Recently I've been interested in the evolution of Dodd this season, because it has seemed to me that Statcast's possibly incorrect classification of his slider, cutter, & ??? pitches was making it nearly impossible to wrap my head around the movement numbers of his pitches.
So, a little deep dive today utilized this approach:
- sort his games by glove-side moving sliders & cutters & by arm-side moving sliders & cutters; the ones that ended up straight as an arrow ended up not really being considered, but for counting purposes he ended up w/ 20 of those, most which came during his earlier MLB starts of the season (6/14 & earlier)
- he ended up throwing 108 glove-side moving ones & 41 arm-side moving ones.
Here's the conclusions that I'm reaching:
- During his two April MLB starts he threw a single type of cutter/slider thing (consistent velo, spin, & vertical break numbers). Statcast classified them all as sliders, but the vast majority of them (33 of 42) moved arm-side, which makes them more cutter-like in their movement. So, IMO he was trying to throw his slider harder (throwing spinning pitches harder is something the Braves are known to emphasize w/ their pitchers sometimes), but the pitch didn't have much slider-ness, making it more cutter-like.
- During his two May MLB starts he again threw a single type of cutter/slider thing (consistent velo, spin, & vertical break numbers). Statcast again classified them all as sliders & all of these were either straight as an arrow or moved glove-side, which is what one expects from a slider. So, his slider was slider-like in May.
- His lone June MLB start was quite s/t his couple of May MLB starts in that he threw a single type of cutter/slider thing (consistent velo, spin, & vertical break numbers) & almost all of them moved glove-side (3 backed up on him & moved slightly arm-side), but it was nothing like back in April when the vast majority of them seemed to be back-up type sliders (pretty much cutter-like things).
- His Sep & Oct MLB starts are when he seemed to be actually be trying to distinguish between his cutter & slider. I say this because the sliders experienced a velo drop & all of them moved glove-side. He even took that glove-side movement to a different type of level in his Oct start by introducing more horizontal action. His glove-side moving sliders in his Sep start averaged 4.3" of break. However, in his Oct start they averaged over twice that amount (8.9"). While the slider was doing some consistent slider-like stuff, the cutter in those Sep & Oct MLB starts was a bit erratic. The velo on it was definitely up (higher than any cutter/slider thing he was throwing earlier in the year, but he may have actually been over-cutting them. I say this because instead of the vast majority of them traditionally "cutting" by having some slight amount of arm-side movement, instead a large majority (11 of 16) actually moved glove-side a little bit.
So, what I'm left w/ at the end of this is that his cutter/slider things experienced a good bit of variability this season. It seems obvious that he was working on them & by season's end he at least had them distinguished from one another from a velo perspective (78-80 on the slider vs. 84-86 on the cutter). He also seemed to have them distinguished from one another in their vertical movement as well.
However, he's got some work still to do to get the cutter to be more consistent horizontally. Early in the season his cutter/slide thing was predominantly moving slightly arm-side, but by season's end, his cutter was moving more glove-side than it was arm-side.
Does he want it moving like a harder slider that experiences less movement overall, but the movement that it does get comes very late? Or does he want it to move more differently than his slider? Hopefully he's using this offseason to try to figure that out, while also regaining the feel for his changeup that he seemed to lose, & also figuring out why his highly regarded command also seemed off last year.
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