The Change: New Pitching Mixes

Hitters have to be jealous of pitchers in at least one respect. A pitcher can add a new pitch — maybe by fiddling with the grip or the release — and that new pitch can make them into a totally different guy. Hitters can fiddle with their mechanics, but it’s rare that there’s a readily available obvious and easy change they can make that rises to the level of a New Changeup.

Speaking of new changeups, check out Carlos Martinez.

Changeups
No pitcher has added more changeups to his pitching mix this year than Carlos Martinez. His usage of the pitch is up 13%, and only Carlos Carrasco is up 10% otherwise. In related news, this is the first year in which Martinez has shown any ability to get leties out. His strikeout rate against opposite-handed hitters doubled, his strikeout-minus-walk rate is finally average against them (~11%) instead of putrid (~0%), and he’s showing his best grounder rate against lefties, too. Martinez has been a little homer-prone against lefties, and that may not change a ton. The velocity gap on his change dropped to below average, after all. But the change added three inches of fade and three inches of drop this year, and Martinez trusts it. Believe that he can be better than his rest-of-season projections because of this real change in his pitching mix. Look how it ties Martinez’ entire arsenal together, thanks to Daniel Doelling via Viva El Birdos:

Some of the other extreme changeup changers are probably just PITCHf/x glitches. Brooks Baseball doesn’t have Carrasco adding 10% changeup usage this year, and Carrasco throws an 88 mph changeup — PITCHf/x hates changeups that go that fast. Anibal Sanchez shows up as throwing the change 12% less often this year, but it also has him suddenly throwing a splitter. Much more likely is that the algorithm just caught up to reality.

Other major changeup adders include people with great changeups trying to hold on to their place in the game — Tim Lincecum, Jered Weaver, Kyle Lohse but also Danny Salazar fit this bill — and a few young pitchers that should make us take notice. Kyle Gibson (11th), Trevor Bauer (9th), and Shane Greene (fourth) all added five to seven new changeups a game, on average. As terrible as Greene’s season has gone, I’d still say this is a good thing for all three pitchers. They trust the changeup more, and it’s made their arsenals more diverse. Bauer, in particular, now has an above-average changeup by most measures, and that change also gives him five (five!) pitches that are above-average by whiffs. The curve remains elite in that regard. He’s probably better than his rest of season projections as well.

Legitimately dropping a change is not usually considered a good thing, but in the cases of Kyle Hendricks (8th biggest drop in usage) and Sonny Gray (12th), it probably is a good idea. In both cases, the pitcher discovered another pitch that may end up being super important to them in the future.

Slider
In related news, Sonny Gray is second only to Chris Archer in number of new sliders this year. When I asked him recently if it was a new pitch, he shrugged and said it was pretty much the same slider he threw last year. By velocity, it is exactly the same pitch, but he is basically combining the best horizontal and vertical movements he’s shown on the pitch. Even if he doesn’t want to tell us what he did exactly, Gray has sharpened that slider up, and he believes in it now. It’s getting 26% whiffs this year, which is an elite number and double the rate on his great curve. He’s also basically replaced half of his changeups against lefties with the slider, which is good because Gray’s change is bad whether you judge it by velocity, shape, or outcomes.

Only Tim Lincecum has dropped his slider usage more than Jake Odorizzi, but that’s a bit unfair to say. Odorizzi has replaced the slider with a slutter — a hybrid cutter/slider that has less velocity and more horizontal movement than his old cutter — to good results. The new pitch has a higher ground-ball rate and about the same whiff rate in general, while he’s getting 24% whiffs on the pitch against lefties, a career high for any breaking pitch of his.

Gerrit Cole (3rd) is showing the best strikeout and swinging strike rates of his career, and he’s throwing the slider more than he’s ever thrown it. These things are related. Jason Hammel pushed his slider usage to 38% this year, which can’t be good for an oft-injured arm. But in the short term, all those sliders are working. Yovani Gallardo is 12th on the list of slider-adders, but it’s not showing up in the traditional peripherals like swinging strike rate or strikeout rate, so it’s not enough for me to believe in what he’s doing.

Curve
So many of these moves could be cast in different lights. Jimmy Nelson cut back slider usage, yes, but it’s not because his slider is bad. In fact, he’s gotten slightly more whiffs from the slider as he’s used it a little less often this year. He’s used it less often because nobody has added more curveballs this year than Jimmy Nelson. Though the curve is a lesser pitch overall than his slider — by whiffs and grounders it’s merely average instead of plus plus — it does give him a weapon against lefties. Left-handed hitters don’t hit the curve (.000 isolated slugging percentage so far) for the same kind of power than they enjoy against the slider (.214 ISO against).

James Shields told us all about his added curveballs, so it’s not surprising to see him second. Danny Salazar (fifth) also pointed out his new curve. Sonny Gray, Jesse Hahn, Gerrit Cole and Shelby Miller make up four of the top five curve-droppers, and it’s the same story for three of them: they each found a new pitch, and those pitches had to come from somewhere.

It’s strange to see Jordan Zimmermann has added curves. He’s added curves and sliders at the cost of fastballs and changeups, and instead of seeing his swinging strike rate increase, it’s gone down. Considering that his curveball is basically an average pitch, maybe this change hasn’t been a good idea. He certainly doesn’t seem like a great buy low.

Splitters show up as changeups, curves as knuckle curves, and sliders as cutters — not every PITCHf/x pitching change is an actual change. And not every change is a huge deal — look at all those splitters that Nate Eovaldi added, to no great avail. But there’s probably no easier to break out than to add a new pitch, so you have to pay attention when it happens.