It's Wednesday, which means it's time for us to visit the bump on Hump Day and discuss starting pitcher news. Each week in this article, I'll be taking a deeper look at a few trending/surging starting pitchers to see what, if anything, is changing and whether or not we should be investing in this hot stretch.
The article will be similar to the series I ran for a few years called Mixing It Up (previously Pitchers With New Pitches and Should We Care?), where I broke down new pitches to see if there were truly meaningful additions that changed a pitcher's outlook. Only now, I won't just look at new pitches; I can also cover velocity bumps, new usage patterns, or new roles. However, the premise will remain the same: trying to determine if the recent results are connected to any meaningful changes that make them worth investing in or if they're just mirages.
Each week, I'll try to cover change for at least four starters and give my clear take on whether I would add them, trade for them, or invest fully in their success. Hopefully, you'll find it useful, so let's get started.
Concern about Zack Wheeler’s shoulder and more closer mayhem add to the movement in this week’s update.
Dylan Cease - San Diego Padres (Pitch Mix shakeup, New(ish) Sinker)
It seemed like a given that Dylan Cease would have a much better second half than first half, andI wrote about him as a player I was looking to “buy” before the second half started. However, Cease got off to a rough start out of the gate by allowing seven earned runs on nine hits in 9.2 innings in his first two starts. He has since rebounded and has a 3.92 ERA, 1.21 WHIP, and 34.5% strikeout rate over his last four starts, but even when he struggled out of the break, changes were percolating under the surface that Eno Sarris highlighted during Cease's strong performance against the Red Sox on Sunday.
So let's take a look at what Eno is talking about, splitting Cease's pitch mix data from before his July 23rd start and after.
Dylan Cease Pitch Mix | |
| Four-Seam | Sinker | Slider | Sweeper | Curve | Change |
| Last 4 starts | 38% | 9.80% | 32.40% | 4.80% | 14.40% | 0.00% |
| Before July 23rd | 41% | 2.40% | 46.90% | 1.20% | 6.70% | 1.80% |
Yeah, there are some major changes going on there. In his earlier stretch of the season, Cease was essentially an 88% four-seam fastball and slider arm. He wasn't truly a two-pitch pitcher, but he was essentially a two-pitch pitcher. Over his last four starts, he has used his four-seam and slider 70.4% of the time, and that combination was used just 63% of the time in his last start. On the surface, we love when a pitcher deepens his arsenal, so let's see if we should love what Cease is doing.
The two biggest shifts in pitch mix usage above are the increase in Cease's curveball usage and the decrease in his slider usage.
Over these last four starts, the curve has become a weapon for Cease against lefties. He's using the pitch 21% of the time to lefties over his last four starts and just 6% against righties. In his previous 20 starts, he used the curve 10% to lefties. Cease uses the pitch early in the count 66% of the time to lefties and produced a strong 36.4% called strike rate against lefties on it over this stretch. He keeps it low 68% of the time and tries to keep it away from lefties as well. His 36% zone rate on the curve to lefties is below average, and it doesn't get tons of chases out of the zone, but it does have an above-average swinging strike rate, so he's been successful with it in the zone, and it has worked as an early-in-the-count called strike offering.
The increased curveball usage has come at the expense of some of his slider usage to lefties. In his last four starts, Cease is throwing the slider to lefties 26% of the time, but he had been using it 42% of the time to lefties in his first 26 starts. Over that stretch, the slider did have a 23% swinging strike rate (SwStr%) to lefties but also a 50% Ideal Contact Rate (ICR) allowed with a 23.5% HR/FB rate and a 91 mph average exit velocity. It simply gave up too much contact. In dialing back the usage of it, Cease has made it harder for lefties to sit on his slider, which is why the ICR is down to 33% and the average exit velocity has fallen to 82 mph. It's a small sample, but it's worth noting.
Another change has been the increase in sinker usage, primarily to righties. Cease has been using the sinker 14% of the time to righties over his last four starts, with his four-seam usage falling to 30% against right-handed hitters. Cease has kept his sinker up and in against righties lately, with a 57% high-location and a 61% inside location to righties. That has led to an 80% groundball rate over his last four starts, with just two singles allowed.
The pitch isn't going to miss tons of bats, but he can jam righties inside with it and then use his four-seam fastball up in the zone off of it. Cease has come inside to righties with his four-seamer a bit more over the last four games and kept it up in the zone 3% more often, which has led to a slight increase in swinging strike rate. Since he also now has the sinker as an early-in-the-count pitch, he's been using the four-seamer 34% of the time in two-strike counts, up from 27% early in the season, and has seen a 3% increase in PutAway Rate, which measures how often a two-strike pitch becomes a strikeout.
After digging in further, we love these changes for Cease. He still has plenty of swing-and-miss upside, but a deeper arsenal has the potential to reduce the hard contact he allows and still allow his primary offerings to succeed by making him less predictable. We're still all in on the Dylan Cease second-half surge.
Cristian Javier - Houston Astros (Season Debut)
One week after Spencer Arrighetti returned from the injured list, his teammate Cristian Javier made his season debut with an impressive performance against the Red Sox on Monday. Javier allowed a single to Roman Anthony and then a two-run home run to Alex Bregman to start the game, but bounced back to throw five shutout innings and allow only one more hit. On the day, he allowed two runs on three hits with two walks and five strikeouts while posting a 25% whiff rate and 27% CSW.
So did things also look like under the hood?
The short answer is: Yes. Javier sat at 93.5 mph on his four-seam fastball, which would be his fastest average velocity on the pitch since 2022. The pitch had 18.7 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB), which is among the best in the league for starting pitchers and means the pitch almost seems to rise as it approaches the plate. He still has a flat attack angle on the pitch, so it's a good thing that he keeps it up in the zone 72.4% of the time. However, as you can see from the image above, a few of those fastballs up were, like, way up. Like, not even close to a strike kind of up. That's not shocking to see from a pitcher who has missed the entire season after undergoing Tommy John surgery, and I'd rather he miss up because I can be confident in the approach here.
Statcast also has Javier "adding" a sweeper this season, but the pitch is 79.1 mph with 17 inches of horizontal movement, and his slider last year was 78 mph with 17.8 inches of horizontal movement. The spin rates on the two pitches are pretty much identical as well, and it feels like just a classification issue. Regardless, the sweeper is a good pitch, and it was his most-used pitch to righties at 38.6% on Monday. He will mix it in against lefties, mainly as a two-strike offering, but I was surprised to see that it had just a 32% low location rate against lefties, and I wonder how much that had to do with subpar command coming off his long layoff. He also had a 39% low location rate to righties, but did a good job of keeping the pitch away, which resulted in a 16% SwStr%. However, he did spin one over the plate to Bregman, which his former teammate hit for a home run, so we still have those command issues and consistency issues coming into play here.
Lastly, I did love that Javier added in a sinker this season and threw it 27% of the time to righties, which was right behind his four-seam fastball usage (34%). The sinker isn't a tremendous pitch in its own right, and he didn't command it particularly well on Monday, throwing far too many over the heart of the plate, but I love the idea of it. Javier had previously been just a four-seam and sweeper pitcher to righties, so he needed a third pitch to deepen his arsenal and set up that sweeper. If he can use the sinker inside and even belt-high against righties, it will help to set up his four-seamers up in the zone and his sweepers away. Of course, as I've said with everything in this write-up, the precision of his command will need to improve as the season goes on.
Overall, this was an impressive debut for Javier against a surging offense. He flashed the stuff that made him a strong starting pitcher in 2022 and even showcased a deeper pitch mix. Throwing 85 pitches in his season debut is a good sign that the Astros aren't going to baby him, and so I'd be adding him in all leagues right now. It may take another start or two for the command to click into place, and maybe it doesn't ever click into place this season, but his upside is too good with this level of stuff to leave him on the wire or allow another team to take the chance it does click.
Cade Cavalli - Washington Nationals (Season Debut)
It's been a long road back for Cade Cavalli. The 26-year-old was the Nationals’ first-round pick in 2020 and was the 39th-ranked prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline, heading into the 2022 season. That ranked him ahead of Jackson Jobe, Eury Perez, and Nick Lodolo, among others. Cavalli made his MLB debut during that 2022 season after posting a 3.71 ERA and 104/39 K/BB ratio in 97 innings at Triple-A.
Unfortunately, Cavalli had Tommy John surgery in March of 2023 and then experienced a setback in early 2024 with a “dead arm” phase. He also experienced some fatigue early this season during his rehab assignment, so his recovery has not been a streamlined process. The 26-year-old remains a "prospect" by definition and ranks as the 10th-best prospect in Washington's system, but there is upside here that we've seen in his first two MLB starts of this season, so let's take a closer look.
As you can see from the Pitcher List game log above from Cavalli's start on Monday, the right-hander leads with his fastball, which is a 97.6 mph pitch that has average extension (6.5 feet) and slightly above average iVB. The shape of the pitch is fairly average, but the velocity is good, and Cavalli has posted a 63% zone rate on the four-seamer through two starts, which shows that he's able to get it in the strike zone to get ahead in the count.
However, so far, Cavalli has thrown 42% of his four-seam fastballs in the middle of the zone (not up or down). That's not ideal, but it's also not unexpected that a pitcher coming off Tommy John surgery and a fatigue setback would showcase inconsistent command. Cavalli has kept his four-seamer away from righties well and has produced a solid 14.7% SwStr% on the pitch against them in his two starts. That's pretty solid, but the shape of his fastball is not ideal, so a lot of his four-seam fastball success likely can be attributed to the fact that he has a sinker that he throws 23% of the time to righties with an 86% inside location rate. Cavalli hasn't done a good job of locating the sinker in the strike zone against righties, but he has done a good job of running it inside, which backs them off the plate and allows the four-seamer to play up when he can get it on the outside part of the zone.
Against righties, Cavalli also uses his curve 32% of the time. The pitch is his bread and butter. It's 85.6 mph with 16 inches of vertical break and seven inches of horizontal movement. In case you're wondering, yes, that's a tremendous amount of vertical movement for a pitch that's essentially 86 mph. He does a good job of keeping his curve low in the zone and keeps it away from righties 68% of the time, which also connects back to that same approach of jamming them inside with sinkers and then using the four-seam and curve away. He still does a good job of keeping the pitch low to lefties, but focuses more on using it middle and inside against them. The curve has registered good SwStr% to both righties and lefties, but has been a more successful two-strike pitch to lefties as his primary two-strike offering, while he'll use his four-seamer more in two-strike counts to righties.
So what you're seeing is a pretty solid approach to righties with a four-seamer and sinker, and then a curve as the primary secondary. He'll also mix in a 94.5 mph cutter that has just 1.2 inches of horizontal movement. I'm not sure why he hasn't used that pitch at all against lefties so far, but I would love to see him use that pitch to attack lefties inside so that he can use his four-seamer up in the zone as a two-strike pitch in the same way he does against righties. It would also allow him to set up a changeup that he uses nearly 27% of the time to lefties and likes to locate away.
The changeup is 89.4 mph, so it's a bit of a power change, with nearly 18 inches of arm-side run. He rarely uses it to righties and has done a good job of locating it in the zone against lefties, but, much like his four-seam fastball, far too many of the changeups have been over the heart of the plate early on. It's missing plenty of bats, with a 28.6% SwStr% to lefties, but has also given up a lot of hard contact.
Through two starts, I've liked what I've seen from Cavalli. The four-seam, sinker, curve combination against righties should provide enough depth to produce strikeouts and keep hitters off the barrel, just like his four-seam, curve, changeup pairing should do for lefties. I'd love to see the cutter come into play more against lefties, but the biggest hurdle for Cavalli will be command. We may not see that click in during the remainder of the 2025 season, but the raw stuff is here, and Cavalli could be emerging as a target for me in 2026 drafts.
60 undervalued players to help you win your fantasy league.
Dustin May - Boston Red Sox (Cutter Usage)
I have to admit, I was pretty out on Dustin May as a fantasy option for the remainder of the 2025 season, and that may not have changed despite his move to Boston. However, he does have a spot in the rotation and is making some clear changes to his arsenal, so I believe he's at least worth discussing.
In his two starts in Boston, May has allowed three runs on 11 hits in 9.2 innings with 12 strikeouts, a 33% CSW, and a 12.6% swinging strike rate (SwStr%). If we look at his pitch mix from his dominant start against the Astros on Tuesday, we can see some pretty clear shifts in his usage patterns now that he's in Boston.
The first thing that stands out to us is that the Red Sox have dialed back the usage of May's sinker. Despite elite GIF content from the pitch, it has never been a great pitch for May. On the season, it has a league average zone rate, a league average strike rate, just a 4.7% SwStr%, and a 47% ICR. So his sinker is average in terms of locations, below-average in terms of swinging strikes, and gives up more hard contact than your average sinker. Essentially, none of that is good despite it being a pitch you look at and say," Wow, that moves a lot."
In his two starts in Boston, May is using the sinker just 18.6% of the time, with a 29% usage to righties and an 8% usage to lefties. Before the trade, he used the sinker 36% of the time with a43% usage to righties and a 31.6% usage to lefties. So this is a pretty drastic change. He's using the pitch 78% of the time early in the count to righties and getting it inside 48% of the time, which is more of an early-count usage than he had with the Dodgers. Yet, a lot of his usage is middle-middle. He has 11% of his sinkers that are over the heart of the plate 48% register as being not in the upper third or lower third of the strike zone. That's a lot and is probably why the pitch gave up an average exit velocity of 100 mph in his start against the Royals.
In addition to reducing his sinker usage overall, May has upped his four-seam usage to righties to 16% from 10.2% and increased his four-seam usage to lefties from 19.4% to 35%. Against lefties, he's now throwing it up in the strike zone 87% of the time, while keeping it away 71% of the time. That's a 22% increase in high location and a 17% inside in outside location from when he was with the Dodgers. It's been primarily a two-strike pitch for him with a 45% usage in two-strike counts, and while that hasn't led to many strikeouts yet, I do like that approach. He has just a 35% zone rate and 48% strike rate on the four-seamer to lefties since coming to Boston, so he may need to locate the pitch better, but I think using it up and in two-strike counts should work for him.
That's because he has really upped his cutter usage, throwing the pitch 24.6% of the time with a pretty equal usage to righties and lefties. When he was with the Dodgers, he threw the cutter just 7% of the time and pretty much only used it to lefties.
Against righties, he keeps the cutter away 48% of the time, but will throw it all over the strike zone from a vertical standpoint. He also uses it 70% of the time early in counts and tries to get ahead with a 65% zone rate. So far, the pitch has a 35% called strike rate to righties in his two starts with the Red Sox and a 13% SwStr%, so he's doing a good job of using it to get ahead and also to pair with his sweeper (more on that below). To lefties, he keeps the pitch inside 64% of the time but primarily uses it belt-high and lower. That sets it up as more of a two-strike offering, and he uses it 37% of the time in two-strike counts, with a 13.6% SwStr% and a 77% zone rate.
So while the cutter may not grade out as a tremendous pitch, he can command it well and is using it to get ahead of righties with a sinker-cutter approach, and get inside on lefties to try and get some swings and misses off of his four-seamer up and away. It also allows him to cut down on his sweeper usage to lefties, which is good because it was a fairly average pitch against lefties and could afford to be used a bit more sporadically.
The cutter usage to righties makes some sense because he's been using his sweeper 70% of the time away from righties and 38% of the time in two-strike counts. The sweeper is 85.3 mph with 17.6 inches of horizontal break and 40.1 inches of vertical break, when accounting for gravity, while the cutter is 91.7 mph with one inch of horizontal movement and 26 inches of vertical break with gravity. Since they come out of his hand at a similar angle and he uses them to attack similar parts of the strike zone, they can play well off of one another. It's part of the reason the sweeper has an 18.2% PutAway Rate and 14% SwStr% against righties with Boston. The pitch had just an 11.9% SwStr% with the Dodgers when he was trying to bury it low in the zone more often.
These changes remain a work in progress for May, and he still doesn't have a pitch that looks like it will truly dominate. However, that might be just another reason why it's great to see him take an approach that uses four pitches almost equally. Despite his velocity and ridiculous movement, he has never missed bats consistently, so he needs to refine an approach that sets his pitches up for success by playing them off of one another. I'm not sure the Red Sox have suddenly "fixed" Dustin May, but I do like the direction he's heading in.
Ryan Bergert - Kansas City Royals (Sweeper Usage, Four-Seam Fastball Location)
As of this writing, I'm not even sure if Bergert has a locked-in spot in the Royals' rotation, but I think he should. The 25-year-old has a 2.87 ERA, 1.09 WHIP, and 23% strikeout rate over 47 innings split between the Padres and Royals, and has seemed to take his game to another level this season. As Eric Longenhagen wrote in his mid-season prospect update on FanGraphs, “[Bergert] and the Padres have made successful changes to his delivery and pitch mix that have his fastball playing better in 2025 than ever before. Berget’s arm slot has been raised, and he’s added a tick of velo, now sitting 94 with more pure vertical movement because of his new release point.”
So, let's follow a fellow Eric and start with the fastball. Bergert has a 93.5 mph fastball with elite 18 inches of Induced Vertical Break (iVB), which is vertical movement created by the backspin of the baseball. The MLB average iVB for starting pitchers is 14.8 inches, so Bergert gets far more backspin, which causes his fastball to sort of "rise" as it approaches home plate.
A fastball like Bergert's will play well up in the zone, which is why he has used it up in the zone 70% of the time since coming to Kansas City. We'll get to more changes that the Royals have made in his two starts with them, but this is a big one since he used his four-seamer up in the zone only 46% of the time with the Padres. This is a massive increase. Bergert has posted a 7.4% SwStr% on the four-seamer with the Royals, but keeping the pitch up in the zone is ideal for its shape, allowing him to register just a 28.6% ICR and a 31.5% CSW. Yes, it's a limited sample, but that's better than the 39% ICR and 25% CSW he had on the pitch with the Padres, so considering we believe this is the proper path forward for Bergert's four-seamer, we can be excited by these results in two starts.
There were some other changes that Longenhagen pointed out in Bergert's arsenal as well: "Bergert has added a second breaking ball, a slower, low-80s sweeper that functions like a strike-stealing curveball against lefties and occasionally gives righties a chase breaking ball with a different shape to worry about."
The sweeper that Longenhagen is discussing is an 83 mph pitch with 15 inches of horizontal movement, which is a lot of movement for a pitcher who also gets that much backspin on a fastball. Using the wrist motion needed to get backspin on the four-seam fastball runs counter to the spin needed to get that much sweep on a slider, so the pairing is not as common as we'd think. But the sweeper is a nice pitch for Bergert because it differs enough from his 87 mph slider, which has just 4.6 inches of horizontal movement and four inches less vertical drop.
As you can see from Alex Chamberlain's Pitch Leaderboard, the Royals have leaned into Bergert's sweeper. The only two appearances he has in August are the two starts he made for the Royals, and you can see his sweeper usage exploded up to 26%. In those two starts, he used the sweeper 30% of the time to lefties, which is up from 12% in his first 11 appearances. That hints a little bit at how Bergert likes to use the pitch. A sweeper to an opposite-handed hitter is usually not a productive approach, but Bergert has kept his sweeper away from lefties 47% of the time in his last two starts while keeping it in the middle or lower third of the strike zone 63% of the time. Considering he has good command of the pitch, with a well-above-average zone rate, he's able to get tons of called strikes on his backdoor sweepers.
However, you can also see from the chart above that his sweeper is a bit different now that he's in Kansas City. The pitch is almost two mph slower with over three inches more horizontal movement and two inches more drop. has also increased his swinging strike rate on the pitch since coming to the Royals. That has allowed him to register a 12.5% SwStr% on the pitch to righties, up from his season-long mark of 11% and has just made the pitch more effective overall.
So we have a fastball with elite vertical movement that he keeps at the top of the zone and two versions of a slider that he commands well in the zone and leaves low. This is the foundation of a pretty solid starting pitcher. I would still love to see another good offering for lefties and, as Eric Longenhagen said, "Berget is a good changeup away from being in the 50 FV tier." If we can see Kansas City help him optimize his changeup, then we could see Bergert take off. They just need to keep him in the rotation first.
Matthew Pouliot
