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I once had an argument with Darwin Barney about whether or not he had any trade value. This is me, gloating that I was right — the Dodgers traded for the Cubs infielder on Monday.

Then again, maybe Barney had a point. We’ll have to see what the player to be named later looks like. No — it doesn’t matter. A team saw what Darwin Barney can do and traded for it. I win the argument. (He can still call me a nerd.)

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At different points in his career, Dallas Keuchel has thrown a slurve and a spike curve. Due to ineffectiveness and injury, he’s had to step down his usage of either breaking ball over his short career. But they’ll be back.

The first breaking ball Keuchel ever threw was a slurve back in high school. But when he got to college, pitching coach Dave Jorn showed him a three-finger change up grip. In what is almost a pitchfork style grip, Keuchel’s thumb doesn’t touch the ball. Perhaps it’s that loose grip that’s given him the third-largest horizontal movement on his change among lefty starters in the game.

The pitchfork grip that launched a career.

Along with his low-90s sinker, that change gave him enough weapons to get by without using his breaking pitch much in college.

That arsenal served him well, but felt he needed a breaking pitch. He had “lost feel for the slurve” he used to have while in high school and so he “came up with a couple spike grips.” One won out, and it helped him advance through the minor leagues. It was good enough.

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Breaking balls sometimes get short shrift these days. Perhaps because of their strong platoon splits and weak (but probably real) correlation with injury, it’s the change up that teams are insisting their pitchers learn. Brett Anderson is a product of a baseball family and one such organization, and yet he continues to ply his trade mostly by throwing a strong breaking ball or two, when he’s healthy.

Is it one pitch, is it two pitches, does it lead to platoon splits, does it lead to injury? His slurve knows all. Or at least a bit.

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Over the All Star break, Miguel Cabrera admitted he wasn’t feeling great. He also mentioned his teammate while he complained of aches and pains to Jorge Ortiz:

“There are times when I feel good, but there are always muscles that are tightening, muscles that are not functioning properly,” Cabrera said in Spanish. “It’s part of the process. The same thing is happening to Justin Verlander, but the difference is he pitches every five days, so you don’t see it as frequently.”

The line between the little everyday joys of growing older and actually being injured may be fine. As the famous line from The Program goes, “If you’re hurt, you can still play. If you’re injured you can’t.”

So is Justin Verlander hurt, or is he injured?

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With a guy like Billy Hamilton on first base, you’re likely to get a fastball. That’s a good thing for Todd Frazier, who has traditionally feasted on fastballs. But does Billy Hamilton also make for a distraction at first base? Someone taking off for second base in your peripheral vision doesn’t make for great concentration at least.

That distractive property of a speedster at first base was the possible explanation that Ben Lindbergh had for the decreased production batters saw when they were at the plate and an aggressive runner was on first.

But ask Frazier about it and he says he’s “locked in” at the plate. “When they throw over three or four times, it’s not a distraction, it makes me feel a little better knowing they’re worried about him and not me,” the Reds third baseman said. “He understands what he’s doing and I understand what I’m doing.”

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It’s time to hang out with your local favorite writers and talk baseball… when there’s no baseball on. (It actually makes for better conversations, because everything you say doesn’t trail off into ellipses when something happens on the field.)

I’m off to Minneapolis for the All-Star game and then on to Chicago for Pitchfork and BeerGraphs business, so we’ll take this show on the road.

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