Article: Swing and a Whiff: Brendon Little’s Curveball Is Nasty

[Jesse Burrill]

Brendon Little is soaring to new heights thanks to a curveball that's both unhittable and impossible to lay off

Remember the 2024 Blue Jays? Of course, we do. A season that was full of optimism fell apart pretty quickly for the team. Bo Bichette struggled to stay healthy and the run scoring as a whole was a problem, which ultimately led to the Blue Jays being sellers at the trade deadline. They ended with 74 wins, finishing last in the AL East.

Part of the reason the team struggled was the performance of the bullpen. Jordan Romano only pitched 13 2/3 innings and had a 6.59 ERA when he was on the mound. The pitching staff as a whole saw 34 different pitchers toe the rubber, and only two, José Berríos and Bowden Francis, had a bWAR above 1.0.

The end result meant the Blue Jays bullpen had a 4.82 ERA, a FIP of 4.84, and a negative WAR total, all of which were the worst in the American League. The Blue Jays knew this would be a problem and made some notable additions. Jeff Hoffman has been excellent in the early part of the season, and you could say the same for Yimi García, who was brought back to Toronto in free agency after a deadline trade to Seattle.

Even with the new additions, the Blue Jays were expecting to get some bounce-back performances from some of the holdovers, and while Hoffman and García have been getting most of the attention, Brendon Little has been thrust into a higher profile role. Taking over Génesis Cabrera's spot as the undisputed number one lefty, he has excelled early in the season.

On the surface, the numbers look pretty good. He’s gotten into a team leading 10 games, giving up just three earned runs in his eight innings pitched on the young season. He’s done well at protecting leads this season too. His five holds are best on the Blue Jays and are third-highest in the league, although he's not the name out of the bullpen most fans would expect to lead this team in holds.

What is so interesting about Little is that he appears to have taken another step forward with his pitch development, particularly on his curveball. On the season, on at-bats ending on his curveball, batters have gone 1-for-15, with 11 of those 15 at-bats ending in strikeouts. The one hit? It was the Jesse Winker triple with a 95% catch probability that George Springer crashed into the wall attempting to catch.

Those are video game numbers. To get a better perspective on just how good that pitch has been, here’s a list of whiff rate leaders on the curveball across all of baseball so far this season.



Now that's a list!

There’s more, too! Getting swings and misses is excellent (and something this 'pen has really needed), but Little is doing it so often by inducing chases. Here are the heat maps for his three pitches:



That curveball is almost exclusively thrown below, and yet, hitters are still swinging at it. That is exactly what you want to do if you're a pitcher. Get the hitters to swing at pitches they aren’t going to do much with. Little has been excellent at that in the young season. 

Take Wednesday's game for example, Little came in to relieve Chris Bassitt and continued his dominance. He faced four batters, walked one, and struck out the other three. The curveball was again excellent. He threw seven, only two in the zone (earning called strikes on both of them). He bounced three and then got swinging strikes on the other two he threw out of the zone.



Pair that with an effective sinker, and you're looking at an outing where Atlanta’s hitters took six swings and missed all six of them.

The Stuff+ numbers seem to agree with what Little is doing too. His 120 Stuff+ is the best on the Blue Jays and 13th in baseball, ahead of names like Josh Hader, Tarik Skubal, and Mason Miller. It's exactly the type of company you want to be in.

Part of the reason could be the lowering of his arm slot. It had been 35 degrees over the first part of his career, and that has dropped to 32 degrees this season. Little's sinker is also slower, but it's featuring more sink that it did last season. It could be he’s just gotten significantly better at pitch tunneling or sequencing, or maybe it's a little bit from each category.

One thing is for sure: Brendon Little is quietly putting together a very impressive campaign, and it won’t be long until he joins the Jeff Hoffman and Yimi García on the short list of best relievers on this team, if he’s not there already.

View full article

[Orgfiller]

Little has been outstanding, a great find by the FO. My only fear with him is his stuff is so good that he can't really control it at times. There's been a few instances where the sink is too hard and drops below the zone, luckily the stuff is good enough to still induce swings on those pitches. But could be a case where he runs into trouble if players force him into the strikezone.

[Laika]

Yeah his zone% is 35% so the obvious adjustment we will start to see is batters just never swinging. 

And his zone% by Sports Info Solutions is 27.4%, the lowest in baseball lol. 

s*** the 35% by Statcast is the lowest in baseball too. Min 5 IP. 

 

Uhhhhhh yeah 

[Brownie19]

Little becoming a dominant option out of the pen is exactly the type of thing that pushes good teams into great teams.  Someone already said it, but it does remind me of when Cecil just started to shove - right when the Jays needed him to - playing a huge role in the 2015-16 seasons.  Hopefully Little can do the same here in Toronto.