Craig Kimbrel debuts cutter in first Mets spring outing

Craig Kimbrel debuted a brand new pitch in his first New York Mets outing for his 17th season in the major leagues. The 37-year-old veteran tossed one scoreless inning on 25 pitches at Clover Park this weekend. But the real story was not the clean box score. It was exactly what he threw to get those outs. Kimbrel is actively testing a cutter this spring.

This is a massive development for a guy who built a borderline Hall of Fame resume on just two dominant pitches. He already has 440 career saves. He does not have anything left to prove to anyone. Yet here he is in camp trying to reinvent himself. Here is why this matters for the Mets and how it changes his outlook for the upcoming season.

Surviving With Less Velocity

Here is the thing about getting older as a late-inning power pitcher. The top-end velocity always drops eventually. Kimbrel averaged an elite 96 to 98 mph on his four-seam fastball during his absolute prime. Last year his average fastball sat right around 93.5 mph. That is a noticeable dip. Despite the drop, he still threw that fastball 65 percent of the time in 2025. Major league hitters know it is coming. They can time it up easily. A 93 mph fastball just does not blow past good hitters the way a 98 mph heater does.

Manager Carlos Mendoza told reporters that Kimbrel had 92 to 93 mph life in his debut outing. That is completely fine for early spring training action. But Kimbrel is smart enough to know he needs something else to survive a full 162-game season.

This is exactly where the new cutter comes into play. Kimbrel has relied almost entirely on his four-seam fastball and his devastating knuckle-curve for his entire 16-year career. Adding a third distinct pitch right now is a pure survival tactic. A cutter moves differently than his other options. It bridges the velocity and movement gap between his straight fastball and his breaking ball. He explicitly wants to keep hitters off his main pitch. If he can throw a tight cutter inside on the hands of left-handed batters or away from right-handed batters, it opens up entirely new ways to get crucial outs. It stops modern batters from simply sitting on one speed and one specific location.

What Craig Kimbrel’s Analytics Tell Us

If you look closely at his Baseball Savant and FanGraphs pages from 2025, you see a proud pitcher fighting to hold on. His raw strikeout rate was still excellent at 34.7 percent. The swing and miss stuff is still hiding in his right arm. But his walk rate jumped to a very concerning 14.3 percent. He was missing the strike zone far too often. His overall fastball velocity ranked in the 35th percentile across the entire league. When opposing hitters actually made contact, they hit the baseball hard. His hard-hit rate climbed to 36 percent.

He even sprinkled in a sweeper about 11 percent of the time last year to try and adjust. The new cutter is different. It is not designed to be a flashy strikeout pitch. It is a weak contact pitch. It is meant to get soft ground balls early in the count to save his arm.

Low Risk Roster Fit

The Mets signed Kimbrel to a minor league deal back in January. This is a brilliant and completely low-risk move for the front office. If the new cutter actually works, they get a battle-tested veteran arm who can handle high pressure situations in New York. He can eat tough innings in the seventh or eighth before handing the baseball to Edwin Diaz for the save. If the pitch experiment fails and he struggles, the team can just walk away cleanly. They do not owe him any huge guaranteed money. It is a pure upside play for a bullpen unit that desperately needs reliable depth to compete in a tough division.

We are obviously just starting spring training games right now. Things can change very fast in baseball. But seeing a veteran with over 800 career appearances actively evolve his mechanics is a great sign. It proves his competitive fire is still burning hot. He wants to win right now. He knows the loud reports of his decline are everywhere. The cutter is his direct answer to the loud critics. If he commands this new pitch consistently, Kimbrel will pitch meaningful innings in Queens this summer. We just have to wait and see how the cutter looks against real major league hitting when the games actually count in April.