Every New Pitch Coming to Toronto in 2026

[Matthew Creally]

Pitching is an art and a science, but even more so, it's a game of adjustments. Getting ahead and staying ahead of hitters requires constant self-awareness from pitchers with respect to their strategy and plan of attack. Tinkering with one's arsenal can permanently alter the course of one's career for the better, like it did, for example, when former Blue Jay R.A. Dickey picked up a knuckleball in the 2000s. More often than that, learning to throw different pitch types can be just the subtle change pitchers need to stay competitive: Sweepers, cutters, and kick changeups became trendy for a reason.

With a month of spring training games having come and gone, here is a profile on every new pitch of note that we saw down in Dunedin in 2026, and how it affects the outlook of those that deployed them.

Dylan Cease: Changeup

It took until his final preseason start on Sunday, but we finally saw the changeup that Dylan Cease has wanted to add to his arsenal for a long time. According to Statcast, he threw 11 of them on Sunday in the Blue Jays' 14-1 drubbing of Tampa Bay, and it returned a 57% swing-and-miss rate to help him cap off a spring training that saw him record a 0.93 ERA, 30.8% K rate, and a 7.7% BB rate in 9.2 IP. Think he's ready to go?

Assuming Cease is comfortable enough to take this pitch with him into the regular season right away, it won't be your conventional changeup. It has the vertical carry of a fastball (17.7" iVB) but averaged 87 MPH, a velocity he'll no doubt be happy with, considering every other attempt he has made at a changeup at the MLB level has been around 20 MPH slower than his four-seamer; too big of a gap to fool anyone. It averaged ~9" of arm-side movement, which, again, isn't notable for a changeup but notably separates from the cutting action on his fastball. Another good sign from Sunday was his ability to command it: 8 of his 11 changeups landed in the strike zone, a promising development for a starter who has been plagued by location issues before.

As expected, we've seen Cease divert away from the fastball-slider combo that was nearly exclusive for parts of 2025. His combined usage of those two pitches was just 62% this spring, down from 83% last year. The knuckle curve he began toying with in his final starts with the Padres is now a clear tertiary pitch for him against left-handed batters, and against righties, he was throwing a lot more sinkers and sweepers, relying on the four-seamer much less. Cease has always had strong peripherals because the specs on his hard fastball and bullet slider are excellent in a vacuum and allow him to miss plenty of bats. To this point, he has had trouble living up to them because of the lack of diversity in his arsenal. This spring was the least predictable Cease has been since his early days in Chicago. His much-anticipated regular season debut will come Saturday vs the A's.

Dylan Cease Usage Splits, 2025 by Half vs. Spring Training (Statcast)

Pitch Type	First Half 2025	Second Half 2025	2026 ST
FF	41.0%	43.4%	31.8%
SL	47.2%	33.8%	31.2%
Others	11.8%	22.8%	37.0%

Brendon Little: Slider, Four-Seam Fastball

The Blue Jays bullpen's lefty workhorse has long had the kind of stuff that perplexes batters, but he tapered off in a bad way to end 2025 after losing the strike zone and running out of gas in general. Even if a reliever has two distinct offerings with plus-plus bat-missing potential, it becomes compromised when hitters know he can't consistently throw them for strikes and doesn't have another weapon to turn to. Naturally, then, Little showed up to camp with a repertoire that effectively doubled in size: He'll still be the sinker-curveball guy we've come to know, but he now boasts a gyro slider and a traditional four-seamer as well.

Many instances of a pitcher adding to their arsenal happen because the pitcher is looking to address a specific platoon matchup, often opposite-handed hitters. This is not the case with Little; in fact, his approach against lefty hitters changed more drastically this spring than his strategy against righties. Specifically, he used his new slider almost in perfect tandem with his sinker against same-handed opponents, essentially removing the curveball from the picture entirely. It's already obvious that stuff models are going to love this pitch: It sat 90-91 MPH with plenty of spin and true bullet action. That's not far off from the specs of Tarik Skubal's slider for the sake of comparison. As we know, though, it would be premature to mention anything else about those two sliders in the same breath unless Little can throw it for strikes. Against lefties, it had a 33% zone rate, which is around the same as his knuckle curve was last year. However, he also used it sparingly against righties, a situation where he was able to find the zone more (50%). Overall, it generated a 73% (!!!) swing and miss rate this spring. Intriguing, to say the least.

Brendon Little Usage vs. LHB, 2025 vs. Spring Training (Statcast)

Pitch Type	2025	2026 ST
Sinker	52.8%	40.5%
Knuckle Curve	41.9%	9.5%
Slider	-	35.7%
Four-Seam Fastball	-	14.3%
Cutter	5.3%	-

The four-seamer was, along with the slider, a tertiary weapon against righties but also saw some occasional left-on-left usage. Even after considering its lower arm slot, its movement patterns won't be surprising for hitters (13.4" iVB, 6.8" arm-side), but it did average 97 MPH and touched 98 during game action. If this pitch ends up being successful, it won't be on account of its raw traits. There's nothing too special about an upper-90s fastball with dead zone movement in today's MLB. What it does have is big-time trajectory separation from his sinker, and it will also force hitters to think about the upper half of the strike zone when Little is on the mound. Having a nasty sinker, curveball, and slider is great, but it also tells the hitter he's about to see a lot of pitches down, which doesn't leave much to have to guess on. If Little uses this fastball occasionally and can steal a strike to keep opponents off balance, it will make the rest of his arsenal play up.

Mason Fluharty: Changeup

Much like Brendon Little, Fluharty is a lefty reliever and a recent graduate from the Jays' prospect ranks with a 2-pitch arsenal (lacking a traditional four-seam fastball) and impressive stuff but less impressive command. He could throw strikes more frequently than Little by the end of the season, so he was squarely within the circle of trust by the time the World Series rolled around, but his cutter-sweeper repertoire lacks diversity. It's pretty rare for any MLB reliever to not have a pitch that moves arm-side, and while Fluharty was a unicorn that way in 2025, he flashed a changeup for the first time during camp this year.

Initially classified as a sinker by Statcast, Fluharty's changeup sat at 88 MPH with ~5" of iVB and ~11" of run and became his new secondary against righties. He threw his cutter 67% of the time in that situation last year, but the changeup gives him another path to go down early in counts and forces hitters to stay on top of both sides of the plate. The movement and spin characteristics of this pitch compare pretty closely to the changeup that now-AL East rival Ryan Weathers threw when he was with the Marlins in 2025, which generated a swing and miss rate over 40%, an xwOBA under .300, and got above-average grades from both Stuff+ and PitchingBot's stuff model on Fangraphs.

Mason Fluharty (2026) vs. Ryan Weathers (2025) changeup specs comparison (Statcast)

Pitcher	MPH	iVB	Arm-side HB	RPM
Mason Fluharty	87.3	4.9"	11.1"	1,980
Ryan Weathers	88.2	2.7"	12.5"	1,862

It should be noted that only five of the 15 changeups Fluharty threw this spring were in the zone (33%), but it got a 40% chase rate in a small sample, so hitters, at least for now, haven't figured out how to handle it. It was responsible for the lone preseason extra base hit he gave up, but on balls in play, it had the lowest exit velocity of the 3 pitches in his arsenal, and generating weak contact was already something he was great at in 2025.

Louis Varland: Changeup

Varland throwing changeups is not a completely new development. He leaned on it more down the stretch after getting traded to Toronto at the deadline, and by the postseason, it was a clear tertiary pitch behind that lethal fastball-curveball combo. This year, though, he has made significant adjustments to its shape: It now profiles more like a kick change, with more downward movement and less spin than the 2025 iteration.

Louis Varland Changeup Specs, 2025 vs. Spring Training (Statcast)

Category	2025	2026 ST
MPH	91.8	91.8
iVB	4.7"	1.5"
Arm-side HB	14.1"	12.2"
RPM	1,741	1,563

Unsurprisingly, lefties saw their fair share of these new-and-improved changeups from Varland over the course of the spring. While it was delightful seeing him unleash adrenaline-fueled mid-90s changeups in the postseason, this newer variant got outstanding preseason results (50% swing and miss, .233 wOBA, -20° launch angle). From a usage perspective, he won't look all that different from the end of 2025, nor does he have to: Varland already has excellent stuff that he can throw for strikes, and refining one of his secondaries to give him another viable strikeout pitch in weak side matchups is a low-risk, high-reward maneuver.

Braydon Fisher: Cutter

At the very start of camp, The Athletic's Mitch Bannon reported that Braydon Fisher was looking to add a cutter in response to the lack of chase his curveball got from lefties as the season went on. While this would've been an interesting development, the jury is out on whether it will actually come to fruition in the regular season because he threw just 3 cutters out of the 110 total pitches he threw in the spring.

Of course, this isn't to say Fisher is the same guy he was at the end of 2025. He's pushed his fastball usage against lefties by quite a bit, using it and the slider at a combined rate of over 70% in those matchups, a stark contrast to last year when he used the curveball 50% of the time. Competition for bullpen reps will be steep early in the season in Toronto, but Fisher is doing his part to ensure that last year was no mirage.

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