Nationals’ Cade Cavalli’s intense competitiveness, new sweeper fueling strong start

PJ Poulin was incredulous after he heard the question.

​The Nationals reliever burst into laughter and started scanning the room looking for right-hander Cade Cavalli.

​“Did Cade put you up to this?” he asked.

​This spring, Cavalli and Poulin were roommates, and they engaged in intense cornhole matches featuring a healthy amount of trash talk. Poulin said they played every day and the games were close.

So who was better?

Cavalli flashed a sly grin when he heard the question.

“I hate to say, but it’s me, the record shows,” he said.

Cavalli started playing with his agent, dad and brother. But they didn’t play cornhole just to pass the time; they wanted to be the best in the household.

​The family bought professional bags, and they began watching the American Cornhole League. Cavalli paid attention to the angles and velocities of his tosses. He was so dedicated that he said he finished in the top 10 of an amateur tournament in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

​“Whenever you get interested in it and you start seeing the smaller details within a sport, you want to get good at those,” he said. “Whenever you find a hobby like that, you get into it, try to get into the nitty-gritty of it, get better at it.”

​Cavalli’s mindset for mastering cornhole is easily applicable to baseball, his occupation, where success and failure are determined by the slimmest of margins and consistency is hard to attain.

​Those intense matchups give a glimpse of what kind of competitor Cavalli is. Through seven starts, Cavalli has posted a 3.82 ERA with a 26.6 strikeout rate.

​“His prep work is amazing,” catcher Drew Millas said. “He’s just got a different demeanor about him the past few weeks and has really leaned into just being himself and going out there, just kind of being free and kind of pitching to his own tune.”

The right-hander possesses the high-end velocity of most top-of-the-rotation starters. But this season, he’s tweaked his pitch usage. He’s leaning more on his fastball (throwing it 35% of the time) while also implementing a sweeper (14%) that he began learning in the offseason. Opponents are batting .125 with a .188 slugging percentage against Cavalli’s sweeper, according to MLB Statcast.

In November, Cavalli hopped on a Zoom call with pitching coach Simon Mathews and assistant pitching coach Sean Doolittle to map out an offseason plan. Cavalli was heading into the winter feeling confident not only about staying healthy and having an offseason to work on his game, but also about his performance in September, when he posted a 3.38 ERA over five starts.

Mathews and Doolittle broached the idea of incorporating a sweeper into Cavalli’s arsenal to help him against right-handed hitters.

​But Cavalli didn’t take to the pitch easily.

​“It was not good at the start,” Cavalli said. “I was like, ‘Man, I don’t think that I’m gonna be able to throw this.’”

​At the beginning, he wasn’t throwing it too hard, but it was performing like a “worse curveball.” Doolittle and Mathews assured him to keep practicing the offering. Cavalli started throwing it more in games and bullpens to increase his confidence. He was relentless in his pursuit of honing the pitch because he knew it would be positive addition to his arsenal. As Cavalli ramped up his workouts, the more progress he saw.

​Testing the sweeper in spring training games is different from a regular-season game with stakes. Facing a Cubs lineup littered with stars on opening day, Cavalli threw it nine times with a 50% whiff rate and no hits allowed.

Though he added the sweeper to be effective against right-handers, he got left-handed-hitting center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong to get called out on strikes with the pitch.

He said that the outing instilled confidence in incorporating the sweeper into his arsenal.

In his last start, Cavalli became the first National since former ace Max Scherzer to record back-to-back 10-strikeout games. He thrived against the Mets and Braves by getting ahead in counts and staying in the zone. When he’s peppering hitters with strikes, it allows his off-speed pitches to be more effective. Cavalli credited his coaches and catchers for their help in game planning his starts.

But the intense desire that led Cavalli to become the best cornhole player he can be is the same mentality that pushes him to tinker and fine-tune his game to become the best starter possible. Those flashes only deepen the desire to repeat that success. At heart, Cavalli is a competitor, no matter the sport.

“That’s part of what makes him really good,” Poulin said. “[Baseball players] always want to compete; we want to win and we want to dominate.”