The most influential reliever in Major League Baseball has been anticipating, and now it is Emmanuel Clase's alternative to step onto the postseason platform.
Clase, following an distinctive reliever season — 47 saves and a 0.61 ERA — will probably be current in the again of the Guardians bullpen as Cleveland commences the American League Division Series towards the Tigers on Saturday.
He'll be geared up with one of probably the most damaging pitches in baseball: Clase's 100 mph cutter, probably the most intense cutter in historical past. Clase's cutter stood out as probably the most invaluable cutter in the large leagues in 2024 — surpassing Corbin Burnes' — and a top-three most valuable pitch, general, alongside teammate Cade Smith's four-seamer and Chris Sale's slider.
Clase's cutter establishes him because the epitome of a “you know what's coming, and you still can't hit it” pitcher. He threw his cutter 78% of the time in the course of the common season, the very best single-pitch utilization fee in baseball after Kenley Jansen's cutter and Michael Kopech's four-seamer. That's the caliber of pitch it represents.
Initially, Clase's cutter possesses the intense velocity and rise via the strike zone to compete with the most effective escalating four-seamers throughout the Major Leagues — he averaged 99.5 mph on his cutter in 2024, delivered 276 cutters 100 mph or tougher, and peaked at 103.0 mph.
However, it additionally veers. The motion profile of Clase's cutter might be noticed under. It “ascends” over three inches greater than a typical cutter, but it swerves like a slider, all whereas projecting in the direction of the batter at triple-digit speeds. That's why he can throw it with such frequency — the dimensions of the brown circle in the visible signifies Clase's cutter utilization in comparison with his slider (the yellow circle) and his seldom-needed four-seamer (the diminutive crimson dot).
Clase's excessive over-the-top supply imparts his cutter with that bit of sharp, compact break wanted to generate deception, not merely energy.
Clase boasts the very best arm slot amongst closers in the 2024 postseason, with a mean arm angle of 57 levels (zero levels would characterize completely sidearm).
Clase's fusion of velocity and break, rising from that elevated arm angle, additionally permits him to ship numerous variations of his cutter to overcome any batter in any state of affairs. He can throw it extra akin to an influence fastball, or extra resembling a devastating slider, or wherever in between.
We'll leverage MLB's Gameday 3D monitoring know-how to show the problem batters face when confronting Clase on the plate. Witness for your self why Clase's cutter is untouchable.
Here are the 5 modes of Clase cutters he plans to unleash this postseason — and the way they seem to a hitter.
1) The “high heat, but it's a cutter”
The main weapon for a traditional energy pitcher is the excessive fastball, the sort that esteemed aces of this period reminiscent of Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander have perfected. Clase possesses the excessive cutter. And it approaches the batter faster than practically each high quality four-seamer.
Clase can make the most of the excessive cutter to overwhelm even the best hitters in the sport, like his game-ending strikeout of Bobby Witt Jr. on June 4 with a 99.6 mph cutter on the high edge of the strike zone.
He can deploy it to triumph in energy vs. energy matchups towards menacing residence run hitters like Adolis García — Clase struck out García with a 100.3 mph elevated cutter on May 13.
Clase's sheer velocity would suffice to overwhelm hitters upstairs even when his cutter did not swerve, even when it functioned as a real four-seamer. Yet, it does swerve. This one towards Matt Wallner broke six inches in the direction of his fingers … and it clocked at 100.8 mph.
2) The in-and-out speckled cutter
Clase is not solely about energy. He can pinpoint his cutter on each side of the plate. And how can a batter cowl your entire width of the strike zone towards a pitch that is in triple digits, with motion?
Here's one strikeout on either side of the plate:
3) The “wipeout slider”-style cutter
Clase throws an genuine slider. A very good slider. A 91 mph slider that serves as a dirty strikeout pitch by itself. But his cutter may mimic a slider — a slider that arrives at 100 mph as a substitute of 90.
When Clase delivers his cutter down and away to right-handed batters, off the nook of the plate, it intently resembles the potent sliders unleashed by aces like Jacob deGrom. Yet, it is even faster.
Take, for instance, the 100.0 mph cutter that initiated on the periphery and plunged under the zone to dismiss Royce Lewis on Sept. 16. Or the 100.2 mph cutter he despatched nicely off the plate to set off a “sword” from the Angels' Zach Neto on May 25 — the awkward half-swing a batter solely experiences when utterly duped.
4) The lefty dead-zone cutter
Pitchers armed with devastating sliders relish attacking righties down and away as a chase pitch. And they'll goal the identical nook of the plate towards lefties — the down-and-in “dead zone” beneath a lefty slugger's swing hazard zone — if their accuracy is exact and the snap on their slider is crisp.
Clase's cutter permits him to realize that as nicely. He can strike out left-handed batters simply as effortlessly with a dead-zone cutter down-and-in as he can with excessive warmth upstairs.
He deceived Willi Castro with a cutter of that sort to help his getaway from a bases-loaded predicament on Aug. 11 — a 102.2 mph energy cutter in the lifeless zone, his swiftest cutter strikeout of the season. He deceived Nicky Lopez with a distinct variation of a dead-zone cutter on April 8 — “only” 97.7 mph, but with eight inches of horizontal break, his most motion on a profitable cutter of the season.
5) The “You have no chance” bully cutter
Major League hitters are the premier hitters globally. If you pitch proper down the center, they usually make contact, even towards an distinctive pitcher.
However, once you possess a particular pitch like Clase's cutter, all standard knowledge is disregarded. Clase can problem a batter with a cutter straight down the middle and emerge victorious.
We'll conclude with one final cutter strikeout to depict the encounter. This one was a 100.7 mph pitch from Clase towards the Rangers' Josh Jung on Aug. 25, an outing the place he struck out the trio, all on cutters. Clase delivered a real middle-middle cutter to Jung, proper in the center of the strike zone. And Jung fell method brief.
Opposing Clase, typically — truly, very often — you genuinely face an insurmountable problem.
