Some basic stuff.
Cutters don’t move much. They have the least movement in an arsenal. That is what makes them such a reliable strike pitch. Cutters (as in cut FBs) flight path to the plate is the most similar to a FB. Next would be slider. So cutters are really used relative to FBs because the flight path matches so well. And you really don’t talk about cutters as a singular pitch for starters. However, closers and starters are two different animals.
So hitters see a starter 2 maybe 3 times a game these days. They usually get multiple FBs per at bat, so they get a read on the starters FB. And hitters do this day in day out. So their swings get grooved to FBs. Starters use cutters to “keep hitters off” their FBs one could say. As a pitch with less movement (which would seem to make it easier to hit) but enough of a difference from a 4 seam FB, with a very similar flight path, that hitters seeing 4 seam miss hit cutters.
So above is a graph of big league cutters for this year. The bulk of the cutters fall in the red box I annotated. They move maybe 3” to 5” horizontally (one to two ball widths) or less for the most part, which isn’t a lot. If you knock out gravitational effects and just talk spin, you are talking 3” to 5” vertical movement also. So maybe 1 to 2 ball widths left/right and the same top/bottom as far as spin effects go. I annotated the graph with a couple guys so you could get a feel for where your guy Clase sits @Criznit.
His cutter is one of the “best” MLB wide – he sits there with Corbin Burns and for reference, that dot right under his picture is Kenley Jansen the Dodgers closer. You can see his cutter is definitely not the normal cutter that hitters see. What makes it different is he gets a tremendous amount of lift from the spin rate that has it be far removed from the norm. And in pitching, you want to be at least 2 standard deviations off the norm to have an elite pitch. Horizontally, it is in the average range but it is that lift that makes it special. So he has about the normal Horizontal movement (3”, about one ball width) but maybe 8” (3 ball widths) of extra rise over the average.
So @Criznit, his cutter has a lot more movement than the norm, but cutters just don’t move much
If cutters are straight, why do they work.
Cutters don’t move much. They have the least movement in an arsenal. That is what makes them such a reliable strike pitch. Cutters (as in cut FBs) flight path to the plate is the most similar to a FB. Next would be slider. So cutters are really used relative to FBs because the flight path matches so well. And you really don’t talk about cutters as a singular pitch for starters. However, closers and starters are two different animals.
So hitters see a starter 2 maybe 3 times a game these days. They usually get multiple FBs per at bat, so they get a read on the starters FB. And hitters do this day in day out. So their swings get grooved to FBs. Starters use cutters to “keep hitters off” their FBs one could say. As a pitch with less movement (which would seem to make it easier to hit) but enough of a difference from a 4 seam FB, with a very similar flight path, that hitters seeing 4 seam miss hit cutters.
So above is a graph of big league cutters for this year. The bulk of the cutters fall in the red box I annotated. They move maybe 3” to 5” horizontally (one to two ball widths) or less for the most part, which isn’t a lot. If you knock out gravitational effects and just talk spin, you are talking 3” to 5” vertical movement also. So maybe 1 to 2 ball widths left/right and the same top/bottom as far as spin effects go. I annotated the graph with a couple guys so you could get a feel for where your guy Clase sits @Criznit.
His cutter is one of the “best” MLB wide – he sits there with Corbin Burns and for reference, that dot right under his picture is Kenley Jansen the Dodgers closer. You can see his cutter is definitely not the normal cutter that hitters see. What makes it different is he gets a tremendous amount of lift from the spin rate that has it be far removed from the norm. And in pitching, you want to be at least 2 standard deviations off the norm to have an elite pitch. Horizontally, it is in the average range but it is that lift that makes it special. So he has about the normal Horizontal movement (3”, about one ball width) but maybe 8” (3 ball widths) of extra rise over the average.
So @Criznit, his cutter has a lot more movement than the norm, but cutters just don’t move much
If cutters are straight, why do they work.
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