White Sox Garrett Crochet flashed a new cutter, he’s just not throwing it much. Through 2 dominant spring training outings, Crochet has thrown 53 pitches, 47 of which being his fastball and slider. His slider looks the same as last season. His fastball velo is up from 96.3 to 98.7 mph, shape is similar. FanGraphs Stuff+ had the four-seam at 104 last year. Should be 110+ if the velo sticks.
He’s thrown 2 cutters, each in the zone, and the shape looks fantastic. The pair of offerings averaged 94.4 mph with 7” induced vertical break and 2” glove-side movement. Comps well to Jose Alvarado’s cutter shape, which had a 107 Stuff+ last season. It’s fun to dream on this profile, but his success is going to hinge on strike-throwing across multiple innings if he’s going to start. He has a 69% strike rate (great) on his 36 fastballs against strong opponents. I want to see more cutter. ✂️
Rays Ryan Pepiot has a new curveball. He threw it 3 times in his last outing. Velocity is just over 80 mph with -16” vertical break and 7” sweep. That’s about 6” more drop than comparable curveballs at that velocity. Nick Pivetta’s curveball isn’t too far off from this shape and FanGraphs Stuff+ gave it a 117 last year. 🌈
Rays Taj Bradley tweaked his cutter. I had a longer tweet about this which goes into more detail. The simple way to put it is that the pitch’s velo is about the same as it was late last season, but it has more drop and more sweep. This shifts it into more of a true slider if the shape sticks. The pitch also possesses more seam-shifted wake, which we can discern by looking at the change in the direction the ball spins out of hand (release tilt) versus what the resulting movement suggests the direction of spin should have been to achieve that shape (inferred tilt). Last season the release tilt was 11:10 with the inferred around 10:45. In the small sample we have this spring, the release tilt is 11:00 but the inferred comes in at 9:50.
Also worth noting: 1) he doesn’t have a new sinker, that’s a misclassification, 2) the “splitter” he’s throwing is the same pitch as the changeup he threw last year, it just appeared 2-3 mph harder in his outing, and 3) his curveball velocity is up 3 mph, again in a small sample. 📈
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