Cutting to the Chase with Chad Patrick

Studying the balance of plate discipline metrics on individual pitches can be fascinating. They tell a story, if you look closely enough.

I’m always interested in the opposite ends of the spectrum, and it’s most interesting when a pitcher utilizes those ends at the extremes. Among starting pitchers who have thrown 250 splitters, Yoshinobu Yamamoto occupies both the lowest called strike rate on his splitter (4.2%) and the highest chase rate (27.2%). Yamaoto doesn’t throw the splitter in the zone because he doesn’t have to. Hitters will chase it. When they do, Yamamoto’s splitter earns a 20.1% swinging strike rate, which is well above average. Here’s a visual:

The Pitch Stacker – Splitters (click to enlarge)

This screenshot is taken from a web app I’m developing, where the blue and red dots indicate the last-place (blue) and first-place (red) pitchers utilizing the selected pitch over the threshold. Green represents the average mark among those pitchers. In this case, you can see Yamamoto leading the group of high splitter usage pitchers in chase rate and swinging strike rate, while finishing last in called strikes. There’s still some work to do on the app, but hopefully you can see how this may be useful. The visual provides baseball fans with a better understanding of a pitcher’s approach, allowing them to compare it to a baseline.

That’s what I was doing when I noticed Chad Patrick and his out-of-the-zone cutter. The rookie Brewers starter has one of the highest chase rates on the pitch at 19.9%, well above the average amongst his cutter-throwing peers, 13.5%. By “cutter-throwing” peers, I mean any pitcher who has thrown 200 or more cutters in 2025. There aren’t many of them. Currently, there are only 15, though Nathan Eovaldi is close to making that list longer with 197 cutters thrown.  But among them, Chad Patrick’s cutter shows up on two different ends of the spectrum:

The Pitch Stacker – Cutters (click to enlarge)

Patrick, like Yamamoto, is forcing hitters to chase, but rarely getting called strikes. Now, notice Taijuan Walker at the opposite end of the “CStr%” spectrum. His 26.0% called strike rate is due to a much different approach. Let’s compare both pitchers’ cutter heatmaps to righties to see how this works:

Clearly, Patrick is working the outer edge against righties, and Walker is either trying to do that or he is more confident in letting the pitch work more of the zone. Let’s get more of the story and flip the heatmaps to view each pitcher’s cutter against lefties:

Patrick is certainly bringing the cutter in the zone more often against lefties, but Taijuan is still letting it eat. Another way to think about comparing this approach is in each pitch’s zone rate, and PitcherList provides a nice L/R split for pitchers:

So clearly, the “C” in Chad stands for “Here comes the Cutter.” Patrick’s 45.2% overall cutter usage is second among qualified pitchers, to only Corbin Burnes‘ 54.1%. But is more really better? No one said it was a competition, but it is a competition. Which pitch has performed better?

Walker wins in each category, but are you willing to call that a clear win? Both pitches have performed fantastically well. Both limit hard contact; the major league average HardHit% is 40.6%, and both have been stingy to hitters. Tired of looking at the peripheral aspects of these two pitches and want to just see them instead? Ok, here’s something fun to do. Go to Chad Patrick’s baseball savant page and click the “Random Video” button under his picture. What are the chances that you get a video of a cutter? Oh, it’s ok, stay here on FanGraphs. I’ll provide the links:

Random Video 1

Random Video 2

Random Video 3 (the fun one)

Are we still comparing Cutters? Here’s one view of Taijuan’s cuty to a righty:

Searched for Video 1

Now you’ve seen it. Can you tell how good it is? Let’s let Stuff+ explain that for our sorry human eyes. Patrick’s cutter scores out to a well above average 108, and Walker’s to a 96. Ok, ok, but which one is located better? Location+ thinks Chad is a 100 and Taijuan is a 110. So, Stuff+ tells us that Patrick’s cutter is “nastier” and Location+ mostly tells us what we already know about each pitcher’s approach. But if we use Baseball Savant to help us visualize each pitch’s movement, we may be getting closer to crowning an FC:

No kidding? Patrick and Walker have an identical movement profile, with each pitch gaining 4.1 more inches of rise than the average righty and 0.8 more inches of break. Here we have another piece of evidence that these two pitches are very similar, yet are being used in entirely different ways. Taijuan Walker has been on our fantasy radar for years, but Patrick is a rookie, and if you want to know if he is a viable fantasy starter, look no further than our own FanGraphs experts:

Jake Mailhot, May 13th:

He’s survived by inducing a ton of weak contact in the air, which has served him well so far, but it’s also the same reasony why his xFIP is 4.42, more than a run higher than his ERA. Still, over his last three starts, his strikeout-to-walk ratio is a very good 4.67 and he’s improved as he’s adjusted to pitching in the big leagues for the first time.

Jeff Zimmerman, May 18th:

He’s been able to keep the ball in the yard (26% GB%, 0.7 HR/9) and suppress his ERA (3.35 ERA, 4.63 xFIP). Streamable starter for now.

Paul Sporer, May 21st:

Definitely feels like some smoke and mirrors here w/the ERA and K-BB disconnect but part of me believes in MIL’s ability to cultivate these types w/Contreras behind the dish, their defense as a whole, and strong bullpen

So, which pitch is better? We won’t know until the clock strikes “end of season” and we return to your favorite way of judging the goodness of a pitch. What we do know, thankfully, is that there’s a lot of season left. Patrick may get found by righties. They may decide to swing less often if they can identify his cutter. Taijuan may have a game or two where he loses the feel, and those in zone cutters end up as out-of-yard taters. For now, both pitchers remain valuable members of their rotations, Patrick with a 2.97 ERA and 1.25 WHIP and Taijuan with a 2.97 ERA and 1.30 WHIP, making it ever more clear that there’s no right way to utilize a cutter.