WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Four years into his big league career, Kyle Finnegan has established himself as good late-inning reliever. And he’s done so with a fairly simple repertoire of pitches. He throws a high-90s fastball most of the time (70 percent on average). And he mixes in a slider to right-handed batters and a splitter to hitters from both sides of the plate, both of those pitches registering around 90 mph with movement in opposite directions.
It’s a formula that has worked well for the Nationals closer. But as he thought about things this winter, he couldn’t help but come back to a certain conclusion.
“I think I’ve performed well, but I’ve always felt like I left something on the table and felt like I could do better than I’ve done,” he said. “And I think something I’ve been missing is a slower breaking ball.”
Indeed, with almost every pitch Finnegan throws clearing the 90-mph mark, there isn’t much reason for hitters to worry about anything throwing off their timing when they dig in against him.
So Finnegan went about trying to address that winter by developing a new pitch. And on Wednesday afternoon, he tried it out for the first time in a game: Say hello to the latest major leaguer to add a sweeper to his repertoire.