The Three-Fastball Solution
Is this Pitch Design 3.0? Plus, Coaches4Hire.
About five years ago, a burger spot opened on my old street in New York’s East Village. But there was a distinction, a modifier. Not burgers, smashburgers. The hamburger, as a culinary dish, had always contained multitudes: various shapes, methods of preparations, bun customs, topping combos. Turning the thinner, crispy-edged burgers seared on a griddle — usually with the not-too-much triad of cheese, caramelized onions and secret sauce — into their own genre was both marketing and taste instruction. Yeah, that’s a burger, but what’s it like?
Fastballs are kind of like burgers. The great ones never get old, the bad ones make you sick, and the rest (the meaty middle?) tend to blur together.
When I wrote about Cam Schlittler last week, the Yankees phenom now sporting a 2.43 ERA through 21 career starts, it occurred to me that he might spark a smashburger moment for the humble heater.
Schlittler throws a fastball on 88.5% of his pitches, which is an especially high percentage for a starting pitcher in an era where fastball usage is waning leaguewide. It’s down to 54.4% so far this season, declining as sure as velocity is rising. Among notable recent starters, Schlittler’s sort of sustained fastball diet is associated with Lance Lynn, late-stage Bartolo Colon and very few others.
As you might have gathered, it’s not all the same fastball. While the pitch design revolution has understandably trained a spotlight, or at least a high-speed camera, on more narrowly defined secondary pitches like the sweeper or splitter or kick-change, pitchers have also been picking up new fastballs, lots of them. Schlittler and Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet have showed how premium velocity with small directional variations can create nightmares for hitters.
They are just the flashiest arms among a surge of starters consistently throwing three different fastball variations: Four-seam, sinker, cutter. After years of watching new bendy pitches, the most meaningful trend in pitching right now might be a story of subtle variety.
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It’s easiest to think about the pitch design era in two stages.
