On the 23rd Tim Herrin made his first appearance of the 2026 Spring, and he brought along a new pitch to talk about. The new cutter is just one of a few changes in Herrin’s game that he showed off a few days ago.
Take a look at these Pitch Plots taken from Herrin’s most recent outing, and his entire 2025 Pitch Plot. (Provided by TJStats)
Outing on 23rd
2025
New Cutter
The cutter adds an new average-to-plus shape on his pitch plot, settling in a previously barren quadrant. The velocity on this pitch is very encouraging, the average cutter from
a LHP is 88.4, compared to Herrin’s 94.8. Typically there is a pretty significant drop-off between Fastball IVB and Cutter IVB, so I honestly don’t know how to interpret those two pitches having around 13.5 IVB each. The cutter has a very unique shape to it, only a few lefties have cutters with 10+ IVB.
I really like this fit for Tim Herrin, not only is a possible weapon against RHH, but oftentimes pitchers with poor command are able to lean on their cutter. Impossible to tell yet if this cutter will help in Tim Herrin’s occasional difficulty throwing strikes, but I hope to see him use this pitch more in the spring.
Higher Arm Slot
Also depicted in the plots above is a slightly higher arm angle in 2026 compared to before. It is only a shift in 5 degrees, but I would guess that higher release is helping Herrin manipulate and command his cutter. This shift brings all of his pitch release heights up a couple inches, but it also lowers his extension. Herrin was around average in extension before, now he is slightly below average.
I anticipate that this will lower Herrin’s platoon risk, however there’s a lot to wait and see before I form any real judgement on this adjustment.
Better Slider
In the past Tim Herrin threw a pure gyro slider that moved arm side as often as it did glove side, but this new slider looks much better. His slider this Spring was thrown on a different spin axis than ever before, and there is a new shape to it.
Herrin added 4 inches of glove side break, which should do wonders to improve his Slider’s lackluster returns in 2025. Herrin’s slider was juiced last season as it surrendered a 52% hard hit rate. TJStats’ model has his new slider at a 102 stuff+ vs 2025’s slider which was 99 stuff+.
As one of a few LHP in the Guardians bullpen, Herrin will likely be very important to this teams success. After just a taste of the new Tim, I am wanting more!
