I straight-up need help understanding what's going on w/ Dodd's Cutter/Slider thing.
Last year he seemed to be working to make them two different pitches. However, early in 2024 they seemed to be melding into the same pitch & that pitch seemed more Slider-like to me - the pitch's velo was down for 7 consecutive starts from early April thru mid May & it's movement was starting to have some consistency to the glove-side (except for his April 11 start where it moved arm-side a lot). However, over his past 3 appearance (2 starts & yesterday's 2-inning relief appearance) he's started throwing pitch harder & the number of times that the pitch ends up doing a back-up / arm-side / seam-shifted wake sort of thing has increased. Here's a sampling of things:
- prior to 5/19 the % of time this pitch moved arm-side for him was just under 1:4 (24.0%)
- over his last 3 appearances that % has increased to 31.9%, w/ the number really sky rocketing in the last 2 (41.5%); this happened on over half the Cutter/Slider things he threw yesterday (5 out of 9).
So, what's the goal for his pitch? W/ the way the pitch moved yesterday, he had no pitch that he could throw that would move glove-side consistently, because he shelved his slow Curveball during that relief appearance. Can a pitcher survive only throwing pitches that move arm-side? Is that even what he's going for?
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