Early Signs are Good for Kyle Gibson’s Cutter

The 2020 baseball season did not go as planned for Kyle Gibson. Of course, that’s likely a fair statement for all players given obvious 2020-specific reasons. Gibson, however, did not get off to a particularly encouraging start with the Rangers after agreeing to a three-year, 30-million dollar deal in late 2019.

After dealing with ulcerative colitis in 2019, the narrative around Gibson was that he was a potential rebound candidate; someone the Rangers were buying relatively low on given a solid track record with the Twins as well as the going price for starting pitching. Gibson’s deal also fit the mold of other recent deals the Rangers have inked with starting pitchers: Mike Minor and Lance Lynn had each signed three-year deals worth roughly 10 million in AAV ahead of the 2018 and 2019 seasons, respectively.

Unfortunately for Gibson and the Rangers, 2020 seems largely a continuation of Gibson’s 2019 struggles. To his credit, Gibson pitched each turn through the rotation in what were truly unique 2020 circumstances, but a 5.39 FIP motivated by career-high walk and home run rates gave way to just 0.1 fWAR. Things would have been much worse too if not for his final three starts, which included two scoreless outings, one of which was a complete game shutout.

Baseball has a way of (sometimes misleadingly) inspiring hope, however rough seasons past might have been. Kyle Gibson came into spring training intent to leverage a normal length pre-season schedule in addition to a new cutter in 2021 in order to induce softer, lower-launch angle contact. Given this intent, here is a quick look at Gibson’s pitch usage in 2021.

To start though, a quick disclaimer: it is simply not far enough into 2021 to make any real assertions about Gibson’s pitch usage, nor is it safe to arrive at any conclusions regarding his cutter. All told, Gibson has thrown just 13.1 innings and 200 pitches in the young 2021 season. Still, given one atrocious Opening Day start and two very solid subsequent ones, it is an interesting exercise to engage in. All data have been provided by Baseball Savant.

First, pitch location and type data have been pulled from Baseball Savant in order to visualize, in a sentence, “what Gibson has been throwing and where“. Scatterplots have been split between pitches to right-handed batters and left-handed batters.

At a glance, it appears as though Gibson primarily uses his sinker (in pale green) against RHHs and largely throws it for strikes. Given the arm-side movement of a sinker and this chart, it looks like Gibson works to get the sinker in on/under batters’ hands. Alternatively, the other pitches he’s primarily relied on to RHHs to this point, the cutter (~89mph) and slider (~83mph), have been generally thrown low and away to batters. This makes intuitive sense as those pitches break away from RHHs’ barrels. Those two pitches are less often in the zone too, suggesting he’s using them in induce chases.

Gibson’s fastball usage against LHHs to this point appears fairly split between the two- and four-seam variety. Together, they are thrown over 50% of the time to those batters and have largely been thrown in the zone. The cutter meanwhile, which breaks toward LHHs in the same way his sinker breaks toward RHHs, has been thrown more inside to LHHs than it is to righties, though he doesn’t use it much against opposite-side hitters.

Next, a breakdown of when Gibson has been employing his various pitches.

From this view, it looks like the slider has been Gibson’s primary put-away pitch to RHBs, although he does throw sinkers in 2-strike situations fairly often as well. Meanwhile, the cutter appears to be something used earlier in at-bats theoretically to induce weak contact, which Gibson has stated is a primary purpose of that pitch.

Interestingly, Gibson has four times already employed get-me-over first pitch curveballs to left-handed batters. In general, his pitch mix is more varied those LHHs than RHH; each of his six pitches, by Baseball Savant’s classifications, have been used at least 7.5% of the time.

So how has the implementation of the cutter performed for Gibson? As a pitch turned to most often against same-side (RHH) hitters, the early results are at least cautiously promising.

While the sample size is minuscule, Gibson has indeed managed to limit quality contact. Of his six pitches, Gibson’s cutter features the lowest average exit velocity (81.9mph) and the second lowest launch angle (12 degrees; contact on Gibson’s sinker has averaged just 2 degrees). WOBA and xWOBA on the pitch return positive results as well coming in at .227 and .240, respectively. For now, it appears to be a good complement to his arsenal for inducing early at-bat contact against right-handed hitters. To this point, it has been a success. Gibson, and the Rangers, surely hope to see more of the same going forward.