Diagnosing Cade Smith & Trouble with the Split

Coming into the season, Cade Smith was the de facto closer for the Guardians. The consensus around baseball was not only was Smith a top five reliever in the sport over the last two seasons, but that Cleveland did a great job ensuring that the permanent absence of serial cheater Emmanuel Clase would be a forgotten one. Thus far in 2026, that has not been the case.

After blowing a save on Tuesday night in St. Louis, Smith has now blown eight saves across the last two seasons, tied for second most in baseball in that span. His 2026 early season stats sit like this: 9 appearances, 9 hits, 5.00 ERA, 3.16 FIP, 2 blown saves. It’s not been great, but a lot under the hood indicates both that these problems are not only fixable, but that Smith has still been a quality reliever without Lady Luck on his side.

HEART PROBLEMS

Cade Smith is not making enough competitive pitches. If you wanted to sum up the bulk of his problems this season, that one sentence alone does it. Statcast breaks down the zone and the area surrounding it into four different sections:

• Heart: this is the area that is essentially categorized as down the middle

In 2026, Smith is living in the heart of the zone with his sweeper at the highest rate of his career by nearly 10%. Subsequently, his sweeper is running its lowest whiff rate of his career by over 6%, and it directly correlates to his struggles to locate the offering early on. That being said, we’ll get back to this soon because while the location+whiff rate drop are correlated to one another, there’s another problem within this.

SHADOW ZONE

• Shadow: this area consists of the borderline areas within the zone and just slightly outside of it. An ideal place for competitive pitches

Cade has largely not seen a big difference within how often he’s attacking the edges of the zone. His fastball, albeit down, is still aggressively attacking the top rail of the zone. Smith’s huge extension and release point create among the best vertical approach angles in baseball.

The sweeper and its whiff rate rears its head once again. That’s a near 22% drop in whiff rate against the sweeper in the shadow zone. What’s creating this problem? Hint: it’s not the sweeper. It’s one thing to show you all graphs and break things down into a zone by zone context, but Smith is locating his sweeper rather well. In fact, every sweeper he’s put in the shadow zone has resulted in a strike, but only one swing and miss.

NO CHASE, ALL WASTE

• Chase: this area is considered pitcher-friendly as it’s out of the zone, but still tempting enough to a batter to get swings
• Waste: this area is anything beyond the chase zone and largely considered to be uncompetitive

The lone sweeper whiff in the shadow of the zone came in a strikeout against Jonathan India, but Smith is largely locating in similar locations with his sweeper as the previous two seasons. His problem right now is his splitter. The splitter is perhaps the biggest feel pitch of any pitch. Smith has not had it at all.

What batters have been able to do is cut the plate in half against Smith, and it’s neutralized one of MLB’s toughest at-bats. Cade is finding himself behind in counts at a much higher clip than usual, and a huge part of that is Smith’s splitter being an uncompetitive offering nearly 35% of the time it’s being thrown right now. Over 26% of his pitches this season have come behind in counts, easily the highest mark of his career, and he’s in turn turning to his fastball 84.3% of the time in these situations. That much is nothing new, Smith’s fastball is his best weapon, and it lines up with rates from the previous two seasons, but at the rate in which he’s falling behind because he can’t find his splitter, right-handed bats almost don’t even need to be concerned with it landing for strikes.

It’s ironic that Cade is having this issue because his predecessor, Emmanuel Clase, had similar issues not being able to work along the inner third of the zone, allowing RHH to lean out over the plate. That’s presently the issue for Smith as well. In 2024 and 2025, Smith was able to locate his fastball along the inner third to right-handed hitters at a 17.2% rate; effective enough to keep them honest. That rate has dropped to 9%. This has only compounded Smith’s issues with his splitter, and in turn, his sweeper struggles to get the same ugly swings it used to because it’s being asked to do way more than it should.

Cade’s arsenal works when blended together. He’s always going to be a fastball heavy, but if he can’t find his splitter soon, these same issues will only persist. He isn’t built to generate weak contact from an identity standpoint. He’s built in a lab to get swings out of the zone and whiffs.

Smith will find his splitter again. It can be a love/hate relationship, and right now, it very much hates him. Smith may have to work against handedness usage splits until he finds the feel for the off-speed, but I anticipate a rebound sooner rather than later.