Cleveland Guardians’ Shawn Armstrong Has New Pitch in Arsenal

The best pitchers in MLB are the ones who continue to adapt, add, and perfect their pitch mix, even as veterans. That applies to the Cleveland Guardians’ old/new pitcher Shawn Armstrong, who is continuing to take steps to improve his game, even at the ripe age of 35 years old.

Armstrong recently made an appearance on Foul Territory and shared that he’s been working on a new pitch this offseason and is excited to see how it’ll play during spring training.

“It’s a little bit of a sinker,” revealed Armstrong. “We’ll see how it comes in spring training. It’s a similar variation of the ‘death changeup’ as people are calling it, or the ‘kick-change.’”“So far, on Trackman, it’s been pretty good… We’ll see how it plays when a batter stands in the box, but I’m getting comfortable with it now.”

Armstrong isn’t developing this pitch to be his go-to punchout pitch next season, but rather as a setup pitch for the rest of his arsenal. The veteran shared that he was looking for something that would pair better with his fastball.

“It’s not something that I’m truly going to focus on,” continued Armstrong. “It’s more of something to pair with my fourseam [fastball] to have the vertical movement different, and to have something to throw below the zone, and to left-handed batters as well.”

It’ll be interesting to see exactly what this new variation of Armstrong’s sinker looks like. Baseball Savant did pick up some variation of sinker that Armstrong was throwing in 2025. That pitch was already pretty solid with an opposing batting average of just .176. 

Clearly, Armstrong does have a plan to make this a much more effective pitch and something he can turn to not just get outs, but also set some of his other pitches up.

The veteran said, “In bullpens, it’s pretty fun to throw. But again, we’ll see how it goes whenever a batter stands in the box. 

Pitchers and catchers will be reporting to Goodyear in no time, with Spring Training games starting not too long after. It’ll be fun to keep an eye out for this new iteration of a sinker with Armstrong having some low-leverage opportunities to try the pitch out before the start of the regular season.