Welcome back to my pitch review series, where I’ll be taking a look at the five best pitches of each pitch type from last year.
If you haven’t read the first article in the series on the five best changeups from last year, that outlines how this series works, what the prerequisites are to be included and all that fun stuff (plus there are some pretty cool changeups in there too!). Also, check out my piece on the five best curveballs of last year, too.
Today, we’re going to take a look at the five best cutters of last year, as ranked by PLV. So let’s dive in!
5. Noah Cameron
You can’t ask for much more from a rookie season than what Noah Cameron did last year, posting a 2.99 ERA through 24 starts. Was there a little luck involved? Sure, that’s what his 4.18 FIP, .241 BABIP, and 84% LOB rate indicate, but that doesn’t mean Cameron’s success was a total fluke.
Cameron’s cutter is key to his success—the pitch comes in fairly slow at just 88 mph on average, but it’s got loads of induced horizontal break to it and it works beautifully, posting a 33% chase rate (78th percentile among cutters) a 34.5% ICR (71st percentile), and a 47.1% groundball rate (76th percentile).
Cameron’s fastball is the pitch that’s a little scary. It comes in slow, around 92 mph, with not a lot of extension and decent ride, and on top of that, Cameron doesn’t control it very well, posting a 49.7% zone rate with it last year (22nd percentile among fastballs).
That said, it seems Cameron knows this, and as a result, he does a solid job elevating the pitch and avoiding the middle of the plate. And he only throws it around a quarter of the time, instead relying on his secondary stuff. If you’ve got a bad fastball, it’s a good idea not to throw it 60% of the time, as a lot of pitchers do, and luckily, Cameron doesn’t, which should help some with his success, even if he regresses a bit.
It’s been a minute since Patrick Corbin was relevant for fantasy purposes (or even real-life baseball), as he’s been absolutely dreadful since 2020. How bad? Last year’s 4.40 ERA was the best ERA he’s had since 2020.
So why is he on this list? Because in 2024, Corbin added a cutter to his repertoire, and it’s basically been the only pitch he’s got that’s any good. Corbin throws the cutter around a quarter of the time, and it’s another one of those cutters that comes in fairly slow, around 88 mph on average, and it’s a pitch Corbin likes to throw low and glove-side, trailing away from lefties and barreling inside to righties.
And while the pitch posted decent swing-and-miss numbers, including a 33.7% chase rate and 12.3% swinging-strike rate, it’s mainly a pitch Corbin uses early in the count to snag a strike.
The rest of Corbin’s repertoire? Well…it’s not great. The slider isn’t anywhere near what it once was and gets hit really hard on a regular basis, and the sinker gets equally tattooed (both have an ICR over 40%, which is very bad). But hey, he had a pretty cool cutter.
There was a lot of discussion last year over whether Garrett Crochet could truly handle the workload of a full-time starter, like 200+ innings, and be dominant in Boston. Well, he clearly answered those questions emphatically, posting a 2.59 ERA with a 31.3% strikeout rate over 205.1 innings, and a large part of that was thanks to this excellent cutter.
Crochet mainly combines four pitches—his fastball/sinker and cutter work as a combo, and then his sweeper works as a devastating out pitch. The sweeper was almost exclusively used as a two-strike pitch—and justifiably so with its ridiculous 47.6% chase rate and 24.6% swinging-strike rate (98th and 95th percentile among sweepers, respectively)—but the cutter was used for both two-strike pitches and early on in the count.
The pitch comes in around 91 mph on average with a bunch of extension and lots of induced horizontal break. Even better, he was able to locate it exceptionally well, and it did a great job as a swing-and-miss pitch, posting a 32% chase rate (74th percentile among cutters), a 13.2% swinging-strike rate (78th percentile), and a 30.4% CSW (77th percentile).
Obviously, saying Garrett Crochet is pretty good is like saying “boy, Mount Everest is pretty tall.” he’s arguably the best pitcher in baseball right now, and I’d expect more of the same this year.
Back-to-back very solid years now from Ranger Suárez, who has now joined the Red Sox for this season. In 26 starts last year, Suárez posted a 3.20 ERA (the best of his career as a full-time starter) with a solid 23.2% strikeout rate and mainly worked as a SWATCH, working in a changeup as a pretty solid out pitch (a 44.2% chase rate is nothing to shake a stick at).
But we’re here to talk about his cutter, and as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, there are different uses for a cutter. Some pitchers use them as their main strikeout pitch; others, like Suárez, use them as a pitch against opposite-handed hitters to grab a strike early in the count.
Suárez mainly throws his cutter to righties, and he throws it as a high, backdoor pitch to snag a strike early in the count, and it works well. He controls the pitch really well, keeping it in the zone while avoiding the middle of the plate, logging an excellent 71.8% strike rate (87th percentile among cutters).
It’s not a big, amazing strikeout pitch, but as an offering to throw to right-handed hitters alongside his sinker, changeup, and curveball, it works quite well.
Leading the pack of the best cutters of last year is our only reliever of the bunch! Calvin Faucher turned in a solid year last season for the Marlins, posting a 3.28 ERA with a 23.1% strikeout rate, 15 saves, and seven holds in 65 appearances, and this cutter is his bread and butter.
The pitch comes in around 92 mph on average with a good bit of induced horizontal break and an absolute ton of spin. He typically locates it glove-side, tailing away from righties and breaking in on lefties. He generally uses it early in the count as basically his main fastball, working to get strikes.
He controls the pitch well, keeping it in the strike zone, and it does a solid job of inducing weak contact (51.9% groundball rate) and getting called for strikes (20.6% called strike rate).
Faucher also has a sweeper he uses as his main putaway pitch alongside his curveball (the sweeper works a lot better than the curveball), but the cutter is his main thing, and it works quite well.
Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire | Featured image by Ethan Kaplan (@djfreddie10.bsky.social on Blue Sky and @EthanMKaplanImages on Instagram)
