Why Kaleb Ort adding a cutter will greatly benefit him
How a cutter could help optimize both Ort's fastball and slider.
Beyond The Monster’s Chris Henrique reported last week that Kaleb Ort, recently optioned to Triple-A Worcester following Chris Martin’s activation off the injured list, will be adding a cutter to his two-pitch arsenal.
Ort, 31, has struggled across two seasons with the Red Sox, as the 6-foot-4 righty has authored a 6.64 ERA in 37 outings, including a 7.30 ERA in 12 outings this year.
However, Ort is one of the more intriguing arms for Boston. With a fastball clocking in at a mean of 95.8 and a slider with 14.3" of sweep, Ort possesses the highest overall Stuff+ on the Red Sox at 128.
But, mixing two great pitches together doesn’t always work. And great stuff doesn’t always equal swings and misses — as shown by the bottom-2% whiff rate of Ort’s.
He struggles to generate whiffs (6.6 SwStr%), so Ort is relying on his fastball 76.2% of the time. And, when he’s throwing the slider, it’s getting crushed (.473 xwOBA) — hitters are also swinging and missing just 3.3% of the time against it. However, his slider has the potential and upside to be a great pitch.
Ort has a good idea of where he’s locating his pitches — his pitch location is similar to many two-pitch arsenal fastball/slider hurlers. However, because they are such different pitches, Ort’s two pitches are too easy for the batter to tell apart from one another. He can be effective sometimes though with his fastball having a ton of movement.
A cutter could help glue those differences together, though, and help him better utilize — what is at least on paper — great stuff.
Ort has above average carry on his fastball at a 17.6" induced vertical break (vertical movement w/o gravity), while also having 10.3" of arm-side movement on top of average VAA numbers (vertical approach angle). The high movement on the fastball does make him at times somewhat effective; it gives him the ability to throw the fastball over 75% of the time and yield just a .298 xwOBA off of it, and it could be even more effective with a cutter.
However, as mentioned, the slider quite simply just doesn’t fit with his fastball. It would fit great with a lot of other arsenals and it would be effective for many — but not Ort.
Now, what exactly do I mean by two pitches not fitting together? And, how exactly are Ort’s two pitches “too different” from one another with the two pitches being quite literally two different pitches?
Well, if we go by what’s basically the bible of pitch tunneling on Prospects Live (article here), it was practically impossible for Ort to have success with just his fastball and slider. There’s a 24.7" HB difference, 15.2" induced vertical break difference, and a 12-mph difference between the two pitches; none of those fit in the ideal criteria of pitch tunneling between a fastball and slider. The chart below explains it.
Also, note that induced vertical break is not the regular vertical break you find on someone’s Savant player page. Induced vertical break is another way of saying vertical movement without gravity, which you can find via the Savant search function.
So, why is a cutter going to be effective, then?
Well, a cutter is ideal for many fastball/slider or sweeper pitchers — it helps glue the two pitches together and makes up for the large differences between the two pitches.
And, to quote Prospects’ Live pitch tunneling project, why the cutter can be so effective is that“the fastball and slider don’t have to look the same, they just have to look like the cutter, which looks like both of them.”
Furthermore, looking below, the fastball and slider are basically two whole boxes away from each other diagonally on the pitch movement chart. Remember, this is a pitch movement chart, not a location chart — also, ignore the changeups; he practically never throws them.
With that, we can imagine it will look something like below for Ort.
Now, Evan Phillips throws a sweeper compared to a slider while also hurling a sinker/two-seamer, but, for one the sweeper is not all that different from Ort’s slider, and secondly, this still gives us a fairly good idea as to what it could look like for Ort — without the sinker/two-seamer obviously, though that clearly wouldn’t be that bad of an addition.
And, like Ort, Phillips began his career without the cutter while throwing the changeup instead — and, he struggled mightily over his first two years in the majors (7.50 ERA in 48 outings). But, after joining the Dodgers in 2021, he added the cutter and the sinker for the 2022 season. And the results?
Phillips had a 1.14 ERA in 64 relief outings for the Dodgers in 2022 and is currently authoring a 1.80 ERA this season, making him one of the best arms in the game.
Now, let’s compare Phillips’ arsenal beforehand in 2020 before he joined the Dodgers: just a fastball/slider pitcher that occasionally mixes in the changeup.
Things like this are why the Dodgers are able to remain so dominant every year, and how they’re able to turn sub-par pitchers into elite arms — they’d probably have a field day with Ort.
Now, don’t expect Ort to be able to post a below-2 ERA and become baseball’s next reliever. It’s not the same for everybody. But, this is why pitching prospects don’t exist — teams can mold a pitcher into anything.
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