CJ Nitkowski

I'm fascinated to listen to him talk about pitching and the way that he digs in.

It's a curveball now that's been in the mix.

He introduced it a couple of years ago, but we didn't see very much of it.

If you go look at the whiff rate on his curveball, it's actually better than the slider.

A couple of starts to go, he went even curveball and split usage, or excuse me, slider and curveball usage, which is not like him at all, right?

So this is kind of new for him where the curveball has been a bigger part of what he does with his repertoire and his changeup.

His changeup's really good.

And again, that wasn't part of what made him so successful when he won those 20 games.

So he is still a really good swing and miss pitcher.

Look at the overall whiff rate for him.

He is not that far off.

If you look at the amount of starts that he had, he's not a qualifier, but look at the amount of starts that he's had and get guys with at least that many starts, and you're looking at a top five swing and miss pitcher again.

So I think it's probably easier to do now than it was because you're going to get immediate feedback, right?

You're going to get immediate feedback when you get on a Rapsodo or you get on a Trackman and you're going to learn pretty quickly, okay, this pitch is not that special.

Now, you still always want to test everything out against hitters as opposed to pitchers with maybe some of the ego of thinking they can do everything.

now you're you're learning pretty quickly whether you can or you cannot uh and how that pitch ultimately is going to play against big league hitters because you're going to get the data that's going to tell you hey this is a below average uh curveball this is probably not something that you can use not to say you can't have it but it would not be very high uh on the priority list so it can be done um and we've seen it with guys that can get it done and then the flip side of that of course is kevin gosman and chris sale right where with kevin gosman of course it's pretty much the split in the fastball with chris sales the four seamer in the slider there'll be some

some change-ups, occasional two-seamer, but it is a two-pitch mix, and these guys know how to dominate with it.

So to each their own.

If you can do it, great.

There is something to be said, I think, for making the fewest amount of pitches as good as you possibly can.