Logan Gilbert is teasing Mariners fans with his latest pitch experiment

For starting pitchers, spring training serves two main purposes. One is to build up the arm to make 30 quality starts over the course of a grueling season. The other is to continue refining their arsenal and adding a new pitch if necessary. The first is important for everyone, but the second is typically an area of greater focus for those looking to have a bounce back season.

Logan Gilbert loosely falls into that latter category. He pitched just 131 innings in 2025, the fewest since his rookie year, after being sidelined with an elbow flexor strain in April. Nonetheless, he was effective when he did pitch, posting a 3.44 ERA with a 3.35 FIP, numbers in line with his career averages. Although his current arsenal doesn't need major overhaul or new weapons, that hasn't stopped him from experimenting this spring.

Logan Gilbert has been gradually re-introducing the cutter to his repertoire in Arizona

In a recent interview with Borck & Salk on Seattle Sports, Gilbert discussed some of the changes he has made to his pitch mix this spring and one was to start throwing cutters again. He hasn't thrown a cutter in an MLB game since the 2024 season, where the pitch accounted for just 10.5 percent of his usage. It was decent, reaching a whiff rate of 27.4 percent, but it was the only year he ever used it and for one reason or another, he decided to instead focus more on his fastball, slider, and splitter in 2025.

His reason for adding it back was to have more options when behind in the count, a sensible rationale. He has a good fastball but it currently only comes in one flavor. Starting pitchers of his caliber typically have at least two and especially for his workload, he has a surprising lack of pitch diversity overall. In 2025, his aforementioned trifecta of pitches accounted for 92 percent of his usage.

He's no stranger to experimentation in the spring and ran similar trials last year. In fact, Mariners pitchers have been widely reported to do this and sometimes, it does result in pitches that hang around for the long haul. Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, and Bryce Miller all added splitters after spring training and although it was never used in a game, Andrés Muñoz was trying out the kick change that took the world by storm last year.

Adding a new fastball could elevate Gilbert to a new level, but there's no guarantee that the cutter will be the tool that takes him there. In the same interview, he also mentioned a sinker and even threw a few in 2025, another possible complement to his existing four-seam.

On the field, the biggest question is whether he'll be able to get back to being effective over 200 innings. Off the field, it's whether he'll be the next homegrown talent to ink an extension with Seattle, following in the footsteps of Julio Rodríguez and Cal Raleigh. It's more certain that he'll continue to be a significant piece of Seattle's rotation as long as he's with the team, even if the new pitches he's trying out don't end up sticking around.