Analysis

The Nationals didn’t have a pitch design team. The new unit could change their future

Cade Cavalli pitches against the Tampa Bay Rays

Cade Cavalli is one of several pitchers to see an improvement this season. Mike Carlson / Getty Images

By Spencer NusbaumJune 22, 2026 Updated

TAMPA BAY, Fla. — Over the offseason, Washington Nationals pitching coach Simon Mathews held a baseball in front of his laptop camera and told his Opening Day starter, in subtler terms than these, that he may know a way to get a few more superstars out.

Mathews dug the nail of his index finger into a seam, placed his middle finger across the outside and tucked his thumb underneath the ball. Cade Cavalli listened closely as his new pitching coach talked through some physics concepts too jargon-y to fit in this story. The idea basically boiled down to this:

If you throw with this arm slot, using this grip, and it comes out of your hand like this, then it will move like this and break a hitter’s brain.

“And it was true,” Cavalli said.

“Going into it, I had a little bit more confidence that this new grip was going to work, because they analyzed my slot, they analyzed my hand position, my spin axis —,” he continued on, as if he were ready to name another 10 variables that made the pitch dance towards the plate.

In essence, the staff had a blueprint. All Cavalli had to do was work.

While one of baseball’s best offenses has carried the Nationals this far — they are 40-38 heading into Monday’s four-game set against the Philadelphia Phillies — what they accomplish on the mound could dictate what comes next for the organization.

Next being the trade deadline, a potential postseason push and the years of contention they hope lie ahead.

Why it's too early to talk about the MLB trade deadlineKen Rosenthal

The Nationals entered Sunday’s 4-3 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays with the least valuable pitching staff in baseball, according to FanGraphs. This weekend, their bullpen twice gave a lead away. That both belies the work that is happening behind the scenes and emphasizes how important it is for the Nats to nail the other half of the game.

While the Nationals experimented with pitch design in years past, there wasn’t a defined process across the organization, nor a defined pitch design team. This winter, they hired pitching director Grayson Crawford — formerly of the New York Mets and Yankees, two forward-thinking organizations in pitching development — to lead that effort alongside Mathews, assistant pitching coach Sean Doolittle and others.

The early returns have been more than promising, with help from pitching coaches across the organization and buy-in from pitchers.

Cavalli is one of many pitchers in the organization who have added a pitch with help from the new regime. He and relief pitcher Brad Lord are the most obvious beneficiaries in the majors. Both have added a sweeper. Both told a similar story of progress; of some experimentation in catch play, followed by a throw that made it click and some tinkering that followed.

How exactly has that worked out?

The sweeper itself

Cavalli has thrown the pitch 153 times and allowed just five hits. (.139 batting average against)

Lord has thrown the pitch 118 times and allowed just three hits. (.130 batting average against)

The rest of the arsenal

Cavalli allowed a .990 OPS to right-handed hitters last year. This year, they’ve turned into Triple A caliber hitters, with just a .638 OPS.

Lord has a 1.10 ERA since April 25, and his sinker that plays off of the sweeper has been one of the most valuable pitches in MLB.

The process in action

Cavalli probably would not peg Saturday as his best start this season. In the 48 hours leading up to the start, after eating an undercooked meal from an unnamed restaurant, the right-hander had sweats, a fever, woke up “fighting” in the middle of the night and wasn’t able to keep much down. He could not rely on his stuff alone.

With the help of his new-look arsenal, he was able to think his way through it. As Cavalli recently described it, he now has a solution for each type of hitter. Hitters who struggle against pitches that move north or south get the curveball; he fed Richie Palacios multiple to get out of a jam. Those who hate off-speed pitches have to deal with his changeup. And those who can’t hit pitches that break horizontally now see the sweeper; Victor Mesa Jr. got one that induced a grounder to get the Nats out of an inning unscathed.

“It’s just kind of completed my arsenal,” Cavalli said.

Lord went through a similar endeavor.

In a previous season, he had tried to add a sweeper but couldn’t find a grip that worked. When Mathews showed him one this spring, Lord tried it in catch play; after two bad attempts, the third one took a hard left before landing at his partner’s chest.

He has no idea what changed. But that is the power of a pitch design team: It is what was supposed to happen the whole time.

The humility required to make this work

There was an idea, ruminating in the coaching ranks, about a new changeup grip that could turn Lord into a star.

They had Lord test it out this spring, just as they did with his sweeper. They had the right man to give it a shot: As a former 18th-rounder, Lord was familiar with the idea of perseverance. After a handful of attempts, they told him to quit it.

Earlier in Mathews’ coaching career, he concedes that he sometimes leaned too far into what looked good on a screen rather than what helped a pitcher build out their entire arsenal.

Brad Lord is another member of Washington’s pitching staff that has benefited from working with the pitch design team. (Jess Rapfogel / Getty Images)

“You imagine this pitch, you imagine Brad Lord throwing a negative eight VB changeup, and you’re like, ‘I really want to light that TrackMan unit on fire,'” Mathews said. “But you have to think of the arsenal holistically.”

The idea, in short, is for pitchers to be “great at what they’re good at,” Mathews said, referencing a quote he often heard from his old boss in Cincinnati. There’s only so much time a pitcher can devote to a new pitch. Lord’s strength is his sinker. So what’s going to be the best way to help that pitch be even better? It’s adding something that has as much separation from that pitch as possible, so hitters have to honor a ball that could move to the left or the right.

“That’s gonna make Brad better now and long-term than f—ing around and seeing if we can make a changeup go down more,” Mathews said. “Because ultimately, in the heat of battle, I want him to choose to throw the pitches that make him special.”

Why the Nats feel close

Years ago, Crawford was one of many coaches in a progressive pitching department that wanted to study the next frontier of development.

The Nats want to replicate that process here.

In the months that followed his hiring, the Nationals added high frame rate cameras to their bullpens and around the park at their minor league affiliates, helping them capture a better view of pitchers’ grips on the mound and the ball’s spin as it hurtles towards the plate. The organization’s coaches have also spent a lot of time learning from Crawford about which pitches and which grips match which type of pitcher, whether their wrist moves a certain way or their arsenal lacks a certain weapon.

For all that it’s done for Cavalli and Lord, the pitch design process is arguably getting even more run in the minor leagues, where there is more time to train and less weight put on in-game results.

That’s where they can have Cole Henry work on cleaning up his cutter at Triple-A Rochester, or give Josh Randall the pitch and watch it help him earn a promotion to Double A. It’s in Rochester where they can clean up Andry Lara’s fastball shapes or fast-rising Robert Cranz’s off-speed pitches. The process could help them even more as they navigate player acquisition — in future trades, drafts and free-agent signings — as they think through ways to get the most out of pitchers who were discounted by other organizations.

For now, they will try to get the most out of the group they have. That includes mid-season adjustments for those who need it.

Take Mitchell Parker.

After an efficient start to the season, Parker allowed 17 earned runs and committed five blown saves over an 18-inning stretch. Washington figured it was time for a reset: Over the 10 days, Crawford and Nats bullpen coach Dustin Glant have worked intensely with Parker to find a new grip and shape on his pitches. On Saturday, he threw with a new fastball (that had more rise) and a new slider (that finally had a different spin than his curveball). He tossed 2 1/3 scoreless frames.

Parker feels close. The Nats feel close. How they replicate that feeling across the organization, and how they continuously build on it, could define their uncertain future on the mound.

“When you get to the point where you’re in that flow state with everything, that’s when the real magic happens,” Mathews said. “And the only way to get there, in my opinion, is to not be static and ego-driven and proud on the front end, so that you can break through the barrier of figuring out what the f— we can actually be capable of.”