Pirates' pitchers learning to embrace the cutter

TAMPA, Fla. -- When pitching coach Oscar Marin and Josh Fleming talked this offseason about the lefty potentially signing with the Pirates, both parties wanted to talk about the cutter. It was once Fleming’s second-most-used pitch, but he shelved it during the 2022 season and didn’t touch it at all in ‘23. A ground ball specialist, Fleming wanted to bring that pitch back.

It turns out that Fleming wasn’t the only one who had the cutter on the mind for the Pirates this offseason. In a time when sweepers and extra pitch movement are the craze among most pitchers, many members of Pittsburgh’s potential rotation are reemphasizing their cutters or trading in slider movement for velocity.

Last season, Pirates pitchers threw the slider 22.3 percent of the time, the fifth most in baseball. That number is still high this spring -- 19.1 percent in ballparks with tracking data -- but the cutter rate has also jumped up to 8.5 percent, the third-highest rate in baseball.

Highlighting the cutter wasn’t necessarily a strategy coming into the offseason. But Pittsburgh’s two starting pitcher additions -- Martín Pérez and Marco Gonzales -- were looking to bounce back after down 2023 campaigns, and both zeroed in on the cutter as one of the main tools to get them back on track.

Last year, Mitch Keller threw his cutter 24.2 percent of the time, just two percentage points lower than his most-used pitch, the four-seamer. He has continued to throw it often this spring, signaling that the top three of the Pirates’ rotation are going to throw plenty of cut fastballs.

Even some regular sliders have been tweaked this winter. Quinn Priester has seen his slider go from an average of about 85 mph to roughly 88 mph in outings this spring, trading in some movement for more velocity.

“It’s not moving as much, it’s just later,” Priester said, explaining his thought process. “Because I’m throwing harder, that break’s happening later, and it’s just a better pitch.”

What could be the advantage of this change? Talking with players, there are two trains of thought.

One is to get more ground balls and weak contact. That’s where Priester’s mindset is. The slider he is throwing now is closer to its original 2021 form when he first unveiled the pitch. It’s a little firmer with more gyro spin.

And when you have National League Gold Glove Award winner Ke’Bryan Hayes at third base, plenty of those ground balls will turn into outs.

“If you get them to see fastball and throw off their timing [with a cutter], even if it’s 4 mph, it’s going to miss that barrel, get under it,” Priester said. “It’s going to be an easy out for us.”

The other mindset is to pair it with the sinker, like what Keller and Colin Holderman did last season. Last year, the two were the only Pirates who had at least 50 sequences of either cutter to sinker or sinker to cutter. In those at-bats that ended with one of those sequences, both pitchers had a run value of -2, which is in the pitcher’s favor, according to Baseball Savant’s data. Holderman held hitters to a .167 average going from sinker to cutter, while Keller’s batting average against was .205 going cutter to sinker.

“With the velo, it’s hard to guess which fastball’s coming,” Holderman said. “I really love it. It’s the best addition I could have asked for.”

Keller and catcher Jason Delay refer to it as X-ing the zone. The sinker and cutter come out of the hand in the same spot with similar velocities, but then their flight paths seemingly cross because they tunnel off each other. The sinker bites down, while the cutter goes more horizontal.

“When you’re working two sides of the plate, I think those two pitches really complement each other well,” Fleming said. “You’ve seen it from Mitch, Pérez and Marco; it really makes our secondary stuff play much better.”

Talking with the cutter throwers on staff, consistency was brought up often. It’s why Pérez abandoned his slider for the cutter in 2019: He could execute it more often.

That execution is going to ultimately determine if a more cutter-heavy approach can work.

“That is what’s giving us the success that we’re looking for,” Pérez said. “I think when you trust a pitch, you’re going to use it. It’s been working for me, for Marco, for everybody throwing the cutter. If you feel good and you trust 100 percent in your stuff, it will work.”