What’s up, everybody!
I’m in the midst of releasing my annual pitch review series, where I take a look back at the five best pitches of each pitch type from 2024, as ranked by PLV! Today, I’m taking a look at the five best cutters from last year.
If you’d like a closer look at what this series is about, check out the first article in the series on the five best changeups of 2024, and also check out my five best curveballs of 2024 as well. And if you’d like an in-depth primer on what PLV is and how it works, check it out here.
Anyway, let’s dive into the five best cutters of 2024!
5. Bailey Ober
We’ve got a double appearance in the series! Bailey Ober was featured in the best changeups of last year and also features here with one of the better cutters in the game.
What’s even more impressive is Ober just added this cutter last year (or if you ask Baseball Savant, it’s a slider, but tomato tomahto) and if his goal was to add a pitch to his arsenal to cause problems for left-handed hitters, he succeeded.
Ober would often jam lefties with his cutter, locating it middle or low and gloveside over 80% of the time, and lefties had problems with it, as they had a 40.2% chase rate and 11.9% swinging-strike rate against it, both of which are great numbers.
Righties had less trouble with the pitch, posting a .368 wOBA against the pitch, so in some ways it’s still a work in progress, but if Ober can refine this pitch to be effective against hitters from both sides of the plate, it’ll pair really well with his fastball/changeup approach.
After a handful of seasons with pretty middling results, Jameson Taillon posted his best ERA since 2019 last year at 3.27 alongside a 1.13 WHIP over 165.1 innings, and a large reason for that was his focus on this cutter.
More than half of what Taillon throws is either his four-seamer or his cutter. The four-seamer does okay, but it got destroyed by left-handed hitters last year to the tune of a 47.2% ICR and .383 wOBA against.
The cutter, on the other hand, does a great job limiting hard contact, as opposing hitters had just a .270 wOBA and 35.3% ICR against the pitch. It also gets a ton of called strikes (21.9% called strike rate, good for 90th percentile among cutters).
Taillon also has a sweeper and curveball he uses, neither of which are especially great strikeout pitches. In fact, if there’s one main issue with Taillon, it’s that he really doesn’t have a strikeout pitch. He throws loads of strikes and does a decent job at limiting hard contact, but he posted just an 18.5% strikeout rate last year, which limits his ceiling in fantasy unless he makes some tweaks.
Spencer Arrighetti is one of those guys where I trust the stuff a little more than I trust the mediocre results he had last year.
Yeah, a 4.53 ERA isn’t great, but you know what is? A 27.1% strikeout rate. And the raw stuff that he has looks like it has the potential to really be something special.
Arrighetti has a great fastball that comes in at 94.1 mph on average and comes with an amazing 7.2 feet of extension and a great height-adjusted VAA of 1.6 degrees.
And on top of that, Arrighetti has a series of secondaries that work well, including this cutter, which he throws for a lot of strikes. The pitch had a 60.6% zone rate last year (good for 93rd percentile among cutters) and a 20.2% called strike rate (80th percentile).
Alongside the fastball and cutter, Arrighetti tosses in a curveball and sweeper that work well as swing-and-miss pitches and occasionally peppers in a changeup too.
Arrighetti has legit strikeout stuff, and with another year in the majors to develop, I think we could see some really cool things from him.
Nick Martinez started the year off as a reliever, but once he moved to becoming a starter full time in August, he went on a tear, to the tune of a 2.42 ERA, 0.90 WHIP, and a 22% strikeout rate through 11 starts. It was nuts.
Now, I don’t think Martinez is a guy who’s going to do that again, but I do think there’s some value to be had assuming he has a full-time role in the Reds’ rotation (more on that in a second).
Martinez throws a bunch of different pitches and doesn’t really have one pitch that dominates his arsenal. His four-seamer, changeup, cutter, and sinker are all thrown around 20% of the time, and all of them have their usefulness. Martinez likes to use his four-seamer in two-strike counts more than your average guy, and with the 17.5 inches of vert it gets, it’s no surprise. The pitch posted a 36.7% chase rate (which is pretty wild for a four-seamer) and an 11.6% swinging-strike rate.
The changeup is a fantastic swing-and-miss pitch too, posting a 47.9% chase rate (95th percentile among changeups) last year alongside a 33.7% CSW (95th percentile as well).
But the cutter is what we’re here to talk about, and Martinez’s cutter worked well last year. It wasn’t a big whiff pitch or anything, more of a pitch he uses to get a strike when he needs one, posting a 57.7% zone rate with the pitch last year (87th percentile among cutters).
It did a solid job of getting called strikes and was pretty solid at inducing weak contact, with a .305 wOBA and 34.9% ICR against it.
I’d love to see Martinez in a consistent role as a starter. He’s certainly got an interesting repertoire and could really turn into a consistent, good starting pitcher. The problem is that the Reds have a lot of options, and Martinez has been moved to the bullpen before. Could he be the fifth starter? I think so (I hope so), but I could also see them bumping him for Graham Ashcraft or someone like that. I’m not sure. It’s well worth paying attention to, though.
This should be no surprise to basically anyone. Emmanuel Clase has led this list many times before and for good reason—his cutter is his bread and butter (the rhyme was an accident, I swear).
Clase has always been really good, but last year was just truly absurd. In 74.1 innings, Clase had a 0.61 ERA with 47 saves. I mean, it doesn’t get much more dominant than that.
And this cutter is where Clase makes his money. He throws it 78% of the time and it averages 99.5 mph with a bunch of movement too.
Last year, it had a 36.8% chase rate (78th percentile among cutters), a 30.4% CSW (68th percentile), a 13.6% swinging-strike rate (66th percentile), and a 31.3% ICR (77th percentile). It’s one of the most dominant pitches among relievers in the game, and it’s a beauty to watch.