Major League Baseball

How Walker Buehler toned down his game and became the ace of the Dodgers

Updated Jul. 29, 2021 9:26 p.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

When he broke out in the major leagues in 2018, about 100 innings into his professional career, right-hander Walker Buehler was the boldest, brashest rookie around.

No teammate spoke of him without calling him cocky or confident and liberally employing the word "very." Buehler threw eight shutout innings and promptly promised he wouldn’t remember the game when his career was over. He pitched the Dodgers into the postseason and told the enraptured Dodger Stadium fans that the team needed their noise the "whole f---ing playoffs."

He is different now, more self-contained, less impetuous and better at his craft as a result.

"I think he’s always had a chip on his shoulder that he felt like he needed to show you, show who he was playing — show whoever — how good he was," said Giants left-hander Alex Wood, who was twice Buehler’s teammate. "The older you get, you realize there’s only one person you’re trying to prove something to, and it’s yourself. He’d probably laugh at me for saying that. He’d probably call me a name or two, but I think it’s the truth."

It’s so true Buehler doesn’t even dispute it. "My biggest thing," he once said, "is not living up to expectations for myself."

Everyone else was a proxy. After several years of striving to impress with every throw, he has introduced this season the new, more contented version of Walker Buehler.

No one event precipitated this change, but rather, it was an accumulation. He won a World Series. He rejected an extension offer that would have guaranteed him many millions of dollars, deciding instead on a shorter-term pact that still secured him a significant sum. He lost the slightest tick of velocity. He developed and refined his secondary pitches.

And, yes, he grew up.

Every offseason, Buehler likes to set a singular goal, a vector to aim his energy. This year, he resolved simply to stay on the field and pitch deeper into his games.

"I can’t do that for 210 innings trying to throw the ball 100 mph," he said.

The man who came up trying to throw with 100 percent effort all the time now operates at something closer to 90 percent. The man who came up shouting expletives at his successes now calmly smirks as he struts off the mound.

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Twenty starts into his 2021, days away from his 27th birthday, this Buehler has emerged for the first time as the Dodgers’ undisputed ace.

He became better than ever by subduing some of what made him so great. He stopped trying to strike everyone out. He eliminated both the best and worst outings of his oeuvre and raised the level of his standard start.

No longer is he striking out 16 Rockies in a complete game. But nor is he six days later surrendering 13 hits and seven runs to the same squad. Both happened in 2019.

In 2021, Buehler has become the Dodgers’ most consistent performer, a machine manufacturing outings of six to seven innings and zero to three runs. He has obtained between 18 and 22 outs in 19 of his 20 starts, including another dominant effort Thursday in another crushing defeat to the Giants. In the lone exception, he still secured 15 outs.

Only Philadelphia’s Zack Wheeler and Cleveland’s Aaron Civale average more innings per start and only Wheeler in as many outings as Buehler.

A statistical curiosity is fueling his success. Buehler has been far better when batters put the ball in play. In the 12 starts in which he has struck out seven or fewer, he owns a 1.45 ERA. In the eight starts in which he has struck out eight or more, he owns a 3.50 ERA. He is pitching equally deep into games in both instances.

Contrast that with 2019: In the 17 starts in which he struck out seven or fewer, he averaged 5 1/3 innings at a 5.34 ERA. In the 13 starts in which he struck out eight or more, he averaged 7 innings at a 1.18 ERA.

It’s unclear how predictive his pitch-to-contact success will prove, but it’s clear it has worked so far. And there are underlying changes that support the success.

After reintroducing a changeup into his repertoire, Buehler now throws six pitches. Right-handed hitters don’t see his changeup, and left-handed hitters don’t see his slider, but either side sees five different pitches every night.

He has wielded his cutter, specifically, as a means to coax weak contact from left-handed hitters. When his cutter is put into play, it travels only 77.1 mph, by far the slowest of his offerings. That’s what pitchers are aiming for when they throw cutters — missing barrels — but Buehler specifically improved his results when he began using the cutter earlier in counts.

The pitch has helped him course-correct after the long inning that, two or three years ago, often undid him.

"They kind of got me back into some of these games that I probably didn’t have the ability to do back in the day," he said.

Back in the day, he essentially tried to strike everyone out. It was, as he put it, his "default mode." That method netted more strikeouts but also more walks and more pitches.

This strategy is more sustainable.

"He’s a little bit more of a toned-down version of himself," Wood said. "He’s really pitching now. He’s not really relying on his huge stuff. He still has it. He’s just very confident in surgically maneuvering through the lineups, and when he needs to really go to it, he has that capability.

"It’s just scary seeing him develop into such a great pitcher."

The Dodgers, of course, foresaw much of this. They drafted Buehler 24th overall in 2015 believing that his feel for pitching made him a great bet to be successful at the highest level. He immediately succumbed to Tommy John surgery but returned a year later throwing harder than ever.

Last season, a half-decade into life with his new ligament, Buehler found his best balance yet between the velocity-driven approach and his pitchability path. He looked like a potential ace for years.

Now he is one.

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The team tried to lock him up for the long-term last offseason, an overture Buehler called at once one of the most humbling and arrogance-inducing events of his time on earth. He weighed the worst- and best-case scenarios. He considered his goals, in baseball and in life. He imagined a host of hypotheticals.

And he turned it down.

"It’s fun in a lot of ways," he said. "It's also extremely stressful. The moment you say no, you think you should have said yes, and the moment you said yes, you’re gonna regret it, as in any big decision. Like, as soon as you buy the car and you drive it, you're gonna be like, ‘I shouldn't have done this.’

"Compound that by whatever that contract would have been worth."

Specifics of the Dodgers’ offer(s) are not known. Buehler instead signed a two-year contract that bought out half of his arbitration years and assured him $8 million. The deal includes incentives that could earn him $4 million more if he starts at least 28 games and wins the Cy Young Award this year. He is on track to start 33 games, receive Cy Young consideration and earn most of that money.

In the longer term, he is on track for a nine-figure contract. FanGraphs on Friday named Buehler one of baseball’s 10 most valuable players, incorporating the three-plus years of club control the Dodgers still retain over him.

Maybe the two sides will one day reach an extension. Maybe he will test the outer bounds of the market for free-agent starters.

Either way, Buehler is already secure in his successes.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.