Wendell Cruz-Imagn Photographs
For the previous half decade, Logan Webb has been one of many recreation’s premier starters. He churns out 30-start seasons with ERAs within the 3s like clockwork; that’s nearly precisely his seasonal common since switching to a full-time sinkerballer in 2021. In that span, he’s averaging 4.4 WAR per yr, and he’s topped 200 innings in every of the previous two seasons. This yr, he’s atop the leaderboards once more, with a 2.63 ERA and a pair of.25 FIP by way of 4 begins. However there’s one thing new to see right here, and it’s a change I believed Webb would make for years earlier than he really did, so I feel an up to date look is so as.
Webb’s method was easy and but efficient. He threw three pitches to righties: sinker, sweeper, changeup. Towards lefties, he threw fewer sweepers and extra changeups, and he additionally combined in just a few four-seamers in lieu of sinkers. For probably the most half, although, he alternated his three finest pitches, weighted to go well with the batter he was going through. Right here’s an amazing graphic, courtesy of Baseball Savant’s participant pages, that reveals Webb’s motion profile. I picked 2023 for causes that may change into apparent shortly:
This reveals just a few issues about Webb’s recreation in a single picture. His sinker and changeup transfer very in a different way from the league-average variations of these pitches. His four-seamer, hardly ever thrown, is efficient not due to inherent form, however as a result of it’s completely different from his major fastball. His sweeper is the one factor he throws that breaks glove aspect, and it breaks that means by quite a bit. In case you’re going through Webb, you’re both going to see one thing that tails arduous arm aspect (sinker or changeup) or one thing that shoots arduous glove aspect (sweeper). It’s like going through Clay Holmes or Blake trains for 100 pitches at a time.
That’s fairly robust, nevertheless it’s at the least a solvable puzzle. The place you’re used to seeing the ball go from his arm angle? It’s simply not going there. If one thing comes out of Webb’s fingers and seems, to the hitter, to be proper down the center, it’s paradoxically simple to take that pitch. The motion profiles imply that the whole lot will bend away from that preliminary trajectory.
Regardless of inarguably good uncooked stuff – each PitchingBot and Stuff+ give Webb top-15 stuff grades yr in and yr out – he’s by no means been a strikeout pitcher. The truth is, his swinging strike charges are meaningfully beneath common. A few of that’s as a result of he throws so many sinkers, however even his secondary choices garner fewer whiffs than you’d anticipate for pitches with their traits.
This yr, Webb’s pitch motion plot seems a bit completely different:
That large hole within the center is not a spot. That’s as a result of Webb has added a bridge cutter, a pitch he’s now utilizing nearly as a lot as his glorious changeup. In his 4 begins, he’s thrown that cutter to lefties 1 / 4 of the time.
The thought behind the pitch is easy. Pitching is deception at its core, and Webb was enjoying with one hand tied behind his again on that entrance; he didn’t current lefties with sufficient robust selections about the place the ball would find yourself. He made his method work anyway due to his pristine command, nevertheless it was an uphill battle. Sinkers and sweepers show significant platoon splits. You possibly can solely throw so many changeups to make up for them. Lefties stroll in opposition to him roughly twice as usually as do righties, they usually chase pitches out of the zone much less often whereas swinging extra usually at strikes.
It’s far too early to really feel assured in 2025 splits, however Webb has completely annihilated lefty opposition up to now this yr along with his new cutter in tow. He’s putting out 31.1% of left-handed batters whereas strolling solely 6.7%; for context, he’s run a 22.5% strikeout price and 5.5% stroll price in opposition to all hitters because the begin of 2021. His swinging strike price in opposition to lefties is 12.1%, the perfect mark of his profession. The magnitude of his enchancment nearly actually received’t maintain, however I feel the path will. Regardless of comparable motion, the pitches he throws to lefties when he’s attempting to strike them out are all doing significantly better at that aim:
Logan Webb, Swinging Strike Price vs. Lefties
Pitch
2021-2024
2025
Sinker
5.1%
2.3%
Changeup
14.6%
18.2%
Sweeper
8.8%
17.1%
4-Seamer
12.1%
13.3%
So how does this magical cutter look? Fairly forgettable, to be trustworthy. Right here’s one he threw to I RICE over the weekend in New York:
Boring, proper? Our pitch fashions certain assume so. Uninteresting form, common velocity – the perfect factor about that pitch was its location, however even then, Rice lined it. However that swing wasn’t notably snug, and I can present you why. Right here’s what Webb’s sinker seems wish to lefties:
That’s the motion that you just anchor off of whenever you face Webb: Balls that appear like they’re inside find yourself over the center of the plate. Begin a cutter on the identical preliminary trajectory, and it could have stayed off the plate inside. Likewise, begin a sinker on the trajectory of the pitch that Rice fouled off, and the ball would have tailed off the plate away. That’s why Rice’s swing appeared so awkward; he was leaning out for a pitch that didn’t tail.
The at-bat didn’t finish with a cutter; it ended with this innocuous four-seamer:
Ah sure, middle-middle solves the riddle. In Rice’s protection, that was the one four-seamer he noticed from Webb all day, and if that had been another pitch Webb throws, its motion would have taken it out of the strike zone. That’s my level in all of this: By including to the combination of pitches he throws, and notably by discovering a pitch that fills the center of his east-west motion distribution, Webb has made hitters’ jobs more durable.
Quantifying the worth of this new cutter? That’s a tricky job, one I’m glad I don’t have. Over at Baseball Prospectus, Stephen Sutton-Brown developed a way to quantify the worth of a various pitch combine. This methodology is damaged down into 4 classes known as arsenal metrics. Three of the 4 metrics are largely self-explanatory, and the outputs are in percentiles:
Logan Webb, Arsenal Metrics by 12 months (Percentiles)
12 months
Pitch Kind Likelihood
Shock Issue
Motion Unfold
Velocity Unfold
2024
37
76
32
16
2025
68
81
43
14
Take a look at that. Webb’s pitch sort likelihood percentile shot up. Naturally, that is the arsenal metric that requires a bit extra rationalization. Pitch sort likelihood is “the likelihood the batter would have the ability to accurately determine the incoming pitch sort given the discharge level, the pitch’s trajectory as much as the batter’s resolution level, and the rely during which it was thrown,” per Sutton-Brown’s primer. In different phrases, it measures a pitcher’s capability to confound a batter’s expectations or in any other case maintain him guessing. A better pitch sort likelihood means extra uncertainty for the hitter. Webb was beneath common in that metric final yr, and it wasn’t arduous to see why. Now he’s within the prime third of the league, and his shock issue and motion unfold are trending upward as effectively. His velocity unfold didn’t transfer – the cutter sits in the course of the speeds of the pitches he’d thrown in prior years – however including a cutter and utilizing extra four-seamers has modified the whole lot else.
Webb hasn’t thrown a ton of cutters to righty hitters this yr, and I perceive why. His sinker is borderline unbeatable for righties. They make poor swing selections in opposition to the pitch and in addition hit it on the bottom two thirds of the time that they put it in play, an enviably excessive quantity. His sweeper misses bats and coaxes weak contact when righties provide at it; it’s breaking away whereas they search for sinkers, which makes for uncomfortable, lunging swings in opposition to it. He even has ok command of his changeup to bury it in advantageous counts.
One other mind-set about this: Earlier than 2025, Webb had the instruments to beat righties; sinkers and sweepers thrown by right-handed pitchers are tremendously efficient in opposition to right-handed hitters. Nonetheless, he wasn’t enjoying with a full deck with out the platoon benefit; his finest two pitches are much less efficient in opposition to opposite-handed hitters. To neutralize that drawback, he wanted one thing that slot in between the motion profiles of the remainder of his choices. So he added a cutter, and now he’s two completely different pitchers relying on whether or not he’s going through a righty or a lefty.
Webb hasn’t displayed an anomalous platoon break up in his main league profession; he’s been roughly league common, in reality. However it all the time felt prefer it ought to’ve been worse, and both means, it couldn’t damage for his platoon break up to get higher. “Simply add a cutter” is perhaps an over-prescribed resolution, however for Webb, it seems to be simply the ticket. So, sorry to batters throughout the nation; among the best pitchers in baseball simply obtained measurably higher by including a pitch that doesn’t even look excellent. The sport is unfair generally.
