Jameson Taillon's cutter suits him

Cutter usage continues to climb, ever so steadily, with an 8% league-wide usage in 2024 marking the highest on record. That’s not really anything to write home about — cutters remain just the fifth-most popular pitch — but that jives with the cutter’s existence as a complimentary piece, a bridge that connects loose ends within a pitcher’s arsenal. 

And there may not be a better example of a pitcher crafting a cutter into a bridge than Jameson Taillon. 

Taillon first deployed a cutter in 2021, and he’s upped its usage in each subsequent year. Last season, he threw it a quarter of the time, good for his No. 2 offering, behind only the four-seam fastball. There’s a good reason for that, because Taillon’s cutter finds itself beside the game’s elite. Among SPs, only Corbin Burnes — renowned for his domineering cutter — generated a higher Run Value on their cutter last season than Taillon; on a RV/100 basis, only Emmanuel Clase (3.0) outpaced Taillon (2.5), among qualified pitchers. 

Here’s where things get weird: Taillon uses his cutter differently than other pitchers. Rotographs compiled this handy table articulating league-wide swing tendencies against each of the three fastballs — four-seamers, sinkers, and cutters; we see that cutters are primarily designed to generate swings, chase, and whiffs. That’s how Taillon attacked hitters with his cutter in 2023. But it’s not what he did in 2024. 

Taillon’s Cutter Changes Purpose

	Zone%	SwStr	CallStr	Heart
2023	51.6%	13.3%	17.4%	26.7%
2024	60.1%	9.3%	21.9%	36.5%

Seventy-eight pitchers threw at least 270 cutters last season. Of that group, Taillon ranks 5th in Zone% and 5th in CallStr. Only Joe Musgrove threw his cutter over the middle of the plate — defined by Statcast’s Heart Zone — more often than Taillon. He’s essentially using his cutter backwards. 

So what’s going on here? Why did he make such a drastic change, and, more importantly, why did it work? 

Let’s start by understanding how Taillon attacks hitters: His five-pitch arsenal lacks any exceptional vertical movement, so he expands the plate horizontally, working on an east-to-west plane. A depth-y curveball changes the hitter’s eye level, but for the most part, it’s sweeper/cutter tailing glove side, and four-seamer/sinker running arm side. 

With this in mind, let’s take a look at the physical changes that Taillon made to his cutter last season. 

Physical Characteristics of Taillon’s Cutter

	Velocity	H-Mov	V-Mov
2023	88.6 mph	4.0 GLV	11.2 IVB
2024	86.5 mph	5.5 GLV	8.1 IVB

That’s a pretty wholesale override. In 2023, Taillon worked with a harder, firmer cutter; last year, he sacrificed velocity for less cutting action — the trade-off of a natural pronator. If we look at the metrics, Stuff+ preferred the 2023 version (101) to the 2024 version, which grades as subpar (92). But to merely look at Stuff+ would bely the story of Taillon’s cutter, because arsenal fit is what matters here — especially with a pitch designed to be a bridge. 

Taillon, Then and Now

2023	MPH	V-Mov	H-Mov
FF	93.7	16.9	-7.7
FC	88.6	11.2	4.0
SW	80.9	1.7	14.5

2024	MPH	V-Mov	H-Mov
FF	92.3	16.1	-6.9
FC	86.5	8.1	5.5
SW	80.4	0.3	15.6

From all three planes — horizontal movement, vertical movement, and velocity — Taillon’s revised cutter best threads the needle. Its rise is firmly in between that of his four-seamer and slider, and the horizontal gap is more evenly split, too. For an east-to-west pitcher, navigating the horizontal movement needle is vital, and his new shapes do that well: It’s not just altering the cutter shape, it’s modifying the cutter in conjunction with minor tweaks to both ends of the bridge, maintaining that split. 

It’s best to visualize how that refined relationship allowed Taillon to modify his attack plan against both right-handed and left-handed hitters. For the sake of arguing that the cutter bridges the sweeper and four-seamer, we’ll focus primarily on those three pitches. 

Against RHB, Taillon uses his four-seamer, cutter, and sweeper on the outer third of the plate; he’s done so each of the past two seasons. The new movement profiles allow the cutter to best act as a liaison in the progression from four-seamer to sweeper.

Pitch 1 (0-0 count, four-seamer)

Pitch 2 (0-1 count, cutter)

Pitch 3 (0-2 count, sweeper)

On par with his new plan, Taillon used his cutter to come in the zone — and often right over the plate — against right-handed hitters. The one he throws to Paul Goldschmidt looks rather pedestrian, catching a good deal of plate at a slow 84 mph. But it’s different enough from the four-seamer to miss Goldschmidt’s barrel. Then, when Taillon dots the outside corner with a sweeper, his mission is accomplished: He’s executed three pitches in the same tunnel, all moving differently and travelling at different speeds. The cutter bridges that sequencing. 

And here’s the other thing: Watch that second pitch again. Doesn’t this cutter look a little sweeper-ish? As we see in Taillon’s Pitch Plot, there’s a pretty firm overlap between his sweeper — which touts a pretty wide shape disparity — and his cutter, which also has a good deal of variance. I think that works to Taillon’s benefit, too, and I’m excited to see where he ranks in terms of some of the new Arsenal Metrics released by Baseball Prospectus. 

Against left-handed hitters, the story is different, but also the same. Taillon totally flipped the location of his cutter, pouring them on the outer half after pounding them inside in 2023. As a result, the cutter is in the same spot as his four-seamer, and it’s easy to see how that causes confusion for the batter.

Pitch 1 (0-0 count, four-seamer)

Pitch 2 (0-1 count, cutter)

Will Brennan spits on the cutter, thinking that it’s going to tail outside — like a four-seamer would — but it stays in the zone. They’re in the same tunnel, but the movement profiles are vastly different, with the four-seamer running 7 in. armside and the cutter going 6 in. in the opposite direction. This tactic led to a surge in called strikes (+8.5%) and zone rate (+13.3%), mirroring the broader evolution of Taillon’s cutter from 2023 to 2024. 

As we see in those two at-bats, a large part of the cutter’s job is to prime other pitches for success. In spite of diminished velocity, Taillon’s four-seamer improved on a RV/100 basis and generated significantly better contact (.353 wOBA/.379 xwOBA vs. .385 wOBA/.410 xwOBA). Meanwhile, his sweeper saw its swinging-strike rate improve by nearly 4%. Not to mention, of course, that Taillon’s cutter — which cost him runs in 2023 — became the second-most valuable pitch in a single-season over the course of his eight-year MLB career. 

It’s an unorthodox way to succeed — eschewing a pitch’s typical purpose. But extreme outliers are en vogue in pitching, and Taillon’s cutter fits the bill. Last season, only four pitchers threw their cutter in the zone over 60% of the time and in the Heart at least 35% of the time. 

Pitching Backwards with a Cutter

	Usage%	MPH	V-Mov	H-Mov	CSW%	Barrel%	RV	RV/100
TAILLON	25.1%	86.5	8.1	5.5	31.2%	4.8%	15	2.5
MUSGROVE	20.4%	89.7	7.4	2.9	35.5%	4.5%	3	1.0
MARTINEZ	20.3%	89.1	11.8	2.0	28.1%	3.2%	2	0.4
ARRIGHETTI	19.6%	88.2	8.1	3.1	32.1%	6.4%	4	0.8

Each of the four pitchers make their cutter work differently. Martinez, for one, relies on tremendous outlier vertical movement to float above barrels. For Taillon, it’s the art of blending his pitches together — not just crafting a cutter, but a cutter that works best for him. That’s true in terms of its physical profile, and it’s also true with respect to how he uses the pitch. They work together. 

We hear a lot about pitchers turning to cutters to bridge the movement gap between their four-seamer and slider. We hear less, though, about pitchers tailoring their already-existent cutter to better fit that gap. Taillon didn’t turn to a new pitch — he modified a pitch four years in the making, and it unlocked a new level for him in 2024. 

What does it all mean for 2025? At minimum, Taillon seems primed for some sort of regression. Last season, he benefited from a low HR/9 (1.14), a low BABIP (.269), and a high strand rate (76.3%), all better than his career average. At the same time, this is what a cutter does: It makes other pitches better. It’s why his four-seamer remained a viable option in spite of diminished velocity, which would normally blare the alarms. 

Remember, things looked pretty bleak for Taillon as recently as 2023, when he posted a career-worse 4.61 FIP in his first year with the Cubs. I think he’s past that point, because the separate parts of his arsenal are more in chorus with one another. Even with regression coming his way, he should remain a formidable pitcher in 2025 because of his bridge.