Adam Ottavino, ROOGY No More

The best article I’ve ever read about Adam Ottavino was written on this site. Travis Sawchik wrote it, years ago, and ever since then I’ve found myself following Ottavino’s career and thinking about that article. The season after he revamped his pitching arsenal by throwing by himself in a Manhattan storefront, he had a career year for the Rockies. The season after that, he returned to New York to pitch for the Yankees, and after a brief detour to Boston in 2021, he’s back in his hometown pitching for the Mets. Now, though, he’s doing it with some new tools.

That fateful offseason, Ottavino learned to command his slider. But that wasn’t the pitch he was trying to learn at the start. Take a look at his pitch mix by year, and you can see the cutter he planned on integrating:

Big sweeping sliders like the one Ottavino throws pair well with sinkers, and he changed his primary fastball accordingly. But sweeping sliders and sinkers both display large platoon splits, so he also picked up a cutter to pair with his two primary pitches. That was the idea, at least. In practice, he didn’t throw his cutter much against lefties, and by 2020 he didn’t throw it much at all. From 2020 through ’22, he threw that cutter only 3.7% of the time overall.

In a perhaps related development, Ottavino has gotten shelled by lefties since 2018: from that year through ’22, he allowed a sterling .256 wOBA against righties and a middle-of-the-road .313 mark against lefties. That’s hardly surprising; he basically only threw two pitches, and neither of them are at their best against opposite-handed batters. The Yankees used him more or less as a righty specialist and then traded him to the Red Sox in a salary dump to make their bullpen work more efficiently.

I don’t think that trade ever made much sense for the Yankees; Ottavino was quietly effective in Boston and then signed with the Mets after the 2021 season to become part of another good bullpen. But I can see where the Yankees were coming from; they manage their bullpen with a heavy emphasis on sparing pitchers back-to-back days of work, and that’s harder to do if you don’t trust one of your relievers against left-handed batters. Lefty specialists are one thing, but teams already didn’t like right-handed one out guys before the three-batter minimum came into effect; the role Ottavino seemed best suited for mostly didn’t exist.

For some pitchers, that would be the end of the story. His righty-only form might not have been ideal, but it was good enough to merit a $7 million salary to pitch in his hometown. If Ottavino were a satisficer, you could imagine him stopping right there and calling it a day. But, well, did you read the part where he spent all offseason throwing solo bullpens in a Manhattan storefront and bought expensive camera equipment he didn’t yet know how to use so that he could tinker with his pitches? He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy for whom “good enough” is good enough.

Last year, Ottavino added a wrinkle designed to attack lefties: He threw a changeup 20% of the time against lefty hitters, after previously using it roughly never. It worked out acceptably, but only acceptably; he had huge problems throwing it for a strike, which meant it was only helpful as a putaway pitch. That’s not so great if you can’t get to a putaway count, though. Ottavino was wretched against lefties last year despite the new pitch, surrendering a .354 wOBA against them. Ah, well. Back to the drawing board, then.

In Ottavino’s case, I mean that literally. This past winter, he went back into the lab and found new ways to pitch to lefties. Oh, the changeup is better, as pitches often are the second year a pitcher throws them. He’s only thrown six so far, so take this with a grain of salt, but he seems to have better command and a more natural velocity gap now. He’s only thrown six changeups to lefties, though, so that’s not the change I’m talking about. No, I’m talking about that cutter, which he took out of mothballs and now throws as frequently as his vaunted slider.

Here’s Ottavino’s pitch mix against righties this year:

Sure, great, fine, business as usual. That’s not so different than what you would have seen in any previous year, aside from the fact that he hasn’t thrown a single four-seamer yet. He’s pitched all of six innings. Give it some time. Here’s his pitch mix against lefties:

Whoa, what? Last year, he threw his signature slider 36% of the time to southpaw batters. He threw four-seamers another 23% of the time. Those two plans are gone, replaced completely by a cutter that he brings out early and often. Unlike the changeup, he can throw it for a strike, which means he can break out the cutter in any count he wants, and he hasn’t been afraid to do just that.

The reason that Ottavino learned a cutter before 2018 is likely the same reason that he’s going back to it now: it’s a natural complement to sinker/slider arsenals. I’m not an expert when it comes to teaching new pitches, but it comes down to this: the grip is a natural permutation of a sweeping slider grip, so pitchers who aren’t comfortable commanding changeups often learn cutters instead. It’s no coincidence that Ottavino tried to add that cutter after training at Driveline; they’re the exact kind of pitch-maximizing lab that would look at a pitcher with his skills and tell him to throw something with cut.

Why a cutter? The most simplistic explanation is that cutters produce tiny, often neutral, platoon splits. I’m not exactly sure what the complete reasoning is, but a lot of it is just intuitive. Cutters fit in the middle between sinkers and sliders, which makes it harder to read the break of any of the three. They don’t have the extreme movement profile that makes the other two pitches easy to pick up for opposite-handed hitters. “Hitters are better at hitting break that moves toward them” is a useful truism, but cutter movement often moves off where they think a fastball will be going. The combination of that slight path deviation and high velocity is just harder to work through for opposite-handed hitters.

How does the pitch look? To be honest with you, fairly unremarkable, though he seems to have a solid feel for locating it already. Here’s a cutter that Ottavino threw for a called strike against Joey Wendle:

Here’s the second pitch of that at-bat, a cutter to a similar spot that Wendle offered at:

Finally, if a batter has chased two cutters, why not throw one a bit further inside:

That’s a delightful sequence, and you can see why I’m excited about Ottavino’s new plan. He was already nails against righties; if he starts shutting lefties down too, he might be one of the best relievers in baseball. On the other hand:

So, has Ottavino turned a new page with another inspired offseason of pitch design? I think so, but I also urge caution. His changes look really good to me. I think he’ll draw assignments with less regard for handedness than he has in recent years, which is great news for a Mets team trying to replace Edwin Díaz. I’m not ready to call the new Ottavino a finished product, but don’t look at him and think “oh this guy only gets righties.” That was last year’s model, and a lot has changed under the hood since then.