What is happening? Welcome to the Plus Pitch Podcast. More pitching podcast from PitcherList.com.

My name is Nick Poll. Today is April 20th. Happy Easter to everybody. And yes, we are going to talk about baseball and we have to talk about Matthew Libretore to force in St. Louis.

He has entered the Cardinals rotation. And I've followed him a lot throughout the years.

I've seen times when he's at 95 with good cutters. Maybe a changeup is working. Maybe the

slider is working. But we've seen a different picture this year. And now that he's gone his

opportunities inside the rotation, he was at 93. 93 didn't really love him. But he was at 95 and

repeated that against the Mets on Saturday.

And it was fantastic.

96.6.2 innings, 2 run, 6-its, one walk-in, six strikeouts, and 13 whiffs, over 100 pitches.

And that slider became all reliable.

I love the increased slider usage.

We were seeing it under 20% before, and it went up to closer to 30%.

And now it's at 40% with pretty even splits against right handers and left handers,

getting whiffs on that pitch and the back foot as well.

75% strike rate on 40% sliders is so good.

That's your foundation.

You have these four seamers at 95 now, which are allowing it to get by a little bit more.

There are some decisions here and there about utilizing the sinker and the four seamer that I don't love kind of throwing it down the middle in situations.

But it's like, no, that's not what you should be throwing.

Still, I love to see it.

The changeup is coming together.

There's more of it against right handers.

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