Kade Strowd 2024

[RZNJ]

Yeah, it looks like the cutter might change Strowd from a non prospect to a potential 2024 ML contributor.   The amount of days between outings is interesting.  I also noticed that the home run he gave up was on a curve.  This seems to be a thing.  Didn’t Reed Garrett go from journeyman minor leaguer to top setup man with the Mets because of the cutter?   Maybe Wandisson Charles should be the next experiment.  Lol

[CaptainRedbeard]

9 K and 0 BB in 4.1 IP at AAA, he did give up the homer but has still maintained a great GB% of 57%. Only 2 fly balls total. The long time between outings is very interesting. I think it could be any combination of a few reasons:

1) He’s nursing some minor injury and they don’t want to push it, or has had some past injuries and they just want to be extra careful with workload. 
2) He’s still working on new mechanical adjustments / pitch adjustments and they have him throwing side sessions between appearances. 
3) They don’t need him at the MLB level right now and want to make sure he stays fresh, so he’s not worn down by the end of this season. 

I’m surely overreacting to small sample size, but the Statcast data along with his effectiveness in his four AAA appearances has me fully anticipating that Strowd will be part of the bullpen down the stretch this year (and hopefully, into the playoffs). 

Especially with Wells’ elbow injury looking really iffy, I think Strowd is the only other guy in the organization with the potential to be a dominant late inning RP in 2024 who isn’t already on the MLB roster. I think McDermott and perhaps Johnson could too in 2025+ but they’re not going to put them in bullpen role until the very end of the year. 

[interloper]

Man I'd love it if he could become a dude for us out of the pen. We need at least one AAA guy to step up and be an option. Krook looks pretty good so far as well. 

[interloper]

On 5/17/2024 at 11:31 AM, RZNJ said:

Yeah, it looks like the cutter might change Strowd from a non prospect to a potential 2024 ML contributor.   The amount of days between outings is interesting.  I also noticed that the home run he gave up was on a curve.  This seems to be a thing.  Didn’t Reed Garrett go from journeyman minor leaguer to top setup man with the Mets because of the cutter?   Maybe Wandisson Charles should be the next experiment.  Lol

I did notice the other night that Charles was throwing a lot more 96-ish pitches than his usual 98ish, unless he doesn't throw as hard as I thought. Maybe a bid to get him under control? Or maybe a different kind of fastball? 

[RZNJ]

11 minutes ago, CaptainRedbeard said:

9 K and 0 BB in 4.1 IP at AAA, he did give up the homer but has still maintained a great GB% of 57%. Only 2 fly balls total. The long time between outings is very interesting. I think it could be any combination of a few reasons:

1) He’s nursing some minor injury and they don’t want to push it, or has had some past injuries and they just want to be extra careful with workload. 
2) He’s still working on new mechanical adjustments / pitch adjustments and they have him throwing side sessions between appearances. 
3) They don’t need him at the MLB level right now and want to make sure he stays fresh, so he’s not worn down by the end of this season. 

I’m surely overreacting to small sample size, but the Statcast data along with his effectiveness in his four AAA appearances has me fully anticipating that Strowd will be part of the bullpen down the stretch this year (and hopefully, into the playoffs). 

Especially with Wells’ elbow injury looking really iffy, I think Strowd is the only other guy in the organization with the potential to be a dominant late inning RP in 2024 who isn’t already on the MLB roster. I think McDermott and perhaps Johnson could too in 2025+ but they’re not going to put them in bullpen role until the very end of the year. 

I happened to see him yesterday.  The game results aren’t on Savant yesterday but I kept looking for this new cutter and kept seeing 96 mph fastballs and sliders.  Pretty sure Savant showed like a 90% cutter usage before that game.  Now it’s down to 66% and shows more of the fastball and curve.   He have up a double to a LH hitter on a slider but looked good overall.   His last pitch was a 12-6 slider/curve which could be a great swing and miss pitch.  The mechanics looked smooth and the fastball command looked good.  I’m just curious if he was throwing cuttters and they break like sliders or he just wasn’t throwing it yesterday.   Maybe @Tony-OH knows?

[Tony-OH]

15 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

I happened to see him yesterday.  The game results aren’t on Savant yesterday but I kept looking for this new cutter and kept seeing 96 mph fastballs and sliders.  Pretty sure Savant showed like a 90% cutter usage before that game.  Now it’s down to 66% and shows more of the fastball and curve.   He have up a double to a LH hitter on a slider but looked good overall.   His last pitch was a 12-6 slider/curve which could be a great swing and miss pitch.  The mechanics looked smooth and the fastball command looked good.  I’m just curious if he was throwing cuttters and they break like sliders or he just wasn’t throwing it yesterday.   Maybe @Tony-OH knows?

I've seen two different sliders/cutters when looking at the statcast data. He threw 12 yesterday and two of them look more like sweepers with more velocity. He did throw one 12-6 curveball (2933 spin rate) that got a whiff. I'd seen that occasionally in the past but he didn't throw it very much. He should throw it more though. At 86 MPH and with 50 inch vertical drop, that would be a plus curveball for sure. Only 6 MLB pitchers average more than 86.3 MPH on their curveballs with the best vertical drop of them being 46,2 (Joe Kelley). 

His cutters and fastball both got a 50% whiff rate. Impressive stuff.

[CaptainRedbeard]

23 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

I happened to see him yesterday.  The game results aren’t on Savant yesterday but I kept looking for this new cutter and kept seeing 96 mph fastballs and sliders.  Pretty sure Savant showed like a 90% cutter usage before that game.  Now it’s down to 66% and shows more of the fastball and curve.   He have up a double to a LH hitter on a slider but looked good overall.   His last pitch was a 12-6 slider/curve which could be a great swing and miss pitch.  The mechanics looked smooth and the fastball command looked good.  I’m just curious if he was throwing cuttters and they break like sliders or he just wasn’t throwing it yesterday.   Maybe @Tony-OH knows?

If you go to Gamefeed -> Player Breakdowns on Statcast for yesterday, it said he threw 12/20 pitches as cutters, between 88.3-93.8 MPH. They got 4 whiffs on 8 swings. 6 fastballs 95.8-96.9 mph, got another two whiffs, and then two breaking balls (1 whiff 1 swing). 

I think Statcast has trouble identifying whatever he’s throwing between cutter/slider/sweeper/curve. I’m guessing it’s more a hard cutter around 93 and slower slider around 89.  But whatever he’s throwing, he’s getting really good spin on it at the velos he’s throwing them at, and the results are great.

The four seamer has great velo too obviously, but not the same degree of impressive spin so it seems he has more natural feel for supinating spin, like Burnes and Bradish, and should continue leaning on that. 

[emmett16]

OH curse hit Stowd tonight.  .2 IP 2 HR 3 BB 5 ER.  

[baltfan]

On 5/17/2024 at 7:49 AM, btownoriole said:

Great stuff Tony - thanks.  Had been hearing his name and now I know why.

Reading about his cutter brought back some bad memories though.  The Orioles have come a long way since Dan Duquette and his philosophies about the cutter in the minor leagues!

I think that was mainly a Rick Peterson thing. 

[sportsfan8703]

On 5/17/2024 at 11:31 AM, RZNJ said:

Yeah, it looks like the cutter might change Strowd from a non prospect to a potential 2024 ML contributor.   The amount of days between outings is interesting.  I also noticed that the home run he gave up was on a curve.  This seems to be a thing.  Didn’t Reed Garrett go from journeyman minor leaguer to top setup man with the Mets because of the cutter?   Maybe Wandisson Charles should be the next experiment.  Lol

Yeah, remember with Reed Garret thar Adam Jones tweeted that he had a “nasty slider”. So maybe he made that slider into a cutter. Strowd could be well on his way to doing something similar. This is why relievers are fickle because they can catch fire one year and a new grip makes them dominant until the league catches up.

Gotta ride the hot pitch. 

[CaptainRedbeard]

10 hours ago, emmett16 said:

OH curse hit Stowd tonight.  .2 IP 2 HR 3 BB 5 ER.  

Not a good night to say the least. I accept partial responsibility 

Still got a lot of whiffs. 6 swings on the cutter, 4 whiffs and the 2 homers. Based on Gameday the two pitches were virtually identical, the ~88mph cutter down and in to lefties and just catching the strike zone. First homer absolutely mashed 455 ft, second one looks like a cheapie with a 93.4 mph EV.

Not bad pitches at all really, but maybe he’s learning that his slower cutter doesn’t play in the zone there to lefties when it speeds up the bat and they can drop the bat head on it. He probably needs to either throw that slower cutter/slider out of the zone back foot or the harder cutter in on the hands. 

The walks are obviously bad, but he literally only had one walk all year before this so don’t want to overreact to that too much.

Threw a ton of pitches (37) so we probably won’t see him again for a bit. I’m pumping the brakes on my enthusiasm, he’s not going to be Mason Miller 2.0 this season but I’m still very impressed by the stuff and optimistic we’ll see him at the MLB level before the end of the year. 

[Tony-OH]

Just  a bad night. Everyone has them. The key is to make them rare.

[interloper]

Another rough one. Disappointing to see.

[Hank Scorpio]

9 minutes ago, interloper said:

Another rough one. Disappointing to see.

It's 8 innings.

Lots of hits and homers... but also 14 K's. 

[CaptainRedbeard]

15 minutes ago, Hank Scorpio said:

It's 8 innings.

Lots of hits and homers... but also 14 K's. 

And he still has a strong GB% too. Only 5 fly balls total and 3 homers. So a ludicrous 60% HR/FB, to go along with a comical .611 BABIP.

Altogether, he’s definitely been getting knocked around in AAA but the K’s, ground balls and still palatable amount of walks come out to a 2.70 xFIP. It was 2.66 in AA this year where he didn’t allow a run.

As long as he keeps those things going he should be in store on some positive regression on contact quality, it literally cannot get any worse.