Armed with power curve, McCullers emerges.
Lance McCullers Jr.’s curveball is one of the most devastating punch-out pitches in the major leagues today
One day while playing catch in the outfield at Jesuit High School in Tampa, Fla., Lance McCullers Jr. signaled for a curveball and let one rip.
He hadn’t warned teammate Connor O’Brien, his longtime throwing partner, he had tinkered with his grip. Not that McCullers knew what loomed, either.
As the ball came out of his hand, McCullers quickly realized he was on to something. The pitch featured the type of sharp, late bite that could make even the best of hitters look foolish. O’Brien, who played right field for Jesuit in addition to pitching, whiffed on the catch.
The moment spawned what has become one of the most devastating pitches in baseball. Then, McCullers was readying for his junior season in high school. Now, the 23-year-old Astros All-Star righthander is among the best young pitchers in the majors, armed with a power curveball he throws harder and more frequently than any other starter.
The beginning of McCullers’ ascent from hard-throwing high schooler to 41st overall draft pick to Astros’ No. 2 starter to first-time All-Star can be traced to the origin of his best pitch. Record-breaking breaking ball
Even during a season in which he’s improved his fastball command and increased his changeup usage, McCullers has struck out significantly more batters on his curveball than any other major leaguer has on the pitch.
McCullers, one of six players who will represent the American League-leading Astros on Tuesday night in Miami, has recorded 87 of his 106 strikeouts on his signature pitch.
The pitcher with the next-highest total on his curveball, according to Baseball Savant, is Cleveland Indians ace Corey Kluber, who comes into his start Sunday with 60.
No other American League pitcher has more than 45.
Averaging roughly 86 mph and topping out around 89 mph, McCullers’ curveball comes at hitters faster than some pitchers’ fastballs. Just when they pick it up, they have to deal with its break.
Certain details of the day McCullers discovered his curveball are lost to history. It was before his junior season of high school, probably around January, he surmised.
In need of a secondary offering to complement his fastball, he had worked with a spike curve grip for maybe a week or two by that point.
Then he stuck the fingernail of his right index finger into the seam of the baseball.
“I could tell the way it came out of my hand,” he said. “I was like, ‘That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.’ ”
Although he’s refined the pitch in the years since, McCullers uses the same spike curve grip to this day, the grip that graced the cover of a recent issue of Sports Illustrated.
He puts the most pressure on the ball with his middle finger, which rides down the horseshoe of the seam and produces the wicked spin that has baffled major league hitters since his debut in May 2015.
“I think the curveball grip kind of chooses you, in a way,” McCullers said. “I mean, everyone has different-sized hands. Everyone has different-sized fingers. Everyone has different arm angles and arm speeds. I think it just takes people trying to find the right curveball grip that matches all of those different attributes in order to throw the best one you can.”
For McCullers, altering the finger placement so that his nail dug into the seam proved most comfortable. It’s his wrinkle on the more traditional spike curve grip he learned from his high school pitching coach, Geoff Goetz, a former minor leaguer whom the New York Mets drafted with the sixth overall pick in 1997.
Before shoulder issues derailed his career, Goetz threw a curveball as his out pitch.
In his rendition, he rested the finger tip of his index finger on the seam as a guide. His thumb placement on another seam on the bottom of the ball also varied a tad from McCullers, who has larger hands.
But like with McCullers, Goetz’s middle finger did the work.
O’Brien, a friend of McCullers since preschool, had caught only the Goetz version of the spike curve on the day at Jesuit High when McCullers first experimented with his current grip.
Last week, McCullers said he wasn’t sure O’Brien realized he was the receiver for his curveball’s defining moment. When reached by phone Friday, O’Brien did recall a day that could match McCullers’ description.
“I do remember a time when I wasn’t quite expecting him to throw a breaking ball and it was good enough to catch me off-guard and get me between the legs,” O’Brien said. “I remember that (from) early on. That wasn’t too fun.”
In the two high school seasons that would follow, O’Brien said McCullers’ breaking ball “made people look dumb and foolish a lot of times.”
Goetz said the pitch was “almost unfair, to the point where it’s like, ‘Hey, don’t forget that you throw 95 to 98 miles per hour, which he did in high school.”
From their first session working on the curveball, Goetz remembers being taken aback by the spin McCullers produced but even more so by how he could locate it.
“His ability to command it even in high school was better than me when I was at my best pro level with my command,” said Goetz, who reached Class AA with the Marlins and Yankees over a nine-year career. “He can throw that for a strike as much if not more often than any other pitch that he throws.” From reliance to dominance
McCullers views his first full professional season in 2013 with the Astros’ Low Class A Quad Cities affiliate as a pivotal development year for his curveball. He struggled mightily with fastball command and didn’t yet really throw a changeup, both factors that forced him to have to survive on his breaking ball.
“People viewed it as a negative at the time,” he said, “but it was probably the biggest positive because I kind of learned backwards.”
McCullers is still bullish with the pitch, willing to unleash it in any count. With two strikes, he has gone to it about 65 percent of the time this season. In full counts, his usage increases to roughly 82 percent.
Great strides with his fastball command and the emergence of his changeup allow McCullers to provide teams different looks.
If facing an opponent known to struggle with spin, he has no issue with breaking off 65 curveballs. If he feels changing speeds is the better game plan, he can lean more on his fastball and changeup.
But even in a season when he’s evolved into more of an all-around pitcher rather than just a spin master, McCullers is the only major league starter whose curveball usage exceeds 40 percent, according to FanGraphs. He throws the pitch 45.9 percent of the time.
It all goes back to that day in high school.
“It’s weird how small little things like that kind of play out on a much larger scale,” he said. “I’m sure if I never would’ve thrown the curveball that day I would’ve found another pitch, maybe a slider or a different variation of the curveball that maybe would be a pretty good pitch for me but maybe not the weapon that my curveball is.”
“I guess that moment, if you kind of look back at it, was kind of the start of my big league climb.”