One Twins Pitcher Nobody is Talking About for 2022

Who is Jharel Cotton?
Earlier this week, Cody Christie wrote an article about Three Twins Pitchers Due to Bounce Back. Today I will dive deeper into one of those three, Jharel Cotton.

Since being drafted by the Dodgers in 2012, Jharel Cotton has made his way around Major League Baseball. He spent parts of five seasons in the Dodgers minor league system before getting traded to the Oakland A’s in 2016. Cotton had a rocky tenure with Oakland, bouncing back and forth between AAA and MLB before having Tommy John surgery in 2018. He was 11-10 with a 4.95 ERA for the Athletics in his career with only 7.3 K/9. He spent a season with the Cubs before going to the Texas Rangers in 2021.

In 2021, Cotton started the year in AAA-Round Rock. There, he threw 42 innings with a 3.00 ERA. He struck out 57 batters and walked 17. On July 30, Cotton was called up and made his first major-league appearance in nearly four years. Cotton struggled for the first month, allowing a 5.79 ERA in 14 innings through August. He also had a very high 5.8 BB/9 in this time span. After August, Cotton hit his stride. For the last month of the season, Cotton posted a 1.62 ERA. He also lowered his BB/9 to 3.2 in September.

Unique Pitch Mix
Part of the reason for Cotton’s sudden improvement could have been due to changing his pitch usage. In August, Cotton threw 49 percent fastballs and only nine percent sliders. In September, he threw 42 percent fastballs and 19 percent sliders. Pairing a more diverse pitch mix with an already devastating changeup led to success.

Riseball!
Cotton has one of the most unique fastballs in Major League Baseball. In the day of velocity, his fastball only averaged 93 miles per hour but remained very effective. This is due to its movement. Among all Major League pitchers in 2021, Cotton had the most vertical movement vs avg on his fastball (4.3 inches more than average). This means his fastball is deceiving and the vertical movement will cause his fastball to stay on its initial plane longer instead of having the normal downward plane. This will cause hitters to swing underneath it.

El Cambio
Despite having a potentially effective fastball, Cotton can not throw it all the time or he becomes too predictable, like he did for his first month in the big leagues in 2021. Another unique pitch Cotton throws to complement the fastball is his changeup. Cotton has a very effective changeup. Among pitchers with at least 50 batters faced in 2021, Cotton’s changeup had the second lowest xSLG, meaning hitters did not square up the changeup well at all. Part of this could be due to the fact that Cotton’s changeup is so slow, averaging 80 miles per hour. Hitters were 9-for-50 (.180) with only three extra base hits and 17 strikeouts against his changeup in 2021.

Slide-Piece
In the big leagues, you can rarely get by just throwing two effective pitches. In August, when Cotton struggled, he threw either his fastball or changeup over 80 percent of the time. This made him too predictable. A 10 percent uptick in his slider usage over the last month of the season led to better results. In a limited sample in 2021, his slider had a whiff rate of 37.5 percent. His slider could still use some work but could be a serviceable third pitch, especially out of the bullpen.

What role will Cotton play?
With Texas, Cotton was a middle reliever. Below is his inning frequency numbers in 2021. The number of games is how many times he pitched in that certain inning.

As you can see, Cotton was pretty versatile, mostly pitching in innings six through eight. With Tyler Duffey and Jorge Alcala as the Twins two best right-handed relievers, I see Cotton being more of a sixth or seventh inning guy to start.

Closing Remarks
Cotton is a promising pitcher that the Twins will only be paying $700K next year. In my opinion it is a good low-risk, high-reward situation. What are your thoughts on Jharel Cotton? Feel free to ask questions and discuss in the comment section.

Thank you for reading, and Go Twins!