Andrew Kittredge Has Been Extra-Strength Nasty as Cubs' Newest Relief Ace

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Matt Marton-Imagn Images

To some extent, Andrew Kittredge is your standard-issue 2025 relief pitcher. He's big and hirsute and a sinker-slider guy. Specifically, before the Cubs dealt for him at the end of July, he was a "95-and-a-slider" guy, which is the get-in cost for a modern high-leverage arm. Everyone throws 95 and has a slider. What makes you special?

Historically, Kittredge's answer to that question has been control. He hasn't often stood out from the crowd, in truth, but in his best years (2021, 2024), he's stayed healthy enough to be a reliable arm; walked very few batters; kept the ball in the park; and missed just enough bats to earn late-inning looks. He's been good more often than he's been great, and hurt more often than he's been good, but he's got 95 and a slider and the ability to locate each fairly well.

Once the Cubs got hold of him, though, everything about Kittredge glowed up a bit. Ok, he's still beardy and old-looking, but in terms of performance, there's been a tangible change. While with the Orioles, this year, his sinker averaged 94.9 miles per hour, and his slider sat at 88.8. Since coming to the Cubs, the sinker is up to 95.7—and the slider is sizzling even more, relatively speaking, at 89.9.

A slider that hard is a true out pitch. Assuming it still has some movement (and his movement numbers are essentially unchanged from one place to the other), a slider at 90 makes you stand out from the crowd in a big way. It makes a huge difference to add a tick to both one's fastball and one's slider. That's why, on the whole, Stuff+ likes Kittredge's arsenal better since he changed laundry.

Stuff+		Pitch Type
Team	Sinker	Slider	Four-Seamer
Orioles	100	102	89
Cubs	104	107	93

It might be tempting to think that that, alone, explains why Kittredge has been so good with the Cubs thus far. He has been tremendous, with a 2.89 ERA, 0.9 Win Probability Added (WPA), 37.7% strikeout rate and 4.3% walk rate in 69 batters faced. But is that just because he's throwing harder, and a slider plays up that much once you crank it into the 90s?

No.

Location+		Pitch Type
Team	Sinker	Slider	Four-Seamer
Orioles	91	109	117
Cubs	115	122	112

Although the extra velocity he's found does matter, it's where he's throwing it that has turned Kittredge into the Cubs' latest super-weapon in relief. Since the deadline, 417 pitchers have thrown at least 10 innings in the majors. Kittredge has the sixth-best Location+ in that group, and of the five ahead of him, only one—emerging stud Reid Detmers, converted to the pen this year after flaming out as a starter with the Angels—has a better Stuff+ than Kittredge's. If you're looking for the combination of sheer nastiness and pinpoint location, Kittredge is where you're most likely to find it this October.

That assumes, of course, that he can keep this up. To determine whether he can, we had better get some sense of how he's done it. So, first of all, here's where he threw his sinker before the trade, and after it.

Notice, here, that he was a one-plan man when it came to the sinker in Baltimore. He tried to throw it, almost exclusively, to the third-base side of home plate. That makes plenty of sense, because his sinker is more of a runner than a true bowling-ball offering. It has heavy action at the bottom of the zone, but it's easier for him to run it sideways than to sink it all that much.

With the Cubs, as you can see, there's a big blob of red in the middle of the plate. That's because Kittredge is embracing a more bifurcated plan of attack with the pitch, based on handedness. If I were to split these locations out by handedness (I don't want to oversaturate you with these images, so just imagine, with me), you'd see a lot of his sinkers in the heart of the zone to righties, while they mostly cluster in the lower, outer corner to lefties. To understand fully why that's important, we'll circle back shortly. Let's talk sliders.

Between these two pairs of images, one theme that jumps out is how much better Kittredge is keeping the ball down since coming to the Cubs. The slider is just never far above the knees now, whereas it wandered up into a liftable area of the zone more with Baltimore. He's also driving the sinker into the lower reaches of the zone more often since the trade. As I already mentioned, though, that's not a result of a big change in movement data on the pitch. Nor has he materially changed his arm slot or release angle.

It's time to talk about how the hurler's two main pitches interact with one another. (He also throws a four-seamer, and he toyed with a splitter earlier this year, but he's basically sinker-slider; we're going to put our focus there.) While with Baltimore, Kittredge had a very traditional plan for attacking righties. The slider started in the middle of the plate and spun down and away from the batter; the sinker started in the same place and bore down and in on them. As we discussed, the sinker didn't always turn down as well as it veered right, but it still worked toward that inner third. The slider would twist toward the low-and-away space, though not always quite get there.

The Cubs' innovation with Kittredge has been to have him start everything away from the righties, instead of starting in the middle of anything. Given all the run on that sinker, starting it around the middle of the plate often meant he was losing it off the dish, and batters would be too busy dodging the pitch to swing at it, so it often went for a ball. Meanwhile, his slider is so hard and tight a pitch that it wouldn't always get as low or as away as he wanted. In an attempt to create a tunnel that maximized deception for the hitter, he was trying to get them thinking 'swing' every time, but the ball wasn't always going where it actually needed to go.

By aiming at the lower, outer quadrant to righties, he's now ending up with a lot of sinkers that have white on both sides of them. That sounds dangerous, but half the time, the batter gives up on that pitch and takes it for an embarrassingly "hittable" called strike. The other half the time, they're trying to contend with a pitch sitting 96 and running hard toward them; they're not finding the barrel with it. Meanwhile, the slider is dipping out of the zone more often, but he's set the hitter up to be defensive about the zone, and they're chasing it at a good rate. Because of the mental starting point for the pitch, even a slight miss isn't going to get him hurt at all.

To lefties, the story is a bit different. Kittredge's plan with them was to throw that sinker on the outer part, but also to start the slider far away from them and nip at the backdoor corner. That's pitching scared, and the Cubs have convinced him to abandon it. The sinker still goes to that outer edge, but starts in the middle of the plate. The slider, meanwhile, is dipping more toward them, and just below the zone. Kittredge's location plan for his stuff to righties while in Baltimore has essentially become his plan to lefties with Chicago, although he's getting everything down just a tiny bit more. To righties, meanwhile, he's devised this whole new way to use the same pitch shapes and interactions.

Daniel Palencia will get some rehab work with Triple-A Iowa this weekend. Brad Keller remains an impressive specimen and at least a co-closer in Palencia's absence. As Kittredge has settled into his role with the Cubs, though, he's made a strong case to become the relief ace of this team as it heads into the postseason. His presence gives their bullpen the depth to seriously ponder a deep run into October. Ryan Pressly failed, but the team still found a right-handed graybeard who can anchor their pen with plus stuff and a lot of veteran savvy.

View full article

[Outshined_One]

He's been far and away the best acquisition at the trade deadline for this team.  There was a good chunk of people complaining about this team not acquiring a lockdown relief pitcher (yours truly included), but Kittredge stabilized the bullpen and has been phenomenal as a late inning relief pitcher.

[Bertz]

At this point his option definitely gets picked up, yeah?  We know Jed's favorite free agent reliever is "the best guy I can find willing to take a one year deal", and I'd be shocked if there ends up being something better than Kittredge at 1/9. 

Plus, I think there's a lot of value to having a trio like Palencia/Kittredge/Hodge locked in before FA opens.  Allows you to hunt for deals a la Thielbar, but also doesn't preclude you from going big game hunting on like a Helsley.

[Transmogrified Tiger]

6 hours ago, Bertz said:

Plus, I think there's a lot of value to having a trio like Palencia/Kittredge/Hodge locked in before FA opens.  Allows you to hunt for deals a la Thielbar, but also doesn't preclude you from going big game hunting on like a Helsley.

I'm not sure this is true, and it's the main thing about the Kittredge option decision to me.  Can the 2026 payroll fit 2 relievers at Kittredge+ salaries, and even if so is Kittredge the guy you try to keep over Keller(even if Keller requires multiple years)?