One month into the season and we are starting to see trends, breakout stars, prospect promotions, and surprising performances. In this scouting notebook, I’ll dive into three players who have been successful so far, and what they’re doing to maintain that success.
Breakout Starter: RHP Kutter Crawford (BOS)
With a 2.54 FIP and 1.56 ERA, Crawford is out to a career-best pace. What stands out to me the most is his adjusted game plan against right-handed hitters. Crawford has made three major changes against righties this season:
- Changed the location of his cutter
- Dropped his gyro-slider in favor of his sweeper
- Stopped throwing his curveball
Cutter Location
Crawford has a 93 mph four-seam with plus ride that he throws to the upper half and above the zone for in-zone miss and chase. His 88 mph cutter has above average cut and depth, and was used to the upper, outer half in 2023. This was likely done to tunnel with the four-seam and then cut away, while the four-seam would rise and run in. The slider and the sweeper were both used to the outer, lower half:
2023 Heat Maps:
This season, he’s started throwing the cutter lower, outer half more frequently and eliminated the slider:
The change in the cutter’s location may be due to the cutter’s above average depth. Pitches with depth often work better lower half or below the zone to prevent hitters from launching them.
So far this season, the average launch angle on his cutter has decreased by 14 degrees to -2 on average and the ground ball rate is 58% (18% more than MLB average).
Change in Gyro-Slider and Sweeper Usage
The table below shows the change in pitch mix for Crawford from last season to this season:
Vs RHH | 2023 Usage: | 2024 Usage: |
Sweeper | 12% | 33% |
Cutter | 30% | 33% |
Four-seam | 36% | 30% |
Slider | 11% | — |
Curveball | 10% | — |
Why did Crawford eliminate the slider?
The gyro-slider was 83 mph on average and had below average sweep and depth. The sweeper is 81 mph on average. While it has below average sweep compared to other sweepers, this pitch still generates a lot of horizontal sweep by nature (as a sweeper by definition is a slider with above average sweep).
Below is a pitch movement chart from 2023. The left visual shows just the slider and the sweeper, and the right visual adds on the cutter.
The chart shows how similar the movement of the cutter and the slider is, as the cutter is nearly covering all the sliders in the visual on the right. Meanwhile, the sweeper has similar depth, but 8 inches more horizontal movement on average compared to the cutter. That, in addition to a wider gap in velocity (8 mph), creates a pitch pair to the outer half that is challenging for hitters.
Curveball Usage
Crawford also stopped throwing the curveball to right-handed hitters in favor of the sweeper. He threw it middle, lower half to righties in 2023:
However, the pitch was not performing well. It had the worst xSLG among his pitches (.662) and a miss rate that was 14% worse than MLB average.
The biggest improvement in results so far from these three changes is that Crawford’s overall hard-hit rate has decreased 10% from that of his career average. His now 26% hard-hit rate puts him in the top 5% of the league.
There are still areas where Crawford can continue to adjust and improve even further, but these changes are a great start to what should be a successful season.
Promising Prospect: Andy Pages (LAD)
Since his MLB debut on April 16, Pages is off to a hot start with a .903 OPS through 17 games.
Two things stick out about Pages — one is consistent with his minor league career and the other we can attribute to a small MLB sample.
- Impressive batted ball profile
- Terrible walk rate
Batted Ball Profile and Barrel Awareness
Pages has average raw power, but uses his power efficiently in games. Looking at his batted ball profile from his professional career, Pages does a great job of putting the ball in the air and hitting line drives.
Season… |
This article was originally published by a theathletic.com . Read the Original article here. .