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Q. What is a cut fastball, again?
A. An average fastball is 92 MPH, and sails armside -- for Paxton "armside" is away from a RH hitter, of course, which means "onto the barrel of his bat."
A slider is 84 MPH, or -8 MPH. It breaks gloveside, and it breaks down. It's really a hard curve ball. For Paxton "gloveside" is into a right hand hitter.
A cut fastball is 89 MPH, or -3 MPH. It breaks gloveside, like a slider, but (normally) does not break down. For Paxton, it breaks in on a RH hitter, and is (normally) used to create contact off the handle of the bat.
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Q. James Paxton throws a cut fastball?
A. He didn't last year. Pitch F/X gives 3% as the number he threw. That's what I remember, too.
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Q. He threw them tonight?!
A. He threw 17 of them, nearly 20% of his pitches, meaning it's a primary pitch. After the game, Zunino called it the key to his game, so it's no accident.
Yes indeedy, this is an evolution in his game.
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Q. And this new pitch was effective?
A. 17 cutters, 14 for strikes. Only 3 put in play. No hits.
First inning: Calhoun hits a tough, knee-high fastball for a double. Trout walks. Paxton gets two strikes on Pujols and .... WHOOOOM, Paxton cuts a fastball, it slides onto the handle of the bat, and there's a 2-hop double play. Out of the inning.*
What was THAT? Dr. D couldn't believe his eyes.
.....
In the fourth inning, with the count 2-1, James Paxton threw a 95 MPH cut fastball (!?!) to Albert Pujols. It sailed in from a 7' high release point, darted across the infield diamond from right to left, and swerved inside onto Pujols' knee. Pujols swung over the top of it, a garbage swing.
Paxton missed with a curve, high, for 2-2. And then Paxton threw a 96 MPH cutter (!!!) to Pujols, and for your viewing pleasure here is that pitch on video. Go to the 0:25 mark.
Have you ever seen that pitch occur in major league baseball? 96, and the batter swings over it like a back-foot slider?
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Q. I thought cutters were thrown to produce contact off the handle?
A. For other pitchers, yeah ... there are a few guys who miss bats with cutters. You might have heard about Mariano Rivera's cutter.
In Paxton's case, the angle on the pitch is so bizarre that they swing over the top of it - especially as it angles down-in through the strike zone. Let me know, the next time you see a big league hitter (let alone Albert Pujols) swing OVER a high nineties pitch!
Also go to 0:31 on the MLB video. Same thing -- using the cutter as though it were a Randy Johnson back-foot slider. Paxton gets a hilarious angle on the pitch.
Here, look at this chart from Brooks:
There are exactly 17 pitches in the red circle. F/X calls these 17 pitches "cut fastballs." But as you can clearly see, the pitches in the blue circle are also cut fastballs. It's just that a does not compute. You might as well try to get F/X to compute .
I don't know if James Paxton can actually replicate these pitches in future games. The rest of the world had better blinkin' hope not.
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Q. Wow, 14 of 17 cut fastballs for strikes.
A. It had a remarkable "smoothing" effect on Paxton's game. He got strikes at will with it, using it in 3-ball counts.
Paxton did not napalm the Angels with a Koufax-Kershaw game, high fastballs vs overhand curves. I don't remember a single first-pitch curve ball, and he threw very few high fastballs.
This was, surprisingly, a virtuoso performance, a CC Sabathia performance. It was simply amazing.
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Q. Does this make Paxton a THREE pitch starter?
A. It does, yes. He was throwing the cut fastball as a safety net. It is a different pitch than his "heater."
Take all the guys with real control of an 88-91 cutter, and the list is like the above pitchers plus CJ Wilson, Cole Hamels, etc. They don't walk people, because when they're behind in the count they can always just Throw. A. Cutter.
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Q. Why does he strike out the side, and then go sit on the bench looking shellshocked. Like somebody just slaughtered his family before his eyes.
A. This team has some characters, doesn't it? There's something for everybody.
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Q. How was the curve?
A. You saw the same game I did. The Angels looked blindfolded.
Scroll to 0:15 on this video, and to 0:35, and 0:48 ... they didn't have my fave pitch, where Paxton bounced it way in front of the plate and got strike three.
They couldn't see it. It's the high front side, the glove, the 7' high release point, the angle of the pitch coming in like it's a fastball. He threw 17 yakkers, they swung 11 times, and 0 were put into play.
0.
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Q. How was the changeup?
A. Rudimentary. He spiked it into the dirt half the time. The other half, he was doing the hitters a favor. Fortunately, he only threw six or eight.
Hey, James, the cutter is already overkill. Lose the change. That's for year three, seriously. Go check Sabathia and Kershaw.
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Q. The fastball?
A. Fastest pitch, 98.7 MPH. That's pushin' a hundred, man. He wasn't far off of Randy Johnson velo.
Brooks had him at 95.6 MPH average ... I'm not super sure, though, that the 9 changeups aren't actually slower fastballs. A couple were. I dunno.
Stephen Strasburg's velocity last year was 95.3. Remember, now, lefty velocity is effectively +2 MPH compared to righty velocity.
........
The command was fair to good. He didn't have Sabathia or Price command, that's for sure. He didn't need it. Just "here it is, hit it."
4th inning, he came at Trout with nothing but challenge fastballs. 7 pitches, all but one of them fastballs ... 94, 96, 96, 97, 97, and Trout couldn't catch up. Finally Trout did dial it up and line one into left field. But the point is, Paxton went out there with chest bared against machine guns, and he was bulletproof. His heater was that good.
........
As the game went on, Blowers said on TV "we're getting a lot of WOW!'s from the other press boxes up here."
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Q. Are you being tongue-in-cheek about the Cy Young contention for 2014?
A. Well, there's only one hedge we'll make here. ;- ) People better hope that James Paxton (1) can't replicate that cut fastball, and they better hope that (2) he can't throw that many strikes.
'cause if he can, he's going to be better than Michael Pineda was in 2011.
Be Afraid. Be VERY Afraid,
Dr D
Doc, how many pitchers, ever, have their 1st 5 starts with a line of 4 wins, 0 losses, 31 innings, 17 hits, 4 ER's and 30 K's?
None, maybe? I mean could Whitey Ford have been any better over 5 starts? 4 of Gooden's 1st 5 were great, but he got thrashed in his 2nd (and his 6th).
These 1st five Paxton starts are in rarefied air guys. Tell your grandkids you saw them.
moe
...the recent Mariner example would be King Felix. He went 5-1 with 5 no decisions in his first 11 starts...and in the first six, he allowed 2 XBH. Total. (!)
Dominic Leone has been throwing a mid-90s cutter and 98 fastball as well, which is how he's zipped to the top of the charts.
Doc, to tell you the truth, I kinda liked the changeup.
I liked it as a sort of Ephus pitch. It had to look like a Bugs Bunny-type of deal coming in there and then the next pitch had to look like a Nuke Laloosh-type of deal. I would be interested in seeing what Zunino called on the NEXT pitch all night.
Granted, he shouldn't use it much. But used sparingly, I like it. Pax's 96MPH heater must look like 104, if thrown the pitch after he pulls the string.
Show it a few times, 6 or 8 is fine. Make 'em quiver.
moe
I was "watching" on MLB Gameday last night while listening to the radio, and saw the pitch f/X data on what they called fastballs. 97-98 MPH, not much break, okay, that's his four-seamer. But then there were all these 91-92 MPH listed as fastballs, with hellacious movement, and I'm thinking "what in the world is THAT? Can't be the change-up - there's too many of them and too much lateral movement. Two-seamer? He doesn't throw one of those, does he?" I figured it was just pitch f/X being pitch f/X. Then I got home and sped through the game on the DVR. Holy moley. He just detonated Pujols.
He did go to too many three-ball counts for my liking, running up the pitch count unnecessarily. But like you said, showing the change-up just enough to put it in their minds isn't a bad thing, and he made it through 7 innings.
If he can keep this up the rest of the league won't just be afraid, very afraid; they'll be rocking back and forth in the fetal position, looking for their binky, saying "I want my mommy."
:: daps :: Mo
Your short list of Spectator(TM) Advisories would include ... Miller, Alias Smith and Leone, and who? :- ) Maybe you need to do a Brainstorm article publishing your Adopt-a-List. It's starting to look kinda scary.
Who would be the next position player you liked super well? If any.
I'm not gonna hold it to precisely what Paxton's done, but let's talk ballpark.
Something like >8k per 9, a plus control rate, miniscule ERA, good in hits, nice win streak to start a career, last 4 decades.
2014 James Paxton: 4-0, 1.16 ERA in 31 IP, 17 hits, 30K / 9BB2006 James Shields: 4-0, 1.80 ERA in 25 IP, 23 hits, 22K / 7 BB2012 Yu Darvish: 4-0, 2.30 ERA in 27.1 IP, 21 hits, 29K / 13 BB1999 Randy Wolf: 5-0, 1.75 ERA in 36 IP, 27 hits, 34K / 12 BB2001 Roy Oswalt: 6-0, 1.82 ERA in 39.2 IP, 29 hits, 40K/ 5 BB2012 AJ Griffin: 6-0, 1.64 ERA in 38.1 IP, 33 hits, 36K / 4 BB2008 Noah Lowry: 7-0, 2.45 ERA in 51.1 IP, 40 hits, 44K/ 10BB1981 Fernando-mania: 9-0, 0.50 ERA in 72 IP, 43 hits (!) 68K / 17BB2006 Jered Weaver: 9-0, 1.05 ERA in 60 IP, 32 hits (!) 55K / 15BB
So there's 8 guys to go with Paxton. I left off Ishii (wildness), Ogando (not enough Ks), Livan Hernandez (same)... but I didn't leave a lot of guys off the list who had the Ks and the lossless line. It's just not easy to open a career that way in 4+ starts. You'll have a bad game. Guys will hit you. You'll get a tough luck loss.
None of those things have happened to Paxton yet, though, and most of that company is elite. Randy Wolf is the worst pitcher on there, and when 5 of your 8 comps are HOF* kind of good... well let's just hope Paxton has the same fortune in his career that Oswalt, Weaver, Shields, Darvish and Fernando have in theirs.
~G
I'm going to exclude Darvish as in import. Didn't realize AJ Griffin got off to such a quick start. Pretty darn good group. Tough to hit the ground running when battling nerves and umpires. So now we have an early read on Miller being the best of the Ackley/Seager/Franklin/Miller group and Paxton ruling the Walker/Hultzen/Maruer/Paxton group. As happens quite often one of the lesser (least?) hyped guys turns out to (possibly) be the best player.
Dude was thought of as maybe the second-best college lefty in his original draft to Mike Minor - and Minor is a really good pitcher. Paxton was erratic in college, with all kinds of upside and things to love, but needing some work to repeat his game. It's taken him years to get it repeatable and getting the hang of that nasty cutter in such a short period of time could really be crucial for his immediate development.
Much like how Putz went from "hard-throwing-6th inning reliever" to "top-5 closer" by picking up one pitch in a noodling session with Guardado... except as a starter. Paxton's cutter works a little like Felix's changeup: it's still really hard-thrown so it's not going to hang or float, but it has both movement and velocity deception. Guys swung through it like it was a changeup, but I have no fear of that thing sitting like a T-ball offering over the plate as long as Paxton keeps throwing it to these locations.
I expected him to have a Kershaw-like delay in becoming a 6 or 7 inning pitcher; you've got to figure out what you can throw, how not to get to so many 3-ball counts, how not to labor when you have great stuff... but if Paxton's cutter allows him to jump that learning factor AND gives him a workable approach when he can't find the feel on his curve... watch out.
Or as Doc says, be afraid, be very afraid. Lefties that throw 94-98, dropping that pitch from on high like divine wrath and brimstone vengeance, and can bomb you with a knee-breaking curve or twisting cutter if you ever start timing the heat? Pretty killer.
Doesn't even need the changeup, though he can keep messing around with it if he wants. All good pitchers wanna get better. Right now, though, Paxton is looking very much like the guy I was afraid he'd be in 2 years if we traded him. I was BEGGING us not to trade him for scrap. No Casper-Wellsian returns. But he's here, and now with any luck he'll be here and healthy and demolishing people with that arsenal for a while.
~G
James Paxton's left hand fastball velocity *alone* puts him on a 10-pitcher list with 9 stars and James Paxton.
But that cutter, if it keeps showing up, that's a game changer. It's as if you suddenly gave Hisashi Iwakuma a 95 MPH fastball. :- )