Pitch Shape Notebook: Kaleb Ort's new pitch, Nick Pivetta's fastball, Garrett Whitlock's changeup
Analysis on Ort, Pivetta, and tonight's starter in Whitlock.
Several weeks ago, I wrote how Kaleb Ort adding a cutter could greatly benefit him. He was in the process of adding one at the time, and he used it for the first time Monday after being called up to Boston again — though, he has been demoted back down to Triple-A Worcester.
And, the results were there. Now, one might point out he threw the cutter just six times between the two outings, but, this led to two scoreless innings across just 22 pitches Sunday, including three strikeouts — before he tossed another scoreless frame Monday. Both were against the best offense in baseball, the Rays.
Ort has never been able to generate whiffs at the major-league level. He held a 6.6 SwStr% before going back down to Worcester, also slating one of the worst whiff and chase rates in all of baseball. But, the new pitch gives his arsenal much more deception.
Ort held the best Stuff+ on the Red Sox at 128 as well as one of the best xWhiff+ marks before being called up again. Both his slider and fastball were great “stuff-wise,” but they just didn’t fit together. The two pitches had a 15.2” induced vertical break separation, a 24.1” horizontal break separation, and a 12-mph separation, making the two pitches too easy to tell apart from one another for the batter.
Now, with the cutter, it closes the gap between the fastball. The goal of the cutter isn’t to simply add another pitch, but rather to make the fastball and slider look like the cutter — this is the idea of pitch tunneling.
The cutter had just 1” of sweep 13.9” of carry (IVB), clocking in at 90.4 MPH and an RPM of 2328 Sunday. But on Monday, the cutter gained both 3” of horizontal break and carry. The Stuff+ on the pitch went from 102 Sunday to 62 Monday — which the six pitches average out to a Stuff+ of 82.
Another thing to note with Ort though as well — his fastball might be the best true 4-seam fastball on the Red Sox, if not for James Paxton. He’s relying on it 75% of the time and has yielded an xwOBA of just .284 against the pitch — but, the slider gets absolutely demolished when he throws it. The 129-Stuff+ pitch is dominant enough on its own but it doesn’t have a secondary pitch — so, in comes the cutter, which should pair well with it, and also make the slider more deceptive.
Pivetta’s fastball
The bullpen might be the right spot for Nick Pivetta.
Pivetta’s fastball has shot up in Stuff+ after making the move to the ‘pen. His fastball was sitting in the low 100s of Stuff+ for the majority of the season — and even for his first relief outing. That was until May 24, when he had his sudden rise.
The tweets below (which, because of Substack’s issues with Twitter we can’t embed) details that; it went even higher in his outing Monday, going to 163.
Comparing the two time frames, March 30th-May 21st vs. May 24th-today, the major difference has been the 2.3” drop in horizontal movement on his fastball.
This has given a tad bit more velocity and carry on the pitch and has clearly made it miles more effective.
Whitlock’s changeup
Garrett Whitlock’s changeup shape has seen a lot of different angles this season. Less is more for Whitlock — and that’s always seemed the case when it comes to his changeup.
If we go back to this chart I made a little while ago, before his big change with the changeup, he was averaging an induced vertical break of 8.6 on the changeup. '
But, the exact outing after I made that chart, he put a major tweak on it. Here’s a look at what the pitch shape was on his May 27th outing — an exact 7” difference in IVB from his season average beforehand vs. his outing on the 27th:
And then his outing on June 3rd:
He also had the highest horizontal movement of the season of 19.1” on the pitch in his past outing. And, the IVB and spin rate noticeably went up. Stuff+ on the pitch however hasn’t really changed much — it’s stayed between 90-100 for the entire season.
How the pitch fares tonight against Gerrit Cole and the Yankees will be really interesting.
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