The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned this summer after being on hiatus last year due to the pandemic. Each week, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Gerrit Cole on his curveball and Austin Davis on his slider.

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Gerrit Cole, New York Yankees

“A.J. Burnett taught Charlie Morton and me the grip when we were in Pittsburgh. He would take me in the cage and do drills with me that his dad would do with him when he was a kid. The curveball is something he’s basically had since the first time he started playing catch, which is different than me, but similar to Jameson [Taillon]. So I had to learn it. He showed me the grip, showed me the drills, and kind of described what he was feeling and what he was looking for. This was in 2012, in spring training. Then in 2013, in the big leagues, we worked on it a lot.

“I’d been pretty much slider only. I had tried a bigger curveball. I’d tried to make the slider bigger. I’d tried to throw a shorter cutter. But I never really had a true downer breaking ball. At first, I incorporated it in Pittsburgh [and] a lot was changing speeds. It’s kind of developed a little bit beyond just that.

“One of [the drills] was with an L screen. We played catch in the cage a few times. He’d back me up to 50-55 [feet] — just in front of the mound — and I would play catch with the curveball. Then he would slide the L screen over. The objective was to throw the curveball and make it go right over the shorter portion of the L screen. It would get to the correct height at the finish. We practiced that a lot. Read the rest of this entry »

High-performing under-the-radar prospects have been featured frequently in this space over recent months, and Brandon Phaadt fits that description to a T. Unranked coming into the season, the 22-year-old right-hander in the Arizona Diamondbacks system posted a 3.21 ERA while fanning 160 batters in 131-and-two-thirds innings. Moreover, he did so while pitching at three levels —Pfaadt’s last six starts came with Double-A Amarillo — as a 2020 fifth-round pick out of a DII school.

The Bellarmine University product pushed back slightly when I suggested that his auspicious performance came out of the blue.

“I guess it did in some people’s eyes,” said Pfaadt. “But I knew I had it all along. I had a long offseason to train, and I also think it was really important that I was able to work with three different pitching coaches this year. I got feedback from all three, and was able to take bits and pieces from each of them.”

Asked for examples, Pfaadt told me that Barry Enright (Low-A Visalia) was more mechanics-based and worked with him on the consistency of his delivery, while Shane Loux (High-A Hillsboro) was more about pitchability. At Amarillo, Doug Drabek provided an effective combination of old-school and new-school acumen. As Pfaadt put it, Drabek “knows what worked back then, and what works now.”

Pitch design didn’t play a role. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned this summer after being on hiatus last year due to the pandemic. Each week, we’re hearing from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features DJ Herz, Aaron Loup, and Trevor Williams on their changeups.

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DJ Herz, Chicago Cubs prospect

“It was 2020 spring training and I was in the pitch lab. [Cubs pitching coordinator] Casey Jacobson was with me. I threw my regular four… I never had a changeup going into pro ball. So, I threw it off my four-seam grip, and it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, either. It was too firm, only about four miles off my fastball. Casey had me try another grip, and again it was just all right. Then, the second grip we tried was kind of Vulcan-ish.

“I put it deep into the wedge between the middle and ring finger. I‘ve got the middle finger off the two-seam grip, so I can just rip down on it. I mean, the first pitch I threw like that, it was like, ‘All right, let’s stick with that one; that’s the pitch right there.’

“I went back home and just kept throwing it. I’ve always been told that the changeup is one of the hardest pitches to learn. I was determined. I said, ‘Man, I want to learn this pitch so much.’ I’d hear these interviews with guys saying that having a good fastball and a good changeup is an awesome combo, so I would throw that pitch every single day. I’d long-toss with it sometimes. I kept working on it, and it’s paid off, man. Read the rest of this entry »

Tanner Houck’s signature pitch is a sweeping slider. The 25-year-old Boston Red Sox right-hander has gone to it 35.5% of the time this season, and with good results. There is little question that the offering is the most lethal weapon in his arsenal. That said, it’s arguably not his most important pitch going forward — particularly if his future is in the starting rotation, and not out of the bullpen.

Bedeviled by an inability to master a conventional changeup, Houck began learning a split-finger fastball last year. The pitch remains something of a work-in-progress, yet he’s begun throwing it more frequently. Houck’s splitter usage is up to 7.5% on the season, a percentage that promises to rise if he can fine-tune it further. Four years after he was drafted 24th overall out of the University of Missouri, Houck is hoping that his newest pitch will take him to the next level.

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Tanner Houck: “I had trouble throwing a changeup. I would constantly baby it — I would get on the side of it and just push it — so it was really inconsistent. They came to me and said, ‘Hey, we want you to throw a splitter.’ This was in spring training 2020, four days before we got canceled. It was a heck of a time to start learning a new pitch.

“They wanted me to keep working on the change, but also attempt to throw the splitter, and I was like, ‘OK, fine; I’ll give it a shot.’ I threw a bullpen the next day, and for every five, maybe one of them wasn’t too bad. At that time it was still 90-93 [mph]; it was essentially just a little bit worse of a two-seam. But I didn’t think anything of it. I was like, ‘This is literally day one of throwing this pitch, so it’s not a big deal.’ Then COVID happens, so I go home. Read the rest of this entry »

Louie Varland has been one of the best pitchers in the Minnesota Twins system this season. In 20 appearances — 10 with Low-A Fort Myers and 10 with High-A Cedar Rapids — the 23-year-old right-hander is 10-4 with a 2.10 ERA and a 2.81 FIP. Moreover, he has 142 strikeouts to go with just 30 walks in 103 innings.

In some respects, Varland has come out of nowhere. A 15th-round pick in 2019 who took the mound at a Division II school, he entered the current campaign well under the radar. His name was nowhere to be found on top-prospect rankings.

The relative obscurity doesn’t include the Twin Cities’ baseball community. The St. Paul native played close to home at Concordia University, as did his older brother, Gus Varland, who was drafted by the Oakland A’s in 2018.

The emerging Twins prospect has upped both his velocity and his pitching acumen since he toed the slab with the Golden Bears. Low-90s as a collegian, he’s now sitting 94 and topping out at 98. Varland shared that his four-seam fastball spins between 2,300 and 2,500 RPM and gets 17 inches of rise. Calling the pitch his “greatest gift right now,” he added that its effectiveness is due in part to “vertical approach angle, the riding illusion that hitters see.” Read the rest of this entry »

Josh Donaldson has a 138 wRC+ since becoming a full-time player in 2013, and power has been a big part of that equation. Not counting last year’s pandemic-shortened season, and an injury-marred 2018, the 35-year-old third baseman has averaged 31 home runs annually. Now in his second year with the Minnesota Twins, Donaldson is a three-time All-Star who has been awarded a pair of Silver Sluggers.

He’s also an analytics-savvy hitting nerd who spends a lot of time thinking about his craft, and he doesn’t always do so in a predictable way. When Donaldson sat down for this interview in late August — the Twins were playing in Boston — he didn’t wait for a question; he asked a rhetorical one of his own.

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Josh Donaldson: “Are barrels overrated? In 2019, my OPS was good. Last year, I didn’t really have enough at-bats to log. This year, my OPS isn’t good — not for my standards — but if you go look at the charts, all of my [quality of contact] categories are red. They’re well into the 90s for percentiles.

“I looked at guys around the league who are having really good years. I looked at Marcus Semien, who is having a great year. I looked at a guy like Nolan Arenado, who has been a really good hitter for awhile. You go throughout the league and look at guys’ hard-hit percentages, and it’s like, ‘Is that good?’ That’s one thing I’ve been kind of tinkering with.

“Obviously, you want to be able to hit the ball hard — you want to drive balls — but I think there’s also something to… say, for instance, someone like Tony Gwynn. Are you able to control the barrel with where it’s pitched? Maybe it’s an inside pitch and you’re able to stay inside it and fight it off the other way to get a hit. That’s versus… I mean, I’ve gotten pitches in, or I’ve gotten pitches middle, and I’ve smoked them on the ground, or I’ve hit a line drive where the defense is playing.

“Freddie Freeman. You look at his Baseball Savant page, and it’s really good. He’s in the 99th percentile in a lot of categories, but I know that his thought-process is to hit a line drive to where the shortstop is. He’s always focused on doing that, yet has the ability to turn on some balls as well. So I think there’s an argument to be made… or at least it’s something that I’m kind of digging into a little bit more. Is hitting the ball hard good, or is it bad?” Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series returned this summer after being on hiatus last year due to the pandemic. Each week, we’ll hear from three pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features J.P. Feyereisen, Zach Plesac, and Nick Wittgren on their changeups.

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J.P. Feyereisen, Tampa Bay Rays

“I started throwing a changeup in 2019, using your basic four-seam grip. It was okay. Then I went to the Brewers and got in their lab. They kind of switched my grip around, and now I have kind of a weird two-seam grip. The thought behind it is to get gravity to affect it and bring it down, so it’s nothing like the Devin Williams changeup where he spins it at 3,100 [rpm].

“Basically, I’m thinking about almost side-spinning it. The way I grip it, the top of the ball is facing up, and it spins [counterclockwise]. It comes off my middle finger. I think ‘ring finger,’ but my middle finger is the main anchor of it, for sure. When I spin it like that, I get depth and also a little bit of arm-side movement. The spin is 1,400-1,500 — nothing crazy — but the good ones I throw will act kind of like a lefty slider. I throw it upper-80s, so it’s kind of a different pitch. Read the rest of this entry »

Xzavion Curry is a prospect-on-the-rise in the Cleveland organization. A seventh-round pick in 2019 out of Georgia Tech, the 23-year-old right-hander is 8-1 with a 2.23 ERA in 18 starts between Low-A Lynchburg and High-A Lake County. With the lion’s share at the latter, Curry has allowed just 65 hits in 93 innings. Moreover, he’s fanned 118 batters and issued just 16 free passes.

Command is Curry’s forte, but it’s not his only attribute. As our own Eric Longenhagen wrote in early June, the 5-foot-11, 195-pound hurler’s “vertical arm slot creates angle and carry on a fastball that plays well at the letters.” Augmenting Curry’s 91-94 mph four-seamer are a curveball, a slider, and a changeup.

He’s only been a full-time pitcher for a handful of years. Curry came to Georgia Tech as a two-way player, having excelled both on the mound and at short as an Atlanta-area prep. That his college coaches made him a full-time pitcher is a testament to changing times. Curry is African-American, and Black players have historically been channeled into position-player roles. Black pitchers have been at a premium.

“That does enter my mind,” said Curry, who had a 17-inning scoreless streak come to an end earlier this week. “As I go around to different places, and play different teams, I don’t really see a lot of Black pitchers. So that is something I’ve noticed, but as the younger generation goes forward, those guys just keep getting better and better. We have a couple in our organization, and I’m pretty sure we’ll start to see more and more Black pitchers.”

Curry cited a different sport when addressing his plus command. Read the rest of this entry »

Eli Morgan has “a bugs-bunny changeup.” That’s how the 25-year-old rookie right-hander’s signature offering was described when it was suggested that I interview him for the Learning and Developing a Pitch series. Delivered at an average velocity of 75.1 mph, Morgan’s changeup is the slowest among pitchers who have worked at least 40 innings (not including Seattle’s Paul Sewald, who per StatCast has thrown just one changeup all season).

Cleveland’s eighth-round pick in the 2017 draft, Morgan has made 14 starts and has a 5.48 ERA and a 5.01 FIP to go with 68 strikeouts in 67.1 innings. He’s thrown his changeup — a pitch he described in detail this past Sunday — 22.4% of the time.

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Eli Morgan: “I started out mainly fastball/breaking ball, and then my senior year of high school I began developing my changeup. I’d thrown a splitter — that was my changeup for my first couple years of high school — but I figured that probably wasn’t great for my arm going forward. At the time, there was talk of Masahiro Tanaka having issues with his elbow because of the splitter, and that kind of turned me off of that pitch. I decided to go to a regular circle change.

“When I got to [Gonzaga University] they told me that if I wanted to pitch, let alone be a starter, I needed to have a good changeup. That was a big thing up there, so I started throwing it a lot more and got comfortable with it.

“Because I throw a four-seam fastball, I throw a four-seam changeup. That’s something one of my pitching coaches mentioned: ‘Make sure it comes out with the same seams as your fastball.’ That’s what I went with, and I had pretty good command of it right from the start. Over time, I began getting more movement on it, getting more fade. Read the rest of this entry »

Louis Head has had a storybook season. Without a team during last year’s pandemic summer, the rookie right-hander was working a sales job, his dreams of reaching the big leagues seemingly in the review mirror. Nearly a decade after being taken by Cleveland in the 18th round of the 2012 draft, he thought his career was over. Then the Tampa Bay Rays came calling.

Head was signed off the scrap heap this past February, and on April 25, two days after celebrating his 31st birthday, he made his major league debut. The Katy, Texas native has gone on to appear in 20 games with the Rays since then — he’s also seen action in 24 games with Triple-A Durham — logging a 2.93 ERA and a 3.53 FIP over 27-and-two-thirds innings. His slider has played a big role in his Cinderella ascent. Developed since joining his new team, the pitch has helped fuel one of the better success stories of the 2021 season.

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David Laurila: You’re a 31-year-old rookie. How were you able to finally take that final step and reach the big leagues? Was pitching development part of it?

Louis Head: “I think it was mostly about there being an opportunity here. We had some guys get hurt early on in the season, and it opened up some doors for me. That didn’t really happen in the past with other organizations. I felt like I had thrown well in the past, especially for Cleveland, and I could have been a guy they brought up. But those opportunities never happened.

“Development-wise, when I did get here, working with the analytical team, and with [pitching coach] Kyle Snyder, we were really able to develop my slider into a major weapon. Before, it was just kind of a get-me-over pitch. Now it’s a legit put-away pitch, and that’s made a world of difference. Them having confidence in me has been a huge part of my success, as well.”

Laurila: Why were you able to turn the corner with your slider here, and not with Cleveland, the Dodgers, or the Mariners? Read the rest of this entry »