GOODYEAR, Ariz. — Now-veteran Cincinnati Reds catcher Tyler Stephenson knew exactly the question that was going to be asked — it’s one I’ve asked him before, actually several times. Who has the nastiest pitch in camp?
This is a fun exercise for me every year as I get to learn more about pitching and catching from this simple question. A big part of a pitch qualifying as “nasty” is that it stands out from others and is different than other pitches that may technically be the same, but they’re different when they leave the hand of certain guys.
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“Who did I say last year?” Stephenson asked, rhetorically as he scanned the Reds clubhouse in Goodyear.
Last year he picked Nick Lodolo’s breaking ball (he calls it a curveball, others call it a slider), a popular choice ever since Lodolo’s joined the team — and one that got a vote this year and was also mentioned.
So what did Stephenson ultimately go with?
Nick Martinez’s changeup
Last season with the San Diego Padres, Martinez threw his changeup more than any other pitch (if you count the sinker and four-seam fastball as two different pitches) — throwing it 28.8 percent of the time.
Hitters hit just .158 against the pitch last season and he got whiffs on 46.5 percent of them, by far the highest of any of his pitches.
Nick Martinez, Dirty 82mph Changeup. 👌
And, I found Waldo. ✔️🏆 pic.twitter.com/4ogZms2gwF
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 14, 2023
“I’ve faced him a couple times of times and he’s gotten me out a lot on it,” said Stephenson, who was speaking about live batting practice, because he has just two plate appearances against Martinez, a walk last May (Stephenson saw three changeups in that at-bat, swinging and missing one and letting the other two go for balls) and a home run at Great American Ball Park in July (on a cutter).
Stephenson said the changeup almost looks a little like the changeup of Milwaukee Brewers reliever Devin Williams.
“His arm speed is just like his heater. You see the four-seam and think it’s a heater and all of a sudden it just drops off,” Stephenson said. “He has made a lot of guys make some ugly swings on it. You’ll see throughout the season a lot of ugly swings on it all year long.”
Nick Martinez’s curveball
The Reds’ other veteran catcher, Luke Maile, liked a different Martinez pitch, a good sign for the Reds.
Martinez threw the changeup and sinker more than the curveball last season (19.3 percent), but increased his usage from 2022 (15.9 percent). Batters hit just .164 against the pitch last year and had a 34.7 percent whiff rate, second-best among his arsenal.
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“It’s big but it’s late and sharp at the same time,” Maile said of Martinez’s offering. “A lot of times curveballs that break as much as his you might describe them as ‘loopy.’ His is really sharp. It plays like it’s coming in a lot harder than it actually is.”
Martinez averaged 81.8 mph on the pitch last season, close to the 80.7 mph on his changeup. He averaged 93.3 mph on his four-seam fastball.
Last year Martinez’s curveball actually had less vertical movement than it did the previous year, but he saw better results. Each of the last two seasons, the average launch angle on the pitch has been negative, meaning when batters do put wood to it, they hit it into the ground, which is a good thing at Great American Ball Park.
“It’s tough to find the barrel with it,” Maile said. “Even if the location isn’t perfect, it’s still difficult for guys to time it up but also snatch it out of the air because it’s moving down so much.”
Fernando Cruz’s splitter
Austin Wynns, P.J. Higgins, Michael Trautwein and Daniel Vellojin all picked Fernando Cruz’s splitter as the nastiest pitch.
“That’s because they’d never caught it before,” Maile said.
Maile may have played it cool, but Cruz calls his splitter his “gift from God,” and it’s a huge reason he’s in the big leagues.
Fernando Cruz. 4 hitters, 4 Splitter Ks. pic.twitter.com/90DsfZaDVW
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) September 23, 2023
Vellojin, who spent all of 2023 in Double-A Chattanooga, said he just tries to keep the splitter in front of him.
Higgins has played in the Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs organizations and said not many splitters were thrown in either place. So perhaps for him, it’s an even bigger outlier.
“It’s electric,” Higgins said.
The way Higgins explains it, Cruz’s splitter appears to knuckle early and then looks like a fastball before dropping.
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“It’s unpredictable — it goes down, to the side, to the other side and sometimes it stays on the same plane,” said Wynns.
All the catchers mentioned the knuckleball characteristics, with Stephenson even chuckling and calling Cruz’s pitch exactly that — a knuckleball, not a splitter.
“It’s unpredictable — it goes down, to the side, to the other side and sometimes it stays on the same plane,” said Wynns.
Trautwein said some split-finger fastballs can almost have a loop before dropping, but Cruz’s “just dives off the table.”
Cruz threw the pitch 35.9 percent of the time last season, limiting hitters to just a .094 batting average. He has a 56.7 percent whiff rate on the pitch, too.
“You know it’s coming and you know it’s a pitch designed to get you to swing and miss at a ball in the dirt and you still do it,” Trautwein said. “These are the best hitters in the world and they’re swinging at a ball that bounces.”
Some have called 2024 the “year of the splitter” and Cruz’s is one of the best — and most unique — splitters in the game.
“We’ve got a lot of really good splitters on this team but they all have a little bit different characteristics to them,” Trautwein said. “Some are split-changes, some are more true splits, some cut every now and then. And then Cruz has the ‘gift from God,’ as he says.”
Nick Lodolo’s breaking ball
During a live batting practice earlier this spring, Mat Nelson was catching for Lodolo and after a particularly nasty slider, Jonathan India looked back at the catcher and said, “That thing just keeps going.”
Even Nelson, who had caught Lodolo before, was caught off guard with that particular slider — “I didn’t anticipate that one going as far as it did,” Nelson recalled telling India.
Lodolo calls the pitch a curveball, while others call it a slider. Sometimes it’s easier just to call it a breaking ball. He threw the pitch 35.8 percent of the time in 2023, but he only made seven starts. As a rookie in 2022, he threw it 28.9 percent of the time and batters hit .136 on it that year. Lodolo also led the majors in hit batters in 2022 with 19, the majority coming on his breaking ball hitting a right-handed hitter.
Nick Lodolo, Literal Back Foot Slider. 🦶
He's gonna do this a lot this season. pic.twitter.com/53ehHjbEoM
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) April 1, 2023
“It’ll start on the outer edge and break to the back foot,” Nelson said. Often literally on the back foot.
It’s not uncommon to see batters swing and try to get out of the way on the same pitch. But what Nelson said is maybe most impressive is how consistent Lodolo is with the pitch.
“He makes it really easy to catch him,” Nelson said. “As a hitter, it’s devastating.”
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Honorable Mention
“Nastiest” is a single pitch, but these conversations rarely start with a single pitch. Other pitches mentioned were Graham Ashcraft’s cutter and sinker combination, almost always accompanied by hand motions showing two pitches coming from the same place and then splitting, one up and away and the other down and in — “and he throws gas,” Vellojin said post-pantomime. Lucas Sims’ slider was also mentioned, as was Frankie Montas’ splitter and, of course, Hunter Greene’s 103 mph fastball.
“Everyone has weapons on this team,” Wynns said.
(Photo of Cruz: Kareem Elgazzar / The Enquirer / USA Today)
