Brandon Woodruff enters 2025 with a question no pitcher wants to face: if fastball is no longer what it used to be, what’s left?
For most of his career, Woodruff relied on controlled violence. His 96–97 mph four-seamer hit straight into the zone, forcing hitters to react late. But the 2025 season forced him to change. As his average speed dropped to 91–92 mph, simply “blowing” opponents was no longer an option.
And that’s when Woodruff evolved.
Instead of relying solely on breaking the ball, Brewers and Woodruff chose a more subtle path: splitting the slider. One part became a sweeper, the other sharpened into a hard cutter—a pitch initially seen only as a “wrinkle,” a visual distraction.
Few expected that wrinkle to become central to the pitch.
In the early stages of the season, Woodruff still led the way with his sinker and four-seamer. But from mid-August onwards, the picture changed. Cutter usage increased dramatically — and at the same time, how hitters perceived Woodruff changed.
The previous problem was: when hitters got their hands on the four-seamer, the damage was real. Both the sinker and the four-seamer showed signs of worsening xwOBA in August. But instead of reducing the fastball, Woodruff used the cutter as a key.
The story lies in tunneling.
At the decision point, Woodruff’s three fastballs — the four-seam, the sinker, and the cutter — originated from almost the same point. The human eye couldn’t tell the difference. But when the ball reached the plate, they ended up in three completely different positions. This forced hitters to guess — and guess wrong.
Match+ models showed that the level of deception from this group of fastballs was 10–12% higher than the tournament average. The cutter didn’t need to be a pitch with “stuff” of its own. It just needed to be there at the right time.
And then, Woodruff began to believe in it.
In the final month of the season, the cutter became the most frequently used fastball. Among starters who threw cutters at least 150 times and accounted for over 15% of the arsenal, Woodruff’s cutter ranked in the top 15 for whiff rate, equivalent to a percentile of 82—a remarkable number for a brand-new pitch.
What made this pitch different was its movement. Woodruff generated nearly 5 inches more induced vertical break than the “dead zone” predicted by the model based on his body and arm slot. This explains why hitters still swing-and-miss even when the pitch was within the zone.
Woodruff’s cutter was about 4 mph slower than the four-seamer, dropped 5 inches more, and ran 5 inches further back to glove side. The result? Hitters were weak with the cutter and started “undermining” the four-seamer—lazy flyballs instead of barrels.
In fact, in terms of whiff efficiency and quality of contact in 2025, Woodruff’s cutter will be better than Corbin Burnes’ cutter in 2024.
His lat injury, which kept him out at the end of the season, was undesirable but not entirely unexpected during his rehab. More importantly: even with a declining arsenal, Woodruff remains in the top 5 MLB in in-zone whiff rate among starters throwing over 500 pitches.
If velocity returns even slightly—as Aaron Ashby once did—Woodruff’s fastball trio will become an extremely difficult problem to solve. But even if that doesn’t happen, Woodruff has proven that he doesn’t need to revert to his old self to remain dangerous.
He’s older. Stuff isn’t at its peak. But his knowledge, pitching feel, and ability to manipulate hitters are better than ever.
And sometimes, that’s the most terrifying version of a pitcher.
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