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Arsenals that include three variations of a fastball — four-seamer, two-seamer, cutter — are increasingly common in today’s game, and Drew Rasmussen is among the trend’s success stories. Relying heavily on a triad of heaters, the 30-year-old Tampa Bay Rays right-hander boasts a 2.96 ERA and a 3.65 FIP over 249 1/3 innings across the 2025-2026 campaigns. Moreover, he just represented the Rays on the American League All-Star team for a second year running.

How Rasmussen became three-heater reliant (just over 80% combined usage) isn’t itself atypical. The way he tells the story of how it happened is atypical… if not a bit curious. In explaining the advent of his most recent — and most impactful — fastball addition, he pinpointed a hitter against whom he’d struggled far less than his telling would suggest.

Rasmussen sat down to talk fastballs when the Rays visited Fenway Park over the weekend. As his responses were expansive — followup questions were few and far between — what he shared is being presented in monologue form.

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Drew Rasmussen: “When I got traded here [in May 2021], I was four-seam and gyro slider — that’s basically what I was throwing in Milwaukee — and then I had a curveball that was very low usage, as well as a bad, bad changeup. Over here, when they transitioned me from the bullpen into the rotation, we learned that I can manipulate the gyro slider a little bit to create a little more lift and give it more of a true cutter profile. I can also manipulate it to get some depth and keep a true slider profile, which gives me the opportunity to pick and choose shapes depending on what I’m looking for. Situationally, what do I want to throw?

“They saw the movement profile of my changeup, so we scrapped that pretty quick. From there we started developing a sweeper — I have the ability to supinate through everything — and that worked pretty well for me in 2021. Then, in 2022, I kept running into Bo Bichette. I had nothing to get him out with. Nothing. I mean, he’s good at hitting balls the other way, and staying on everything. But if you missed in with a breaking ball, he could do pull-side damage. I would be out there frustrated, because the only thing I had to go in on him with was a four-seamer. And at the time, I was cutting it anyway.

“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.

“I talked with Kyle Snyder, our pitching coach, and was like, ‘I’ve got nothing to get this guy out.’ Basically, my best bet is to throw any pitch type middle-middle and hope that he pops it up or hits it straight into the ground. At some point, inevitably, I’m going to have to make a pitch to that man with runners in scoring position, and I don’t have the confidence to get him out with anything.

“That’s when we started developing… the board will tell you it’s a sinker, but it’s really just a two-seam runner. It’s got some depth relative to my four-seamer, but for the most part it’s just straight run. This was toward the end of 2022, going into 2023. We figured out a way. I mean, our guys are so smart. They know so much more about the human body — biomechanics; physics, frankly — than I do. Like I said, I supinate through just about everything, so the only way I can create arm-side [movement] is by finding some way to seam-shift and force the ball to go that way.

“We found a way to put a two-seam grip in my hand and create arm-side run. Essentially, we oriented the seams in a way that the spin is working to where… I actually throw my cutter and my two-seam out of the exact same hand positioning, and exact same wrist positioning at release, but the seam orientation allows for one to cut and the other to have the seams catch with the air resistance forcing it arm side. I have the same thought process, the same finger and wrist positioning, but one goes right and the other goes left.

“Sure enough, the very first time I faced Bichette with it, we got ourselves deep into a count. He had fouled off a four-seamer and a slider, then we ran one in on him. It stayed on the plate, but we were able to lock him up because it was something so different than what he had seen from me. It was a situation where I had a new little toy to use against him. Now I’m comfortable throwing it to both right-handed and left-handed hitters. It’s become a true weapon and a true part of my arsenal, and it all started with the idea of how I could get one man out.

“The sinker, the two-seam runner, that we were able to create with our analytics team and the coaching staff, is one of the first transitions I had to make at the big league level to get guys out consistently. It truly is… I mean, the hardest thing to deal with as a hitter is velocity. That’s why there is such a premium on it at this level. It gives you the least amount of reaction time. Hitting is all about timing, and the least amount of reaction time is the single hardest variable to deal with. It’s no secret as to why if you throw an 84-mph slider and a 90-mph slider with the exact same movement profile, and they’re located the same, the 90-mph slider will produce the better results. Same with a fastball. If you throw a 92-mph four-seamer with good carry, and a 98-mph four-seamer with good carry, the 98 is going to produce better results than the 92. If you shorten reaction time, you have a better chance of getting an out.

“That’s why throwing three fastball variations is so effective. They’re all relatively the same velocity-wise, but they’re moving in different directions. Another thing it has done for me is give me the freedom to… say, if on a certain day I’m not staying through my four-seam well, [and] the carry is down. I still have these other two options that I can lean on. Or, on a day that my cutter command is bad, I have two other options in the same velo range with two different movement profiles. In real time, the hitter has just milliseconds to decipher which movement profile he’s getting, with all of them coming in at about the same velocity. Having all three gives you that advantage.”