SURPRISE, Ariz. -- Jack Leiter is far from the only pitcher to tinker with his arsenal in the offseason and into Spring Training. He’s not even the first to do it two years in a row.
But for Leiter, adding this new cutter could be the key to him taking the next step.
“It's honestly just kind of a natural pitch,” Leiter said. “It's fun, it's easy, it's late and it moves just enough to get off the barrel and bails you out of counts. You're not looking for swing and misses with it, per se. It's more to just finish at-bats quicker, which is what I've been needing in order to be more efficient. So I think it kind of fits what I was trying to accomplish with going deeper into games and throwing more innings this year.”
Leiter said he learned the cutter grip from Red Sox ace Garrett Crochet this offseason. Crochet is a University of Tennessee alumnus, but lives in Nashville in the offseason and often works out with the Vandy boys alums. Crochet’s cutter had a +10 run value in 2025, when he finished second in American League Cy Young Award voting.
On a mission to be more effective and efficient in 2026, the cutter was a good place to start.
“I think you look around the league at the elite starting pitchers and the ones who go deep into games and throw 200-plus innings, a lot of them have multiple fastballs,” Leiter said. “Last year, I added the two-seam. I really liked that pitch. I wouldn't say it was an elite two-seam fastball by any means, but it served its purpose. I think [the cutter] serves the same purpose. It's not like a revolutionary, life-changing thing, but it's something that can be useful.”
In 2025, Leiter threw a four-seamer (38.8% of the time), slider (23.3%), changeup (16.5%), two-seamer (11.9%) and curveball (9.4%). The newly developed kick change and two-seam were new additions last spring.
But the two fastballs had a vast difference in effectiveness. The four-seam -- which was as elite as elite can be in college -- was a work in progress for much of his time in the Minors because of his struggles to command it well. It returned to elite form in 2025, though the two-seam wasn’t as effective as he would’ve liked.
Four-seam in 2025
• .189 BA, .293 slug, +11 run value
Two-seam in 2025
• .329 BA, .474 slug, 0 run value
That, in and of itself, is what makes adding the cutter even more important.
“Everybody can train hitting good four-seam fastballs,” he explained. “It's reasonable to believe on days where I'm starting, the other lineups are hitting a lot of four-seam fastballs. I think finding ways to protect the fastball, and throw other pitches that look like a fastball for as many feet as you possibly can, is an effective way to be unpredictable. I don't know what it's going to [look like] in terms of usage, but it'll just help with being unpredictable, and it'll help everything else play better.”
“Unpredictable” is basically the word of the spring for Leiter. When manager Skip Schumaker was asked what Leiter needed to work on this spring, he first mentioned being more efficient with his pitches. Being unpredictable is the first step towards that.
Having a more well-rounded repertoire with multiple fastballs covers all the bases as Leiter looks to become a more complete pitcher at the big league level.
“That's the name of the game, changing speeds, changing locations and staying on the attack,” Leiter said. “So mixing in some cutters and that three-way fastball is what a lot of guys are doing with the four-seam, two-seam, cutter. I see why, because it's hard to cover all of it as a hitter. It’s always a chess match. And based on scouting reports, a lot of hitters have holes and [batted] balls going one direction over another. So just having the blueprint for every lineup is important.”