Shane Baz Has a New Cutter. How Good is Didier Fuentes?

Shane Baz, Didier Fuentes, Blade Tidwell

• Rays Shane Baz has a new cutter. The pitch averaged 89 mph with 9” vertical break and 3-4” glove-side movement in yesterday’s outing. It’s a pretty standard cutter shape with slightly more glove-side movement than average. He brought it into his mix on June 15 and continued using it heavily yesterday (37%). The adjustment comes after allowing 5 barrels on his slider in May. His old slider acted mainly as an early count or behind-in-count weapon against right-handed hitters. His 7% K-BB against righties in April and May suggested something needed to change. This new cutter has been thrown 45% of the time in the first or second pitch of an at-bat against righties in his last two outings, but is mixing into almost all counts above 25% usage. The early returns are promising. His swinging-strike rate against righties is up from 9% to 13%, and his xwOBAcon allowed is .152 over his last two starts (small samples but promising). ☀️

  • The Tampa Bay broadcast showed a split screen of Baz adjusting to hide the ball better with a runner at second base. Perhaps there’s some tipping involved in his pretty shaky 4.79 ERA this season. It can only go down from there, and the cutter adjustment appears to be a positive one so far.

Shane Baz’s New Cutter

• Braves Dider Fuentes made his MLB debut (5 IP, 6 H, 4 ER, BB, 3 K). If you’re a paid subscriber here on my substack, you would’ve already known who Fuentes is! His superpower is that the approach angle of his four-seamer is very flat. He averaged -3.6° VAA in his debut, which would be the flattest approach angle in MLB in front of Logan Webb and Bryan Woo, almost a full degree lower than the -4.7° average. The reason his ball approaches the zone flat is due to a combination of his spin efficiency (96%) and huge extension for his height (6.8’ ext at 6’ tall). This results in a 5.1’ release height with 17” vertical break at 96 mph (he averaged 95 mph in the minors). 👍

  • The issue with his mix is the lack of a good secondary. The two breaking balls he threw in his debut are both below 82 mph. He didn’t throw much of an 89-mph splitter in the minors, and it won’t help him with strikes. Fuentes threw a shorter slider in the minors, which I was surprised not to see in his debut. This pitch was ~85 mph with 4” vertical break and 5” glove-side movement. The shape isn’t great, but he zoned it decently well. I’m curious to see how the Braves handle his development. He’s a very intriguing prospect, but it’s a one-trick pony right now. To be a successful starter, he may need an expanded mix quickly. My comp here is more Joe Ryan than Bryan Woo because Woo’s <90% spin efficiency has allowed him to figure out a great sinker, which Fuentes could probably throw, but not as effectively. Braves pitching development continues to fascinate me.

Didier Fuentes’ four-seam fastball

• Mets Blade Tidwell with a pair of meh outings to start his MLB career (2 starts, 7.1 IP, 8 ER, 6 BB, 6 K—first one coming over a month ago). He has big extension, an above-average release height (6.4’), and sits 96 mph on his four-seamer. What I’ve always found odd is that everything he throws averages lift or positive vertical break. His problem in the minors has been whiffs against left-handed hitting, and in our super tiny MLB sample, that’s been the issue as well. He throws 6 pitches (4S, SK, CT, SL, SWP, CH), mixing them all in against lefties. If you look at his heatmaps, he attacks the zone with most of his mix… aside from his four-seam fastball, which has the second-lowest zone rate in his mix next to his changeup. 🍎

  • This feels like an odd approach to not zone a good four-seamer much, but I wonder if the optimal approach is simply using more deep count four-seamers. This would allow him to pull back on the pitch earlier in counts in favor of throwing the other pitches he can zone aggressively with less damage allowed (CT, SK, SL). Otherwise, I still think Tidwell is some kind of number 5 starter in a rotation. Sometimes it just takes a few starts to click, and his stuff is diverse and good.