What Made Framber Valdez's Record-Breaking Season Possible?

Houston Astros' starter Framber Valdez broke the Major League record with his 25th consecutive quality start on Sunday. What has made his dominant season possible?

Framber Valdez is full of secrets, tricks he keeps hidden up his sleeves, ready to show the world when everyone is watching.

Former Houston Astros reliever Héctor Rondón was watching in 2019 when Valdez made him a bet. Standing on the right-field foul line just beyond first base at Minute Maid Park, Valdez insisted he could clear the center field fence on a throw... with his non-dominant right hand.

Rondón, naturally scoffed at the idea, ready to win some easy money off Valdez's hubris. The lefty dropped his glove, went back into a crow-hop and launched the ball with his right arm, clearing the fence easily as the ball cruised through one of the archways under the train tracks in left-center field.

"I'm ambidextrous," Valdez later said through an interpreter in an article by Jake Kaplan of The Athletic. "I'm a lefty pitcher, but I can throw righty and I can also hit righty."

“[It was] like easy," Rondón said, "No effort. I don’t know how he did that.”

Valdez claims he can throw 88 or 89 mph right-handed, but it's not a fact he'll share with you until he has run his little grift. Josh James remembers him doing the same thing at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi, the home of the Double-A Astros.

Valdez can occasionally be found sitting in his corner locker with headphones on, bobbing his head to a tune only he can hear. You wouldn't call him anti-social, but he can sometimes keep to himself. That's not only the case with his personality, but also the pitch that made his record-breaking run in 2022 successful.

When Valdez pitched during the 2021 World Series, it was apparent the Atlanta Braves had the scouting report on him. Valdez was rocked for 10 runs over just 4.2 innings. That whole series, Valdez relied almost entirely on just two primary pitches, his sinker and his curveball. He threw the changeup for only eight of 99 total pitches.

Valdez did not throw throw one four-seam fastball, and he certainly did not throw the pitch that has made him so successful in 2022, the cutter, a pitch Valdez had never shown to a Major League hitter before this year. Coming into this season, it was his secret weapon.

Valdez is a pitcher who relies on poor contact and limiting extra bases. Though he is very often is near the bottom of the league in average exit velocity, he's also middling in both walks and strikeouts. When batters do get to him, they are normally hitting singles.

But the cutter has brought that style of pitching to a new level, allowing him to further keep hitters off balance. It's a unique pitch, thrown soft, but with little vertical break. It averages only 83.1 mph, but with nearly 10 fewer inches of drop than the average cutter.

This allows it to tunnel with his four-seam fastball, which has about eight fewer inches of break than other four-seamers. The cutter also lack intense horizontal movement, but that doesn't matter when it is thrown to lefties.

Valdez abandons what has been his best pitcher almost entirely when pitching to righties, whom he has handled well his entire career. In 2021, left-handed batters hit Valdez for a .717 OPS compared to a .626 against right-handers.

In 2021, Valdez allowed a plethora of balls his over 100 mph to left-handed hitters / via Baseball Savant

The 28-year-old needed to find a better method of putting away left-handed hitters, thus the cutter. Thrown 261 times in 2022, 210 have been against lefties and the average exit velocity on the pitch is almost 2 mph slower than any other offering in Valdez' arsenal.

In 2022, Valdez has allowed far fewer balls hit over 100 mph to left-handed hitters / via Baseball Savant

Opponents are hitting just .083 off the pitch, and of the 72 balls put in play, only three have gone for extra base hits.

Despite throwing the cutter only 10% of the time, it is Valdez's best pitch value-wise. Over 100 pitches, its run value is -3.1. His next best pitch, the changeup, is -2.0 over 100 pitches.

Following a season in which lefties had a .717 OPS against Valdez, the cutter has forced their OPS down to .499. He has not allowed one home run in 2022 to a left-handed batter. Valdez himself is better at getting the ball to clear the fence with his non-dominant hand than batters are at hitting his cutter for a home run.

Only a few of his teammates were around to witness Valdez's improbable throw, but armed with his new secret weapon, the baseball world watches as records crumble before him.

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