2025 SPs to Watch: Kutter Crawford

The first pitcher in my new series can add to his game by subtracting.

Introduction

Welcome to the first installment of my new series in the lead-up to the 2025 season, “SPs to Watch.” The goal of this series is to do shorter articles on interesting pitchers that aren’t necessarily worth pages and pages of analysis. The horror! I’m trying my best to make these players fairly obscure because calling Kumar Rocker or Bailey Ober an “SP to Watch” is akin to MLB calling Lawrence Butler a breakout candidate. One may consider Kutter notable, but I’d say he’s comfortably the most well-known player that I’m including. Strong candidates that have been covered in other articles, like Emmet Sheehan and Landen Roupp (both from Taking Over the Twins), won't be part of it either.

Crawford’s situation is unique because, in an era of increasing organization specialization, his Red Sox may have become the most dogmatic. In the modern era of pitch selection the 4-seam fastball, the quintessential pitch in baseball, has seen waning use. But while many teams have modestly tuned back 4-seam usage for strong secondaries, the Red Sox have taken a sledgehammer to it. Tanner Houck is the philosophy’s poster child, dropping his troublesome heater’s usage from nearly 40% to zero in 3 years, and other notable starters like Garrett Whitlock and Brayan Bello also throw nearly nothing hard and straight in 2024. New free agent signing Walker Buehler may see a similar adjustment with his 4-seam issues, yet Kutter Crawford might be the one who can profit the most from such a revision next season.

One could save some time and address the way to fix Kutter Crawford as Nyanasaur on Twitter did here. For those who can’t access the Tweet, he is politely asking Mr. Crawford to stop throwing it down the middle, because it’s the only area of the chart where he has a wOBA allowed above .350. It, of course, is .571, higher than any individual hitter’s season in history. When he throws it down the middle, it’s worse than prime, roided-out Barry Bonds. That’ll make it difficult to perform. Nonetheless, I’ll take the more nuanced approach by analyzing his repertoire in detail.

Pitch Breakdown

The 4-seam fastball doesn’t seem so bad at first, with its elite 19.1 inches of induced vertical break (IVB), but when one adjusts for his extreme over-the-top slot, the rise only comes out to about average. With hefty usage at the top of the zone at a below-average 92.5 mph, it gets completely demolished with only mediocre deception. I’d consider it a “dead zone” pitch all things considered, and he can certainly do better. A perfect Red Sox project.

Kutter’s kutter [sic] is great, which is fitting. It gets solid rise like the fastball, but the calling card is the 5.5 inches of sweep, inducing lots of swing-and-miss and weak contact. The sweeper uses that cutter tunnel to great success, running an 80th-percentile chase rate. It can leak high in the zone, but it manages to stay above the barrel all the same and induces flyballs nonetheless. He appears to have a better feel for his pitches with glove-side movement, which helps explains why the heater falls so flat. If he wants to drop his heater, these two pitches will be the ones picking up the most slack.

He can weaponize that supination preference with his splitter, normally a pitch with lots of arm-side movement, to make it his best pitch. The lack of arm-side movement reminds me of Logan Webb’s changeup in how it can deceive hitters, with both moving 4 inches less than the average in their respective pitch group. This lack of run gives the added benefit of making it more handedness agnostic, a trait that makes it a lethal offering when paired with its 5 extra inches of ride relative to the typical splitter. In 2024, it was consistently great against LHB in 12% usage, while being more “boom or bust” against righties with crazy high whiff and hard contact rates. The sample against RHB was just 53 pitches, so I imagine more usage would make it look like a more appealing option. In contrast, the pitch floundered last year when it was 2 inches more typical in both directions, so Kutter’s movement towards ingenuity helped him bring it to life.

The curveball is a 77 mph looper with lots of drop and has performed well in low frequencies. The 32% CSW and 29.6% ICR aren’t half bad against LHP only - I’d expect some eventual use against RHB as well. While the velocity feels a little soft, and the strike rate a little low, it can limit swings surprisingly well. I think he can be more aggressive with it to squeeze out more strikes from bats on shoulders.

One additional thing to note is how his velocity reacted to his career-high workload last season. A jump from 129 to 183 innings coincided with a velocity drop of 1 mph in the fastball and cutter, 1.5 mph for the sweeper, and 2 mph with the curveball. His strikeout rate correspondingly dropped 2.5%, despite better pitch selection and better command. Any recovery of velocity would allow him to elevate his game that much further, especially for his cutter.

A summary of Kutter Crawford’s season, demonstrating the strong performance of his cutter and splitter in particular. Template courtesy of @TJStats on Twitter.

Conclusion

While it’s not likely he will drop the 4-seam entirely this year, I’d be shocked if the usage remained above 25%. The cutter/sweeper/splitter core is both effective and unique, and the curveball should be able to fill any gaps. If he continues on the typical Red Sox fastball mitigation trajectory, I’d predict his ERA falls below 3.75, more than a half run of improvement. It’s hard to overstate how much I feel the 4-seam stifled the rest of his arsenal from shining, and with the right adjustments, he can be a very dependable starter.

Sources

PitcherList

FanGraphs

BaseballSavant

TJStats