Two Phillies Add Cutters
Adding a new pitch has often been used as an explanation for a breakout year by a pitcher. But with the narrative bias it was important to be skeptical of such claims: when a pitcher adds a pitch and does well we hear about it, when he adds a pitch and nothing happens it is ignored — did you know that Jon Garland added a cutter last year! With the pitchf/x pitch-by-pitch data, we are better equipped to systematically look at the effect of adding a pitch.
Over the past weekend we had the interesting reverse of this story with some suggesting that Kyle Kendrick’s and Cole Hamels‘, before they pitched very well on Sunday and Tuesday, high ERAs were due to them adding the cutter. It shows how tempting it is to find anything to explain what is almost surely variation from a small sample size. Had Kendrick and Hamels pitched amazingly in their first games everyone would have credited the new pitch. And after both pitched well in their last outings I am sure the narratives will change.
Anyway, the point is that, right now, with both pitchers having thrown less than 20 innings, we cannot possibly assess how the cutter has or will affect the two pitchers. The data does show them throwing the new pitch: Hamels about 14% of the time to the expense of all of his other pitches, and Kendrick over 30% of the time giving up completely on his slider (and it does look to me like the cutter is a distinct pitch and not just a reclassification of the slider). It is just too early to say what this will mean for them (more ground balls? smaller platoon splits? …). But as the season progresses these new-pitch pitchers are interesting to check out because adding a new pitch can have a large effect as Carson, Matt, Mike and I talked about in a recent podcast.
Dave Allen's other baseball work can be found at Baseball Analysts.
I’m beginning to regard the analysis of “he added a cutter in spring training” about as high as “he’s in the best shape of his life”.
best comment i’ve read all day
Assess, not “asses”.
Wow, good catch. Trying to keep this a family friendly place. Thanks.
I just told my secretary I am adding a cutter. She expects better work product now.
The Halladay Effect rears its head in Philly. After watching Hamels lollipop that fat curveball of his for the last couple years the addition of a tighter ball running down and away from lefties can only help. I’ll be curious to see over their coming starts whether, like Halladay, these two will try to throw their cutters to both sides of the plate.
I can tell you from watching the games that neither cutter is particularly good. When you watch Madson (or better yet Rivera) throw a cutter and then compare it to what Kendrick and Hamels are flipping up there, it’s hard not to cringe. In Hamels’ case, I worry his cutter will take away from his output by cutting into the amount of change-ups he throws.
I feel like both pitchers kind of rushed the pitches into production. I remember the first time Kevin Millwood through a back-up 2 seamer to strike out a lefty he said after the game something like “I’ve been working on that in the pen for over a year now but haven’t really used it much in a game yet.” Hamels and Kendrick’s cutters may get better with time.
I’m not sure comparing Rivera’s cutter, a pitch that has revolutionized man’s approach to pitching baseballs, to two guys’ variations of the pitch that have been thrown for less than two months is such a good idea.
Well that’s why I put it in parenthesis silly. In any case, it’s completely valid to say, this is what a really good cutter looks like and this is what bad cutters look like.
madson has a bad cutter. not a great example.
I was wondering about the classification of Kendrick’s slider/cutter.
I don’t think he scrapped his slider completely although I haven’t been able to watch much of his starts so far. I think the slower ones are still sliders and the harder ones are his cutters.
I’ll watch more closely next time, but I know I saw a bunch of pitches that moved like sliders rather than cutters. I’ll pay more attention to the radar gun to make sure they’re not just occasional really good cutters.