bad veteran into something.

Now it’s 2025 and Connor Van Scoyoc is in AAA Albuquerque knocking on the door of an MLB debut. He’s doing so by defying all of the science we know about pitching, too. But in defying the science, he’s succeeding at a level that the Rockies probably can’t ignore much longer.

Van Scoyoc has 22 innings pitched this year for the Isotopes and in those 22 innings he has only surrendered seven earned runs. That makes for a cool 2.78 ERA but underneath that you can see something incredible from the 25-year-old. In those 22 innings, he has nine strikeouts. NINE. That is a 3.57 strikeouts per nine innings ratio. Just 10% of his faced batters strikeout and yet, 65% of them hit a ground ball. Most of them hit that ground ball softly! Only 11% of Van Scoyoc’s pitches result in a swinging strike. This is counter to nearly everything we know about a modern successful pitcher! This is not just that CVS (already a nickname locked in) is bad at striking guys out. He is fundamentally not trying to do so. He wants you to hit the ball, softly, right at the guys on his team. Out of 68 batted balls in Van Scoyoc’s 86 batters faced, just 12 were fly balls. This is a guy that straight up hates the air and believes he must save a baseball from experiencing it.

The Rockies are 11-50, a team miserably on pace to set the record for the most losses by anyone that didn’t have their team die in a mining accident. What do they have to lose by giving Connor Van Scoyoc a chance to never strike anyone out? Why not give your bullpen a reliever that will spread the good word that swinging strikes are evil?

In Bull Durham, Crash Davis gives Nuke LaLoosh a pep talk and tells him to stop trying to strike everyone out. “Strikeouts are boring” he says. “And on top of that they’re fascist.” Van Scoyoc saw that film, I presume, and realized his life’s work must now be to eliminate the strikeout from baseball. If they are fascist, then they must be removed from polite society. That is just simply good praxis. The root of fascism is a system in decay and Van Scoyoc is simply asking us to use the whimsy of ground balls to restore faith in the artwork of pitching, in the system of baseball.

I am not usually one to support this line of thought. A pitcher being bad at avoiding contact is one that is working too finely within the margins to sustain success. This is something I still believe, something I will always believe.

But what if, exceptions existed to prove this belief? What if Connor Van Scoyoc existed to show that someone COULD live in those margins? What if the ideology of our time could be adapted to allow for someone like him to live within it?

We won’t know unless the Rockies let us find out. It is time to embrace Van Scoyoc Thought. Call him up and let the ground ball God sort out what happens.