Burke increased his cutter use, but Ramírez punished a low curve

Sean Burke reached a 2–2 count against José Ramírez in the fourth inning with two called strikes on cutters. His next pitch was a 78.0 mph knuckle curve that crossed the plate just 0.74 feet above the ground. Ramírez hit it for a two-run homer, turning a pitch far below his recorded strike-zone floor into the only scoring play of ALDS Game 5.

Burke allowed four hits and two runs over five innings in the White Sox’s 2–0 loss to Cleveland at Progressive Field on October 10. He struck out four, walked nobody and threw 71 pitches. Chicago’s season ended even though Burke prevented another run and its two relievers completed three scoreless innings.

The outing’s broader pattern was a heavier reliance on cutters and a smaller supply of misses than in his regular-season starts. The cutter helped him acquire called strikes, including those two against Ramírez. The decisive homer came on a different pitch, and the complete contact record complicates any explanation that treats one mistake as the quality of the entire start.

The cutter found taken strikes

Burke threw 18 cutters, or 25.4% of his pitches, against 10.4% in a baseline of 2,445 physical pitches across 27 regular-season starts for Chicago. That was an increase of 14.9 percentage points using the unrounded shares. He also threw 23 four-seam fastballs, 13 knuckle curves, 11 sliders and six sinkers. Every pitch remains in the comparison, including the less frequent classifications.

Five of those cutters were called strikes, and none of the eight attempts against the pitch produced a miss. That is a meaningful distinction in its contribution. A taken strike can move an at-bat forward without creating an empty swing, but the absence of misses meant Burke still depended on other pitches and on balls being converted into outs.

His slider generated three misses in five attempts, and his four-seamer generated two in 15. Overall he had five misses in 34 physical attempts, a 14.7% whiff rate compared with 24.5% in the season baseline. This count includes Steven Kwan’s foul bunt. Savant’s outing summary excludes that attempt and lists 33 swings, producing 15.2%; the miss count is five under either denominator.

The opponent’s handedness mix differed substantially from Burke’s season sample. He threw 62 of 71 pitches to left-handed hitters, compared with 1,419 of 2,445 in the baseline. Even within that left-handed split, cutters rose from 191 of 1,419 pitches, or 13.5%, to 16 of 62, or 25.8%. The observed increase therefore extends beyond the overall hitter mix, although a single game cannot establish a permanent change in his plan.

His four-seamer averaged 94.9 mph, close to its 94.7 mph season mark. The cutter averaged 89.4 against 89.8, with 8.8 inches of induced vertical break against 9.0. These averages do not suggest a large cutter shape or speed change. The clearer difference was how often Burke used it and how the resulting strikes were acquired.

Against Ramírez, the sequence began with a knuckle curve for a ball, then alternated a cutter strike, a slider ball and a second cutter strike. The fifth pitch returned to the knuckle curve. Its plate height was roughly 0.79 feet below Ramírez’s recorded 1.53-foot zone floor. Ramírez made damaging contact outside the recorded rectangle. That location alone cannot establish whether Burke missed an intended target.

One low pitch within a mixed contact record

Ramírez’s homer had a measured exit speed of 97.2 mph. The fact that it was low does not establish that Burke missed a target: the public tracking record supplies the ball’s path and outcome, not the intended location. Nor does an isolated homer prove that every low knuckle curve was ineffective. Burke’s other results need to stay in the account.

Cleveland put 14 balls into play against him. All had measured exit speeds, averaging 85.1 mph, and four reached at least 95 mph. Those figures were below his season comparison of 88.7 mph and a 39.1% hard-hit rate. Yet the first-inning lineout by Chase DeLauter was measured at 109.2 mph. That hard contact became an out, while other, much softer contacts became hits.

Jo Adell’s fourth-inning single left the bat at just 43.9 mph. Petey Halpin later doubled at 93.5 mph in the fifth, then was retired attempting to advance to third on the play. That baserunning out helped Burke finish the inning. The final line therefore reflects both his pitching and what happened after contact, rather than an uninterrupted series of routine outs.

Burke’s longest inning was the fourth, when he threw 22 pitches; the other four required nine, 10, 15 and 15. His inning-level four-seam averages ranged from 94.7 to 95.4 mph. There is no sustained decline in that small set of measurements, and the chart does not use those speeds to diagnose fatigue.

His previous appearance in the series was an 83-pitch relief outing over 5⅓ innings in Game 2 on October 5. That role differed from this start, so it is identified separately from the matching-role regular-season baseline. The Game 5 record shows a cutter gaining prominence and collecting called strikes, but it leaves a practical question for the next outing: can the heavier cutter mix coexist with more misses from the rest of the repertoire?