{"id":256156,"date":"2026-06-05T07:09:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256156\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T07:09:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T07:09:08","slug":"the-brooklyn-cyclones-report-the-wave-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/256156\/","title":{"rendered":"The Brooklyn Cyclones Report – The Wave"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s one thing you can\u2019t teach in baseball: throwing left-handed. It\u2019s one of the most valuable traits in the game. In 2025, lefties had an ERA over half a run lower than righties \u2014 the largest gap ever.\u00a0<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

While there are many prominent hard-throwing lefties, in general, southpaws generally throw a bit softer for righties. The average fastball for an MLB righty in 2026 is 95.1 mph, compared to 93.4 mph for lefties. So, when a lefty does have plus velo, he stands out.\n<\/p>\n

Daviel Hurtado is one of those guys.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, he\u2019s a lefty that throws 94 to 96,\u201d Cyclones pitching coach Luis Alvarado said. \u201cNasty slider that he throws in the upper 80s, and a nasty curveball. He\u2019s been working on the changeup, but he\u2019s a guy that attacks the zone, and when you have that plus the stuff, you\u2019re a special pitcher.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Hurtado was recently promoted from Single-A St. Lucie, which means there is publicly available data on his arsenal from the first seven-plus weeks of the season. His fastball is up over a full tick to 94.3 mph, and his slider is also up nearly a full tick to 87.1 mph. Both marks would be above average among MLB arms, and he\u2019s just 21 years old.\n<\/p>\n

Alvarado said he thinks he could have more velocity gains to come as well.\n<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by Matt Kipp\/Brooklyn Cyclones<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a very skinny dude, but his strength and conditioning group and nutrition have done a really good job with him,\u201d he said. \u201cAs long as he puts in the work, eating well, going to the gym, and staying healthy, I think velocity is gonna keep increasing.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The slider is a pitch that Hurtado has developed since signing with the Mets in 2024 after initially coming in with just a fastball and curveball.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been a long process,\u201d Hurtado said through Alvarado, who was acting as translator. \u201cGetting the shape first, then after that, getting the velocity, and then getting the confidence to throw it with two strikes, and then working on the part of getting it in the zone.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Alvarado said the fastball-slider combo is now his bread and butter, and the velocity on the slider helps it play off of his fastball. Hurtado echoed that sentiment, saying those are the two pitches he is most confident in.\n<\/p>\n

The curveball is still there, and it\u2019s a prominent piece of his arsenal. It\u2019s a pitch Hurtado said he feels very comfortable with, and it returned great results in a small sample size in St. Lucie this season. He threw 43 curveballs in nine innings, running a 63% chase rate and 46.7% whiff rate, both the top marks of any of his offerings.\n<\/p>\n

As of now, it\u2019s his second-most-used pitch behind the fastball, but that\u2019s likely to change as Hurtado continues to ramp up the usage of his slider. The curveball is used mostly against righties, while the slider is used against both sides.\n<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also the changeup, which is a pitch that\u2019s still very much in the development stage. Hurtado said he\u2019s been working on it for a while, but it\u2019s a difficult pitch to learn.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have been exploring grips, and just, it\u2019s a feel pitch,\u201d Hurtado said. \u201cYou always hear that from pitchers, it\u2019s a feel pitch, and getting a feel pitch to work is usually a little more difficult than like gripping a slider and saying throw it as fast as you can and let the grip work.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Alvarado is high on it.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a nasty pitch, he\u2019s just got to get a little more confidence in it,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

Hurtado marries this arsenal with plus control, which is reflected in the drastic improvement of both his strikeout and walk rates. Between both Single-A and his first two appearances in High-A, Hurtado is running a 32.8% strikeout rate and just 3.1% walk rate. It\u2019s the third-best K-BB% in the Mets\u2019 system, and the best among any starting pitcher.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cYou create the reputation that you\u2019re going to be in the zone,\u201d Alvarado said. \u201cAnd, in the moments that you\u2019re not, you\u2019re still gonna get swings. \u2026 When you attack the zone, you force guys to swing, and then when you know that they\u2019re gonna swing, then you can expand a little bit, and you\u2019re gonna get more chase. Walks are gonna go down because if you\u2019re in-zone, you\u2019re gonna get a little bit more action early in counts, and you avoid the 2-0, 3-0 counts.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Hurtado is yet to give up a run in his 7 and \u2154 innings as a Cyclone, and he\u2019s given up just three hits and one walk while punching out six. Stepping into a rotation that just lost standout Channing Austin to Double-A Binghamton, Hurtado is filling the vacuum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s one thing you can\u2019t teach in baseball: throwing left-handed. It\u2019s one of the most valuable traits in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-256156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}