How Josh Winckowski altered his cutter to make him a dominant bullpen arm
Winckowski has a 2.38 ERA in 25 appearances out of Boston's bullpen this season.
Josh Winckowski was somebody the Red Sox were likely disappointed in after a rough start to his big-league career in 2022. Authoring a 5.89 ERA in 15 games (14 starts), something likely had to change if he wanted to have success at the major-league level.
Well, an arsenal tweak has solidified his spot in Boston’s bullpen this season after there being a reasonable chance of him starting the year in Triple-A Worcester. It has him consistently in the greater half of Ed Hand’s beloved Red Sox bullpen Trust-O-Meter as he holds a 2.38 ERA in 25 outings (41.2 innings) out of the bullpen this season.
What’s led to his success is a little more than just simply adding or taking away a pitch. He’s changed his cutter entirely and is now throwing it in the zone, rather than trying to get chases out of it, and it’s led to it being thrown over 35% of the time compared to last year’s clip of just over 10%.
The picture above shows his cutter usage in 2022. You’ll notice right away that the main premise of the pitch was throwing it out of the zone and trying to garner whiffs and soft contact from chases, while he almost never used it with two strikes (3.2%) and used it more than not against lefties (16.1%) to throw it away from them. It was simply an additional pitch for him and he obviously didn’t use it all that much.
But, Winckowski obviously needed to change something up over the offseason after a rather disappointing start to his big-league career. In comes the cutter.
If we take a look at how he’s throwing it now, not only how often he’s throwing it has been altered — his location is almost the exact opposite. It’s black and white when comparing the two.
Not only is he throwing it in the zone, but he’s throwing it just over 35% of the time, a nearly identical rate to what he’s hurling his sinker at. This has taken the slider from a secondary pitch to a pitch he’s throwing just 19% of the time now, though it has become dominant with two strikes — a scenario in which he throws the pitch almost 30% of the time.
The handedness is also a large factor of which pitch is thrown. Versus lefties, he’s relying on the cutter 45% of the time while on the other hand(edness) — literally and figuratively — against righty hitters he’s relying on the sinker almost 45% of the time.
Simply location and usage isn’t really all that was changed to the pitch, however. Arguably the bigger change to the pitch was its movement profile.
Now, the velocity, spin rate, and horizontal movement on the cutter have very minimal differences when comparing them to last year. But, there’s one additional major change: the induced vertical break of the pitch, or in other words, how much carry/ride the pitch is getting.
Last year, Winckowski’s cutter got 5.1” of carry, which is not much but also nothing to really note about for a cutter.
But he completely altered the pitch, as he’s now averaging a just 0.4” of carry on it which took his FanGraphs Stuff+ on the pitch from 99 to 128. Of pitchers who have 50 or more cutters thrown this season, Winckowski has the fourth-lowest IVB on the cutter in baseball.
And, the spin rate may be a near identication from last season, but the spin direction has certainly been altered. There’s a difference there.
With such little carry, his cutter could realistically be considered a gyro slider if he didn’t already throw a regular slider — he’s practically throwing two different versions of a slider. It plays more like a slider now because of how little carry it gets.
Whiff rates have had major jumps for the slider (25.3% to 41.5%) and sinker (9% to 18.4%) this season with the deception that throwing the cutter in the zone adds to both pitches.
Don’t be fooled by the hard hit rate and exit velocities you might find on some of his pitches as well — while he has certainly been “hit hard,” Winckowski has induced a ton of ground balls. Exit velocity has been proven to not matter if you hit it directly into the ground, and he’s authored a ground ball rate of 53.2% this season.
And, the whiff rate on the cutter may have gone down, but that goes hand-and-hand with throwing it in the zone. It’s clearly worked too considering the success he’s been having this season.
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