Has the Rangers’ Pitching Lab Fixed Patrick Corbin?

Texas Rangers starting pitcher Patrick Corbin has had a resurgent season in 2025 after being synonymous with the worst pitcher in baseball for the last four to five years.

Coming fresh off the end of a six-year, $140 million deal with the Washington Nationals that seemed to be one of the worst long-term deals in modern baseball history, he’s back to his pre-2020 self this year thanks to the Rangers’ pitching lab.

It looked like Corbin might have a hard time keeping a spot on a big league roster coming into 2025, but he’s shown that he’s still got some strong innings left in the tank. He signed a one-year, $1.1 million deal with the Rangers to be a solid veteran arm in their rotation, and he’s done more than was likely expected from him.

Stats updated prior to games on June 15.

Waning Success in Washington

After the 2018 season, Corbin, coming off a long tenure with the Arizona Diamondbacks, signed a six-year, $140 million extension with the Nationals, and initial returns showed that the signing might be one of the better-valued pitcher contracts.

Corbin’s 2019 season was incredible, as he sported a 3.25 ERA over 202 innings with the fourth-highest strikeout total in MLB. However, he was third in strikeouts on his own team, as Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg also contributed amazing performances.

The Nationals won the World Series in 2019 on the backs of surging young talent and this three-headed monster in their starting rotation, and Corbin’s performance down the stretch was invaluable to their run for the title. He threw 10 innings and only allowed four runs in the World Series with a 13.9 K/9 rate throughout their playoff run. It’s safe to say he had a great first year in the nation’s capital.

The rest of Corbin’s tenure in Washington, however, was a nightmare, to say the least. Between the years 2020 and 2024, Corbin was attributed with 70 losses, 21 more than second-place Luis Castillo of the Reds and Mariners.

Among pitchers with 600+ innings across those five seasons, his horrendous 1.6 HR/9 was the very worst, as was his fWAR of 4.7.

Corbin regularly sat at the bottom of the league in several categories. For instance, he led the league in losses three times, in hits surrendered three times, in earned runs three times, and in home runs surrendered once.

Suffice it to say, Patrick Corbin was undoubtedly the worst pitcher to receive regular playing time over this stretch and was concurrently on one of the worst contracts in the league. But something about this new experience with the Texas Rangers seems to have sparked something in him.

Terrific in Texas

The Rangers have won five of Corbin’s 12 starts in 2025, but out of the seven losses in these starts, he has surrendered three or more runs just three times.

Corbin’s strikeout rate is down to 6.3 K/9 in 2025, but he’s allowing significantly fewer hits than in previous seasons. His H/9 rate sat at an average of 10.9 over his last five seasons in Washington, and it’s down to just 7.9 through 12 starts in Texas, so clearly something’s working for him this year.

His 5.62 average ERA over his last five years as a National has been lowered by almost two full runs this season, as it currently sits at a mark of 3.66. Corbin has been consistent and effective for Texas, including an eight-inning outing in which the Rangers lost 2-0 to Corbin’s former team.

Corbin has been locating his pitches like a madman in 2025, putting 47% of his pitches at the edge of the zone, where the league average is just 39%. Perhaps increased command was the secret to unlocking success out on the mound for the veteran southpaw.

He might have a lower fWAR (0.4) than several of his fellow Rangers starters this season, but Texas has the league’s second-best team ERA, so that’s hardly a knock against Corbin.

Coming into Corbin’s start in Minnesota on Thursday, Texas had been outscored 35-40 in his outings, but the bats came alive and provided 16 runs of support in a 16-3 rout of the Twins.

Texas is 35-36 on the season and sits just 1.5 games back of the third AL Wild Card spot, and Corbin’s valuable performance as a solid back-end starter has been invaluable.

Texas’ rotation is reaching its ceiling, having been one of the league’s best so far this season. While two-time Cy Young winner Jacob deGrom is turning back the clock and veterans Nathan Eovaldi and Tyler Mahle are pitching fantastically, Corbin’s stability every five games has been a source of success on the young season thus far.

Repertoire Changes

Corbin hasn’t necessarily made any huge changes to his pitch arsenal, but he did revamp his changeup quite a bit. He is throwing it on average 3.1 mph slower than he did last season and with 3.3 more inches of vertical drop than average, compared to -1.4 fewer inches of drop than average last year.

This could be because he’s taking a different approach to the purpose of his changeup now. Knocking over 500 rpm off his changeup from 2024 to 2025, he is using the pitch like more of a low-spin-rate splitter.

Among lefties with 750 pitches or more this season, Corbin’s changeup has the sixth-best active spin rate in all of MLB (97.9%). This refers to the percentage of the pitch’s spin that contributes to its movement or break, meaning that his changeup is one of the most efficient of its type in baseball this year in terms of movement.

Corbin’s six-pitch mix also includes a slider, sinker, four-seam fastball, cutter, and an incredibly slow curveball. Among qualified pitchers, his 68.4 mph looping curveball is the slowest in all of baseball this year.

Last season, Corbin’s slider was his only pitch to allow a batting average against of less than .300, but in 2025 his changeup and four-seam fastball are his only pitches with an opponents’ batting average above .300. These pitches compose less than 10% of his arsenal this year, so he’s limiting opposing bats at a strong rate.

Patrick Corbin is coming hot off one of the worst stretches we’ve seen a pitcher go through in recent memory, and it’s definitely going to take some time for him to rebound in a sufficient way to completely put his last five seasons behind him. However, the Texas Rangers have received some of his best this season, and he’s played an important role in their successes in 2025.