Is Andrew Abbott real or fluky? Plus, José Soriano's efficiency, Kyle Harrison's arsenal, and Framber Valdez's changeup.
Corbin examines four starting pitchers and their arsenals, including Andrew Abbott, José Soriano, Kyle Harrison, and Framber Valdez.
We're closing out May with a beautiful day in the PNW, and let's do another starting pitcher thread from Friday. Andrew Abbott had his best outing, with seven scoreless innings on Friday against the Cubs. Abbott had 2-4 whiffs between his four-seam, changeup, curveball, and cutter.
Abbott introduced a cutter against right-handed hitters in 2025, rarely throwing it 3.6% of the time before Friday. The cutter has been a pitch he tends to use toward the inside corner to right-handed hitters, leading to weak contact (.000 wOBA, .288 xwOBA) in the early 2025 sample.
The visual below shows the cutter locations against right-handed hitters.
We want to be careful with pitchers like Abbott, who has decent four-seam IVB, yet lacks the high-end extension. Though Abbott's changeup leads the arsenal with a 13.7% SwK, he generated his whiffs in the heart of the zone, which isn't sustainable against the Cubs.
José Soriano has been a quality start machine with four in his six outings in May. The Guardians stacked left-handed hitters against Soriano, with the sinker leading the arsenal in whiffs (8% SwK), which typically isn't something we want. Soriano pitched to contact, with a 100% zone contact rate via the knuckle curve and splitter on Friday.
Most of Soriano's arsenal lives toward his arm-side, including the four-seam, sinker, and splitter. We saw most of Soriano's arsenal located low and away from left-handed hitters on Friday. Don't overreact to Soriano throwing the splitter a ton in the zone (62%) against the Guardians, but it typically hovered around 21-22% in 2025. Since splitters can be bumpy, expect Soriano to have some highs and lows with the splitter.
Kyle Harrison's four-seam elicited a 20% SwK on Friday against the Marlins. Harrison has been using a low arm angle, aligning with the below-average four-seam IVB. However, Harrison somehow generated 10 whiffs via the four-seam on Friday.
Though Harrison uses a lower arm slot, he kept the four-seam usage higher in the zone to help with pitch separation. In the early 2025 sample, Harrison has been pumping more four-seamers, most notably against right-handed hitters. Interestingly, that came with better results versus right-handed hitters, including the four-seam allowing a .198 wOBA (.233 xwOBA).
Framber Valdez had an efficient complete game outing, with a 15.7% SwK across 83 pitches. Valdez was one of four pitchers with nine innings of under 90 pitches and 9 strikeouts since 2010. Besides Valdez, that list includes Bailey Ober, Yusmeiro Petit, and Rick Porcello. Valdez was amped with his sinker (+1 mph), curveball (+1.6 mph), and changeup (+1.4 mph), increasing in velocity on Friday.
Unsurprisingly, Valdez's approach may change, though opposing teams have been stacking left-handed hitters against him. The curveball led the arsenal, with a 23.3% SwK on Friday, but elicited a SwK of around 18-19%.
We've seen Valdez add vertical movement via the changeup, and it turned into an above-average movement profile in 2025. Valdez used to pump the changeup in the zone. However, he backed off the changeup locations and focused on it having a lower zone rate. That hopefully coincides with more whiffs and fewer opportunities for weak contact.