Coming off two quality starts after a forgettable two-inning, 8-run, blow-up against Texas, Toronto’s Brett Cecil is starting to resemble a fantasy starter. In last night’s start against the Angels, arguably his best start behind his 1-hit/10K masterpiece against the Indians, Brett Cecil allowed two hits and two walks scattered over 7.1 innings.
Cecil’s success has come largely as a result of working his fastball aggressively around the zone to set up his quality off-speed stuff.
During his previous two starts, Cecil’s used his fastball and sinker to pound the zone at an an above average rate. Neither of Cecil’s fastballs are used as strike-out pitches but both induce a fair amount of weak contact and in the case of his four-seamer, an above average rate of balls being flung into foul territory.
While Cecil’s four-seamer isn’t inducing swing-and-misses, he’s managed to get 70% of them across the plate for strikes. Batters are having problems identifying the fastball, a pitch that Cecil’s started cutting occasionally, and are swinging at roughly 49% of them (65% over the past 2 games).
Cecil’s ability to work the fastball, like almost every other Blue Jay pitcher, has resulted in the increased effectiveness of all of his off-speed pitches. Brett Cecil’s change-up has developed faster than expected at the big-league level such that he’s been able to actually decrease the usage of his slider. Between 2009 and 2010, Cecil was able to take another couple of miles off his change-up without changing his arm-action. The decrease in velocity and spin-rate on the change-up has allowed Cecil to add a couple extra inches of sink to the pitch.
Not only has Cecil been able to hide and mix his pitches better, he’s also limited the amount of walks in 2010. Cecil’s current rate of 2.75K/BB is right around where it needs to be for Brett to be successful in the long-term. With an improved change-up and almost a 10% increase in O-Swing, Brett Cecil is starting to look more and more like Ricky Romero by the day.
Despite Cecil’s improvements across the board, his rate stats are deflated by an artificially low BABIP and left-on-base percentage. That’s not to say that Cecil’s ERA will regress, though. Cecil’s currently outpitched his 4.10 ERA by about half a run according to tERA which when coupled with further maturation, should probably keep his ERA in the low-fours for the rest of the season. Cecil’s WHIP certainly won’t be as lucky and will eventually regress to the 1.30 region.
Like any young pitcher, Cecil is going to have a few blowups and his propensity for 2 and 3 strike-out games is troublesome but going forward, Cecil isn’t all that far behind where Romero was last year. He’s flashed strike-out potential, improved his change and limited free-passes, to me that sounds like someone on the rise.
