The cutter holds a vaunted place in recent Yankees history. Mariano Rivera’s cutter was arguably the single greatest pitch in baseball history, so good he needed no other offering. It was the weapon around which Andy Pettitte built his success, and a major contributor to CC Sabathia’s second chapter as a precision pitcher. And now, Jordan Montgomery has a chance to add to the pitch’s storied pedigree in Yankees lore.
Montgomery is off to a torrid start this spring, allowing a single earned run across 10 innings of work, striking out seven. However, I am not so much interested in the results as I am in the process that yielded them.