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There aren’t many conditions one can draw this early in the season. Baseball is a noisy, random sport. But one of the data sources that we can trust is the pitch tracking. Not the precise measurements themselves — magnitude of movement can be misleading because of calibration issues in the Hawkeye equipment, and pitchers are often down a MPH or so in the early season anyway — but rather the general shape of pitches. Who’s throwing what?

So with the caveats out of the way, let’s go to the “tape.” Out first group will be the pitchers who seem to have added a sweeper in the offseason.

I like to use Texas Leaguers to glance over pitch shapes. Measurements are presented in comparison to a theoretically “straight” pitch, with the effects of gravity not included. They don’t match what you’ll see on Baseball Savant or from Pitch Info for “reasons,” but it’s all from the same base Hawkeye data.

The “He Learned A Sweeper” Group

There have always been sweepers — that is, breaking pitches, often at curve velocity, that get significant armside horizontal break rather than downward break. Think Chaz Roe.

But the thing that’s new (in addition to the name) is that teams have become good at teaching pitchers how to throw sweepers. Beginning in 2020, the new Hawkeye pitch tracking system began measuring pitch spin directly, where older systems (Trackman, PitchF/X) had only measured movement. That led pitch physics people like Barton Smith to realize that the physics of pitches were cooler and more complicated than we had generally assumed. And this new understanding of concepts like seam shifted wake (SSW) opened up a new world of pitch design and pitch teaching.

While not everyone is going to be Chaz Roe, it turned out to be relatively easy to teach a major league pitcher to throw a sweeper. So now a lot more do.

The biggest moment in “new Rays sweeper” history was when Zack Littell added one midseason last year, shortly before transforming from a journeyman reliever into a totally competent starting pitcher. That new pitch was our clue that something was up, so let’s take a look at who else has added a sweeper.

Aaron Civale

Civale has always thrown the kitchen sink, and he started throwing a slider with some sweep to it in late June of last year. But the heart of his pitching used to generally rest on the interplay between his high-80s cutter and high-70s curve. Take a look at Civale’s last start before joining the Rays.

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The slider was emphasized a bit more with the Rays, but it was always a clear third breaking ball option. Now look at his first start in 2024.

Texas Leaguers

Sweepers are a heavy platoon pitch, which is to say that they’re very hard for same-handed batters to hit, and I’d expect Civale to mostly use this as a weapon against righties on or off the edge of the plate, much as he did to Isaiah Kiner-Falefa here.

The other question with Civale has been how to get deep into counts without throwing his very excellent curve too often — big curves like his can become easy to recognize when thrown over and over. This sweeper to Kevin Kiermaier was probably supposed to be on the hands, but you can get away with middle-middle when you’re sequencing well.

Against lefties I expect we’ll see the sweeper as an occasional change of pace, usually thrown for a strike.

Tyler Alexander

I’m not totally sure what to think about Alexander, as he’s thrown a bunch of different breaking balls over his major league career. But the one he threw in 2023 was clearly a gyro slider, and with low-80s velo not a very good one.

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In his first appearance for the Rays it was shifted way over gloveside, giving Alexander much more east-west motion to work with.

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I think Alexander’s bread is buttered on his changeup, and that it will continue to be that way, sweeper or no, but much like with Civale (only with lesser stuff overall) the question with Alexander will be about how to mix pitches and work ahead in counts without over-relying on the changeup.

As expected, he threw the new sweeper more to the lefties in the Blue Jays lineup, but it was interesting that Alexander was willing to lay one in to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. in a 3-0 count.

Garrett Cleavinger

Maybe the most interesting set of new pitches shown by Rays this season is Cleavinger’s because he’s added not one, but two new pitches: a sweeper and a cutter.

Consider what Cleavinger looked like when he came over to the Rays in 2022, with velocity numbers added. This is a two-inning appearance.

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This is a prototypical lefty-killer short reliever. High powered fastball, big breaking balls (slider and curve), huge separation between all the pitches on on a single axis. And one lonely changeup that probably doesn’t work great with his arm angle.

But now consider the plot from Cleavinger’s second appearance, when he pitched two innings against Toronto.

Texas Leaguers

First off there’s a cutter now, sitting on that axis between his four-seam fastball and his slider. Second, instead of the curve, there’s a sweeper which has departed the FF-FC-SL axis and now has additional movement to the gloveside. And third the sinker is more clearly definied, with significant armside movement.

There’s A LOT going on with Cleavinger now, and in theory it’s all good. But Cleavinger’s stuff was already good, and five distinct pitches is a lot to get to in any meaningful way for a short reliever.

It makes a person wonder exactly how long Cleavinger could be stretched. He pitched more than one inning 15 times in 2022, but never went more than two. But might we see him in high leverage long relief in 2024?

Or is he a candidate to pull a Littell?