Drew Rasmussen’s fastball mix has turned into one of the more effective three-pitch heater packages in the game, and the Rays right-hander says the latest piece of it was born out of a very specific problem: Bo Bichette.
Rasmussen, 30, has leaned heavily on a four-seamer, two-seamer and cutter across the 2025-2026 campaigns, using that trio more than 80% of the time. The results have backed it up - a 2.96 ERA and a 3.65 FIP over 249 1/3 innings - and he’s also represented Tampa Bay on the American League All-Star team for a second straight year.
But the path to that arsenal wasn’t straightforward. When Rasmussen spoke about his fastball evolution at Fenway Park over the weekend, he walked through how his pitch mix changed after the Rays traded for him in May 2021 and moved him from the bullpen into the rotation.
At that point, Rasmussen said he was mostly a four-seam and gyro-slider pitcher, with a curveball thrown sparingly and a changeup that didn’t last long. The Rays then helped him reshape the slider into a pitch that could play as a cutter or a true slider depending on the situation. A sweeper followed in 2021, and that became part of the foundation.
Then came Bichette in 2022.
Rasmussen said he kept running into the Blue Jays shortstop and had no real answer for him. The four-seam was his only pitch that could work in on Bichette, and even that wasn’t a reliable solution. Bichette handled the rest of the mix well enough to leave Rasmussen stuck, frustrated, and looking for something new.
“We started playing around with things. Because I had nothing that would work [inside] to him, we would take a shot with a four-seam up and away and he would hit a double into the gap.
We would take a shot with a gyro slider down and away, and he would hit it through the four hole. We’d go sweeper and he’d shoot something down the line.
I’d try to bounce a curveball and he would hit a line drive up the middle. Everything I threw worked right into his comfort zone, basically.”
Rasmussen said he told Rays pitching coach Kyle Snyder that he had nothing to get Bichette out with. That led Tampa Bay to start building what Rasmussen described as a sinker on the board but really a two-seam runner in practice.
The pitch was developed toward the end of 2022 and into 2023, with the Rays’ analytics and coaching staff helping him create arm-side run through seam orientation. Rasmussen said the cutter and the two-seam are thrown from the same hand and wrist position, with the seam placement creating the different movement. One cuts, the other runs.
The first time he used it against Bichette, Rasmussen said, the pitch did exactly what the Rays hoped. After a fouled-off four-seamer and slider, Bichette saw the new offering and got locked up by something unfamiliar.
That one hitter, Rasmussen said, eventually gave him a new weapon he can now use against both right-handed and left-handed batters.
The broader point, from Rasmussen’s view, is simple: the more fastball looks a pitcher can present at similar velocity, the harder life gets for the hitter. He pointed to velocity as the biggest separator and explained why three fastball variations can be so effective when they all come in around the same speed but move differently.
It also gives him a safety net. If the four-seam isn’t carrying well on a given day, he has the two-seam and cutter to lean on.
If the cutter command is off, the other two remain available. In Rasmussen’s words, the hitter only has milliseconds to sort out what’s coming.
That’s the edge.
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