The Change: New Pitches from Nelson, Eovaldi, Boxberger

Every year, pitchers add wrinkles in the spring. Most years, they forget them once they have to get batters out and the results count. In the case of today’s pitchers, though, we have three guys that found a new thing and stuck with it when the calendar switched to April. The results weren’t uniformly amazing for each of them, but a third pitch might mean wonders for misters Jimmy Nelson, Nathan Eovaldi, and Brad Boxberger.

I did a full workup of Nelson’s new pitch today on the front page, and it looks nice. A curveball with as much depth and velocity as his new spike curve has should be a great third weapon, and enough to stave off lefties. The only question remaining is command, but if I was choosing between Nelson, Taijuan Walker, and Nathan Eovaldi, I’d choose Nelson right now. At least he’s in the National League, and his new third pitch has shown the best so far.

Speaking of Nathan Eovaldi, let’s check in on that splitter. The good news first: he threw it a lot. 13% of the time in his first start against the Red Sox. Only once in his entire career to date has he thrown a changeup that much in a game. And those old changeups — with their below-average drop and velocity gap — weren’t that good. This splitter is very different in terms of movement.

The splitter is straighter than your average changeup, but it has nice drop — almost three and a half inches more drop than his old change. It’s hard, but it’s softer than his old changeup. Let’s look at Eovaldi’s movement on the new pitch compared to his old changeup, and the league average split finger and changeup movements.

Pitch	Velocity	Velocity Gap	Horizontal Move	Vertical Move
Eovaldi Change	86.7	-9.7	-7.4	5.5
Eovaldi Splitter	84.2	-13.4	-2.8	1.1
RHP Change	83.1	-8.4	-6.5	4.3
RHP Splitter	84.4	-7.1	-5.5	2.8

By the numbers, the splitter looks better than his change when compared to the league average. The splitter is still flawed — it’s straight — but it has more drop and a bigger velocity gap than the average splitter, and that’s something his changeup could never say.

Let’s take a look, though. He threw four straight to Pablo Sandoval, and the second one (on the left) got his only whiff of the night on the splitter. That one looked good. The very next pitch, though, was not as good. It didn’t move the right way.

David Cone, on the broadcast, nailed it when it comes to learning a splitter and why two pitches in a row might have looked so different. “These last three pitches these three splitters in a row, they sort of show you how hard it is to learn that pitch. this last one, you see the grip, this one is going to cut. Generally, the last one went down and away to the lefty. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re going to get from the pitch, and you’re still building up the finger strength,” Cone said as they replayed the bad splitter in slow motion.

Cone also said that throwing the pitch in the game (“not on the side, not in spring training,”) was the only way to really learn the pitch. So we’ll give Eovaldi an incomplete with a golden star for effort. Just by throwing it so often, he’s taken a step he’s never taken before. And the good ones looked so good, he’ll probably keep throwing them. And if he keeps throwing them… 97 with fastball, 87 with the slider, and 85 with the splitter, with fade and drop… that’ll be nasty enough to keep rostered.

But the lack of consistency, and the strength of competition, probably puts him a step behind Nelson if we’re going to use one-game samples on new pitches as a guide.

The last pitcher didn’t need a new pitch. Brad Boxberger’s fourseamer goes 93 mph and has gotten 13% whiffs so far, his change goes 80 with great drop and 16% whiffs so far, and his slider (84 mph, 10% whiffs) has been good enough to keep same-handed hitters on edge.

But those aren’t great numbers on the slider, and so Boxberger has turfed the pitch, it looks like. So far this calendar year, he hasn’t thrown one of them. And he’s thrown three curves. Knuckle curves, says Jason Collette. Knuckle curves that look like this.

Nasty. As the broadcast team said, “as if he needed another weapon.”

At about 79 mph, it’s usually harder than any curve he’s thrown before. It also features nine inches of drop, a combination of aspects that you’d only see from the curves on Garret Richards, Alex Cobb, Jarred Cosart, Felix Hernandez, Josh Fields, Carlos Torres, and Jake Arrieta. That’s heady company for the Rays closer.

Given the fact that teams go to the lefty to close out games about half as often as they should given the number of lefty pitchers in the game, and the fact that the Rays haven’t settled on Jake McGee as a closer for a full season yet, it’s not at all implausible that Boxberger will keep the job all year. It’s an interesting way to spend money for the Rays, as he’ll get more expensive as he racks up the save, but it’s enticing to have a young closer under control for his peak years, and he may end up creating more trade value with more saves, if that’s the way they want to play it.

New pitches don’t always take, but they offer tantalizing upside when they do. These three new pitches look legit — their pitchers are using them in big spots, showing confidence in the pitch, and executing (at least most of the time).