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CLEVELAND, Ohio — Generally, when pitchers miss up in the strike zone, it can produce negative results in the box score. But that wasn’t always the case for Cleveland Indians right-hander Adam Plutko in 2019.
© John Kuntz, cleveland.com/cleveland.com/cleveland.com/TNS
Cleveland Indians starting pitcher Adam Plutko throws in the first inning against the Kansas City Royals, July 20, 2019, at Progressive Field.
Plutko did allow 22 home runs across his 20 big league starts, but the Indians went 14-6 in those outings and he allowed three runs or fewer in 15 appearances. He was 4-3 with a 3.53 ERA in 12 starts from July 20 through Sept. 22, including 48 strikeouts in 66 1/3 innings. By the end of the year, Plutko’s hard-hit rate of 31.7% was seventh lowest among American League pitchers with at least 300 batted balls against.
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When Plutko committed to a strategy that took advantage of a distinct rising movement on his four-seam fastball, it opened up not only his curveball to being a more effective swing-and-miss pitch, but it also led to the development of a “four point” approach that kept hitters guessing where the ball would be.
First, a disclaimer: Plutko’s not trying to say that throwing fastballs at the top of the strike zone is going to be the best strategy for every young pitcher out there. On the contrary, with today’s hitters focusing more than ever on launch angle, mistakes made with elevated fastballs can get hit a long, long way.
But Plutko made the strategy work for him in 2019 based on what he was confident his fastball could do.
“With how my fastball has a ‘rising effect’ to it, it plays better for a longer period of time at the top of the strike zone,” Plutko said. He cited pitchers such as Gerrit Cole, who began throwing his rising fastball up in the strike zone when he moved from Pittsburgh to Houston and found it made the other pitches in his arsenal more devastating.
“(Cole’s) strikeout numbers jumped because his curveball was improved off of that, because his slider was improved off of that, and everything kind of was more cohesive. The pieces were all there, now it’s about making them fit in the puzzle.”
More than anything, that realization was what made second half of 2019 a success for Plutko.
“All of a sudden the pieces started to fit in the puzzle and I started to understand who I was,” he said. “Not that I didn’t understand who I was before, but there was a trust factor. It was like ‘alright, I’m good enough and my stuff is good enough, now I need to put the pieces in the right places.’”
The approach is a tried and true pitching principle that has worked for ages. Change the hitter’s eye level with a high fastball and get him to swing and miss at a 12-6 curveball down in the zone.
“That’s the easy one that everybody sees,” Plutko said. “Up here, and you come back with a down curveball that’s a combination that’s tried and true and will work for the entirety of however long baseball is going to be played.”
But when Plutko started implementing that plan, he noticed that his ability to throw inside to hitters increased as well. And that helped make his cutter more effective to right-handed hitters.
“If I’m pounding them in, in, in and all of a sudden their vision shifts over here, now I have the opportunity to go back out over here because you’re changing where the eyes are at,” he said. “You think about changing the eyes with height, but you can do it in-and-out as well.”
Plutko said as long as he executed his pitches, the strategy was effective.
“All four of those places made me a much tougher pitcher to figure out,” Plutko said.
And having catcher Roberto Perez on board with the idea gave it added bite.
“The way I pitched was very different from the way Mike Clevinger pitched,” he said. “And that’s Roberto’s ability to adapt to which guy is in front of him. As you saw, he got rewarded for that level of understanding.”
Plutko says finding a degree of success in 2019 only made him hungrier for the opportunity to prove himself again in 2020.
“It makes you want to get back out there right now and prove it again and prove it again,” he said. “That’s the mindset of a major league player. You don’t just do it one season. You do it year in and year out. I want to go out and prove it again and I want to do it in 2020 and I want to do it in 2021 and beyond.”
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