With a rolled up sleeve and a sinker that lights up the radar gun, Jimmy Cordero burst onto the scene for the White Sox in 2019.
After bouncing between the minor league systems of the Blue Jays and Phillies, Cordero finally got his shot in the major leagues when he debuted with the Nationals in 2018. A collection of poor showings led to Cordero’s release from Washington, a waiver claim and eventual release from Toronto (again), a waiver claim and release from Seattle, and finally, a waiver claim by the South Siders in June of 2019.
While Cordero had some growing pains in July and August with the White Sox, his month of September was nothing short of dominant. Over 13.2 innings in the final stretch of the season, Cordero posted a WHIP of 0.73 while allowing no runs on six hits. This incredible span shrunk his season-long ERA down to 2.89, and put his WHIP just below 1.00, the typical mark of an excellent pitcher.
In spite of his solid campaign in 2019, Sox fans seem to be skeptical about Cordero’s future. Can a guy that bounced around so many different teams in such a short period of time actually be good? In short, yes. Here’s why:
Velocity – or Lack Thereof
It’s no secret that Cordero can throw the ball hard. I mean, have you even seen the bicep that his pulled up right sleeve reveals?
Cordero’s sinker was thrown at an average of 97.4 MPH in 2019, making it the 13th fastest sinker and 14th fastest pitch in all of MLB. That’s right, Cordero has elite velocity.
However, Cordero’s ability to throw hard isn’t the only good thing about pitching arsenal. He also has an incredibly effective changeup.
Throughout Cordero’s 53 major league appearances, including his time in Washington and Toronto, no batter has ever gotten a hit off of his changeup. In those 53 appearances, Cordero has gone to the pitch a total of 126 times – approximately once for every two batters he’s faced – and still, no hits.
On top of that, Cordero got batters to whiff at 50% of the changeups they attempted to hit in 2019. Believe it or not, this was the highest whiff rate on a changeup by any pitcher in the second half of the season.
Simply put, Cordero’s elite velocity paired with his untouchable changeup makes him a nightmare for opposing hitters.
Keep ‘em Guessing
Cordero doesn’t only use changes in velocity to keep batters guessing, he also uses location.
The 28-year-old threw 45.8% of his pitches on the edge of the strike zone in 2019, almost 3% higher than the league average. For reference, Gerrit Cole, Jacob deGrom, and Max Scherzer didn’t throw in the “gray area” of the strike zone as often as Cordero did in 2019.
On these borderline pitches, opposing batters had a measly .152 batting average. That’s like the 2011 version of Adam Dunn bad.
Because of Cordero’s ability to stay around the strike zone, along with the deceptiveness of some of his pitches, batters swung at 38.4% of balls the right-hander threw outside of the zone in 2019. This was the second-highest chase percentage in MLB and is a whopping 10.1% higher than league average. Pair this elite chase percentage with a 40.7% whiff rate on pitches outside of the strike zone, and you’ve got yourself a highly effective reliever.
Still not convinced? Let’s keep going.
First-Degree Worm-Burners
The sinker is undoubtedly Cordero’s go-to pitch, as he threw it just about half of the time in 2019. Because of the downward movement of a sinker, batters tend to hit the top of the ball, which creates ground balls more often than fly balls. Cordero takes this to the extreme.
In 2019, 60.4% of the balls put in play against Cordero were groundballs, which is 15% higher than league average and good enough for the 11th highest number in the league. Similarly, the average launch angle of balls put in play against Cordero was only three degrees, 8.2 degrees lower than league average.
Inversely, fly balls were hard to come by when facing Cordero, as only 12.9% of balls put in play against him were in the air, 9.1% lower than league average.
Basically, Cordero is an extreme ground ball pitcher.
Without taking a closer look at the quality of contact against Cordero, his high groundball rate and low flyball rate would likely be seen as a negative. Though a high rate of ground balls typically means few home runs allowed, it can also indicate a high amount of hits given up, as ground balls tend to result in hits more often than flyballs.
However, a deeper dive into the quality of contact against Cordero’s pitches shows that he avoids these generalizations by generating weak contact often and by rarely allowing solid contact.
To add to the seemingly endless list of numbers in which Cordero beats the league average, batters made weak contact against him 6.9% of the time in 2019 (2.3% higher than league average) and made solid contact only 3% of the time (2.6% lower than league average).
Even Josh Hader didn’t avoid the sweet spot of the bat as much as Cordero did in 2019, as Hader found the sweet spot 37.8% of the time, as opposed to Cordero’s 26.7% of the time.
At this point, there’s no denying that Cordero’s numbers last season weren’t all luck.
For those of you that are still skeptical of Cordero’s abilities, let’s address some possible worries you may still have. After all, Cordero isn’t a perfect pitcher. Not yet, at least.
His 2018 Season was So Bad!
You’re right! His 2018 season was not very pretty. In 19 innings pitched, Cordero allowed 23 hits, 12 walks, and 12 earned runs. His ERA was in the stratosphere at 5.68, while his WHIP was an equally alarming 1.84. To add insult to injury, he generated weak contact only 1.5% of the time.
Now you can start to see why he bounced around so many teams before he landed with the White Sox.
While it’s true that Cordero’s season in 2018 was abysmal by pretty much every metric, the differences between that year and 2019 were vast. For starters, Cordero relied heavily on his four-seam fastball and slider in 2018, throwing them a combined 61.2% of the time. In 2019, he only threw these lackluster pitches a combined 26% of the time, opting instead for his wicked sinker and untouchable changeup.
This change in pitch selection helped lead to a dramatic increase in Cordero’s command. He went from walking 5.7 batters per nine innings in 2018 to walking only 2.7 per nine in 2019. An improvement this dramatic can’t only be chalked up to luck.
Cordero’s sinker became more effective in 2019 than ever before, as it gained 1.1 inches of horizontal movement. This added movement, along with the frequent use of his changeup, caused batters to whiff 5% more often in 2019 than in 2018.
While both 2018 and 2019 are relatively small sample sizes, the tremendous progress Cordero made on multiple different fronts in 2019 should ease any worries that Sox fans may have about Cordero’s first season.
His Spin Rate is So Low!
This one might hurt a little for Sox fans that are into the new ways of evaluating pitchers. I won’t lie to you; it hurts me, too.
Basically, Cordero doesn’t put much spin on the ball at all. He falls in the bottom 19% of all pitchers when it comes to spin rate, and it’s no surprise when you consider his average spin rates compared to the recommended averages for MLB pitchers by Rapsodo.
Cordero’s four-seamer, slider, and changeup all fall short of the minimum recommended averages by about 50-150 RPM. His cutter, which he threw only 6.8% of the time in 2019, falls a whopping 278 RPM shy of the same mark. The sinker, the pitch Cordero threw about half of the time in 2019, is his only pitch that falls in the Rapsodo recommendations.
Remember that terrible 2018 season I was just talking about? Cordero’s spin rate was actually higher that year than it was in 2019. Take a second to think about that one.
Like I said earlier, a spin rate that falls in the bottom 19% of the league is problematic, no matter how you look at it. Luckily, for Cordero, it isn’t as big of an issue as it would be for other pitchers.
A high spin rate typically leads to swings and misses. In Cordero’s case, a pitcher that generates weak ground balls far more often than the rest of the league, swings and misses aren’t the goal of every pitch. Sometimes he wants the batter to simply ground out, rather than going through a long at-bat that raises his pitch count.
Of course, a high spin rate also typically leads to a lower batting average against, which would benefit Cordero, but he should be able to still perform well without an average spin rate.
If Cordero does figure out how to raise his spin rate, the White Sox could have a truly elite reliever on their hands.
His FIP was So High in 2019!
You just love to complain, don’t you? I thought I was going to get away without having to mention this one.
For those of you that may be unfamiliar with FIP, it is Fielding Independent Pitching. Essentially, the statistic attempts to eliminate any luck that a pitcher may have in a season by looking at how effective they are at preventing home runs, walks, and hit-by-pitches, and how effective they are at generating strikeouts. The equation to calculate FIP includes a constant so that it is on the same scale as ERA. In short, if a pitcher’s FIP is higher than his ERA, it means he probably got lucky throughout the season and is likely to face a regression.
Now that you have an idea of what we’re talking about (if you already knew what FIP was then I hoped you skipped that paragraph), let’s look at Cordero’s numbers.
In 2019, Cordero beat his FIP by a considerable margin, posting an ERA of 2.89 and a FIP of 4.07.
But did he get lucky, or was it skill? Answer: probably a bit of both.
Because FIP places so much importance on strikeouts and no importance on weakly hit groundballs, it’s not very kind to Cordero. Naturally, it seems his FIP will usually be higher than his ERA.
However, the odds are Cordero received the benefit of some luck in 2019. It’s impossible to say just how much luck, but we’ll probably have a better idea as we watch him pitch over the next few years.
There you have it, a deep dive into the pitcher that most Sox fans know as the guy that rolls up his sleeve when he pitches. If Cordero continues on the path he’s on, look for him to be a legitimate, potentially even elite, member of the White Sox bullpen for years to come.
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Featured Photo: WGN Sports Telecast (2019)
