George Kirby's New Cutter. A Fix for Aaron Civale
George Kirby, Aaron Civale, Brady Singer
Mariners George Kirby has a new cutter. He’s thrown it 8% to righties in his last 2 outings and just once to a lefty. Near 75% of the pitch’s usage has been as the first or second pitch of an at-bat, the rest coming with 2 strikes. It’s 92 mph with 8.5” vertical break and 2” glove-side movement, right in line with an average righty cutter. FanGraphs Stuff+ gives it a 94, near-average pitch, I’ll take the over. I wonder if the cutter was added to help his breaking balls versus right-handed hitters. Both his slider and curveball have lost swing-miss compared to last season and are allowing the most damage in his mix to righties. The cutter acts as something hard, away to throw them off his slower breakers, perhaps reviving his breaking ball success. 🔱
Kirby is also throwing more sinker in his last 3 starts, a 10 percentage-point bump to each handedness. His four-seam usage to righties has fallen from 43% to 26% in his last 3 outings. As the sinker has become his primary fastball to righties, it’s drifting more middle-in/down-in compared to up (see heatmaps below). It feels like he’s chasing contact, ball-in-play more with the sinker location tweak? Which runs counter to the cutter addition to help the breakers swing-miss. Perplexing profile right now. He’s getting unlucky, plus command, knee issue. Hard to assign proper weight to each variable impacting his performance. I think the more down-in sinkers will help long term, but it’s hard not to remember him dominating with four-seam and sinker both up-away to righties last year.
Rays Aaron Civale is going through it. 27 ER over his last 6 starts. The Rays gave Civale a sweeper at the deadline last year. He’s added sweep to it this season and it’s now his most-used pitch to right-handed hitters at 25%. Any time I see struggle after a large increase in sweeper usage, I think the addition of the pitch is affecting the pitcher’s “throw” in ways that don’t always manifest in data. But I digress. With the Guardians early last year and through most of his career, he used his sinker inside to righties more. This year with the Rays, that location has drifted middle-up/up-away (see heatmap below). I wonder if this is the root cause of the damage he’s allowing on his cutter and sweeper. Less inner-third protection allows hitters to dive over plate. I don’t often think there’s a simple fix for things, but this … feels obvious? ☀️
Both fastballs are getting torched versus lefties. I unfortunately don’t have as obvious of a fix here. His lefty sinker location was more middle-up with the Guardians. It has become a pure front-door pitch in Tampa. I’d lean even more on the cutter (his only successful offering to lefties) or play with more up-away sinker locations to mimic his prior interaction at the top of the zone with those two pitches.
Royals Brady Singer is holding a 2.70 ERA with a 3.20 FIP through 10 starts, just as we all expected. He’s started throwing more four-seamers this season, but he’s backed off the pitch in May. The beauty in Singer is his ability to throw 80%+ sinker-slider to the same spot in the zone to righties (down-away to his glove-side) and lefties (down-away to his arm-side) and succeed. He has a new changeup to lefites that he appears to be cutting to his glove-side a lot. Given he’s been stronger versus righties than lefties, I’d keep an eye on the development of this pitch to help against any potential regression. 👑
I liked Singer entering the season because he said he’d throw more four-seam and sweeper, neither of which are happening in troves, although I’m grateful to see 10%+ four-seam to lefties. Last year is feeling more like a blip than the real Singer.