Patience On New Pitch Has Paid Off For Slade Cecconi

Cleveland Guardians right-hander Slade Cecconi has given the team a 4.83 ERA in 72.2 innings of work. That includes a rough start to his season and a marked turnaround.

Over his last seven starts, the right-hander has a 3.16 ERA. He implemented a new pitch this year, the sweeper, hoping to ditch his slurvy slider. The early returns weren’t great, though.

“We got rid of the sweeper because that pitch sucked, for lack of a better way to describe it,” Cecconi said, per Noah Yingling. “It just sucked.”

Since the start of the season, Cecconi has been throwing more cutters than last year. It’s basically a new pitch for him, since he used it so little in 2025. Even during his early-season struggles, he has kept throwing it, and it’s finally starting to pay dividends.

“It takes time,” Cecconi said. “It’s hard to just look at one outing or maybe two outings and come up with a big-picture thing from one or two outings. You need data and feedback from hitters.”

Cecconi certainly knows his pitching. He knows that he is not the hardest-thrower out there, and that his stuff isn’t on the same level as some of the game’s brightest stars. However, he more than makes up for it with pitching savvy, smarts, and the willingness to try new things, fail, adjust, and succeed.

Not many hurlers can say they are brave on the mound, and Cecconi definitely is. He is willing to experiment to find the best version of himself he can be.

The cutter is basically two pitches in one because he can use it as a riding fastball that cuts, and also as a slider with some depth. He can manipulate the offering’s speed and depth.

“I can back door to lefties more now, I can go top rail with it, I can go down with it. It’s all the same pitch,” Cecconi said. “It’s just ever-so-slight manipulations of where I’m throwing it and what action I want to get on it. But it’s all the same pitch.”

The talented right-hander is now using four pitches this year: a fastball, the cutter, a sinker, and a curveball. He mixes them well and goes to every one of them at least 15.5 percent of the time, which keeps hitters guessing.

At one point, it became evident that Cecconi’s sweeper wasn’t going to work. Fortunately for him, he has a new, versatile pitch that helps him consistently retire major league hitters.