Gavin Stone was credited with his first big league win on Sunday. Working in a bulk role behind opener Caleb Ferguson, the 24-year-old rookie right-hander went six solid innings as the Los Angeles Dodgers topped the Boston Red Sox 7-4 at Fenway Park. His changeup played a predictably prominent role. Stone threw the pitch that our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen has assigned a 60/70 FV (current/projected) on the 20-80 scouting scale a total of 22 times, with a vertical break averaging 30 inches and diving as low 39 inches. Velocity-wise, it ranged from 82.6 mph to 87.7 mph.

Stone was making his fifth major league appearance (and his first since July 4) when he took the mound in Boston. His earlier outings had been on the rocky side — his ERA and FIP are now 10.50 and 6.72 respectively — but there is no denying his potential. The 2020 fifth-round pick out of the University of Central Arkansas is currently no. 40 on The Board with a 50 FV.

Stone told the story behind his signature pitch the day before facing the Red Sox. Read the rest of this entry »

When Carlos Rodón returns to the mound tonight — the 30-year-old New York Yankees southpaw has been out all season with forearm and back issues — he’ll be doing so with one of baseball’s best-known sliders. Long his signature pitch, it has contributed heavily to his success, which includes a 2.67 ERA, a 2.42 FIP, and a 12.23 K/9 rate between the 2021 and ’22 campaigns. As far back as 2016, former FanGraphs columnist (and now Tampa Bay Rays analyst) Jeff Sullivan compared Rodón’s slider to the one thrown by future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw.

Harkening back to my Learning and Developing a Pitch series, which has been on hiatus since last July, I recently asked Rodón for the story behind his slider.

———

Carlos Rodón: “The slider I throw now is the same one I threw in college. Before I got to [North Carolina State University], it was more of a slurve. My pitching coach in college was Tom Holliday, and he thought that I should throw a harder breaking ball as opposed to one that was more curvish/slurvish. He said, ‘Let’s try to make this closer to a true slider,’ showed me a grip, then said, ‘I want you to throw this as hard as you can.’ I did, and from there it didn’t take very long to develop into the breaking ball I have now. It fell into my arsenal pretty easily.

“The grip isn’t a traditional slider grip. The tracks of the ball, above the horseshoe — both horseshoes — like you’re throwing a two-seamer… you spin it like you’re going straight perpendicular across [the seams]. You’re crossing them, and then my leverage is on that next horseshoe. The leverage is with my middle finger, and while that’s traditional, the grip itself is kind of unorthodox. It’s not like I’m on just one seam. It’s hard to explain, but I’m kind of above it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features St. Louis Cardinals rookie left-hander Zack Thompson on his big-bending curveball.

Drafted 19th overall in 2019 out of the University of Kentucky, the 24-year-old Thompson made his major league debut on June 3, and he’s gone on to log a 3.31 ERA and a 4.05 FIP over 16-and-a-third innings. Working primarily out of the bullpen, he’s allowed 13 hits, issued five free passes, and fanned 13 batters. No. 9 on our newly-released St. Louis Cardinals Top Prospect list, Thompson has thrown his arguably-best-in-the-system curveball 32.8% of the time.

———

Zack Thompson: “Growing up, my dad was always protective of me throwing breaking balls, so I didn’t start throwing one until I was a junior in high school. That’s when we began messing around with a curveball. We started out duct-taping two tennis balls together — my high school pitching coach, Jason Dudley, came up with the idea — and I just kind of flipped those to get the shape. It’s actually a lot easier to get feedback off of that. That’s kind of how it got started for me, and I ran with it from there.

“As I got older, I obviously started refining it more. The shape has essentially stayed the same, although I did have to cut down a little bit on the movement. That happened in college. Honestly, it was just too big. It was also too slow. Cutting down on the movement, my command got better, and the pitch also got a little bit sharper. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Detroit Tigers left-hander Andrew “Big Country” Chafin on his signature slider.

Chafin has a keep-it-simple-stupid [K.I.S.S.] approach to his best pitch, and it’s hard to argue with success. Since the start of last season, the mustachioed southpaw boasts a 2.17 ERA and 2.78 FIP over 94 relief outings, allowing just 62 hits and fanning 88 batters in 87 innings. Chafin has thrown his breaking ball 35.8% of the time this year.

———

Andrew Chafin: “I hold a curveball grip, throw it as hard as I can, and it comes out a slider. So, is it a curveball or a slider? I guess whatever it does is what it is. Really, I don’t care what people call it as long as the hitters swing and miss. If that happens, I’m happy.

“I want to say I started learning [a breaking ball] in my junior year of high school, give or take. I don’t remember who I was working with in particular, I just found a grip that felt comfortable, and I tried to make it spin. There’s nothing special about how I grip it or throw it. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Oakland Athletics right-hander Paul Blackburn on his curveball, a revamped pitch playing a key role in what has been a career-best season.

On track to represent Oakland in next month’s All-Star game, Blackburn has won six of eight decisions — this for the team with baseball’s worst record — while logging a 2.26 ERA and a 3.09 FIP over 13 starts comprising 71-and-two-thirds innings. He’s thrown his curveball, a pitch he no longer grips in atypical fashion, 18.5% of the time.

———

Paul Blackburn: “I started throwing a curveball right around my sophomore year of high school. I learned it from watching Barry Zito. I grew up in Northern California — I’m a Northern California guy — so I saw a lot of Barry Zito and his big curveball. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment, presented in a Q&A format, features Seattle Mariners reliever Paul Sewald on his slider.

Since signing with Seattle as a free agent prior to last season, Sewald has won 12 of 16 decisions, logged 15 saves, and has a 2.86 ERA, a 3.20 FIP, and 123 strikeouts in 85 innings. The 32-year-old right-hander has thrown his signature slider — a pitch he completely revamped after coming over from the New York Mets — 42.8% of the time.

———

David Laurila: You’ve developed a great slider. What’s the story behind it?

Paul Sewald: “Since the beginning of time — before TrackMan, before Rapsodo, before everyone realized exactly what the pitch does — every pitching coach in the history of the world said, ‘You need two planes on your slider, you can’t have it go just sideways. That’s not how you get outs.’ So that’s what I thought. I tried to make it have two planes.

“When I first started throwing it, it was very slurvy. It wasn’t very hard, but it did move in two planes. It wasn’t a curve. It wasn’t a slider. It was somewhere in the middle. That’s how I grew up throwing it, and I always went back to that line of thinking. Slurvy or not, it had to have two planes.

“Then I got over here to the Mariners and it was, ‘We don’t care if it moves one centimeter down, we just want you to sweep it as far as you can possibly sweep it.’ I said, ‘OK, that’s interesting. I haven’t been trying to do that, but I throw across my body, so it seems like something I could do.’

“Immediately that worked. It was overnight. In camp last year, I didn’t pitch very well, but that was because of my fastball. The slider was very good. As soon as they told me, ‘We don’t care about any depth, we just want sweep,’ I took off with the slider. It was a very easy and very comfortable switch for me.”

Laurila: Outside of having the right delivery — throwing across your body — how did you go about getting the action the Mariners were looking for? Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a young Seattle Mariners right-hander, Logan Gilbert, and a sneaky-good San Diego Padres reliever, Nabil Crismatt, on their changeups.

———

Logan Gilbert, Seattle Mariners

“I changed the grip this offseason. I’d been throwing it a little more off my ring finger, and now it’s more of a traditional circle change. I’m also trying to throw it more like my fastball, which has helped the consistency. I obviously wanted to keep good action on it, but also be able to locate it in the zone; I wasn’t commanding the old one very well. More than anything, I was looking for something that I felt comfortable with. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of southpaws — White Sox starter Dallas Keuchel and Brewers reliever Brent Suter — on their changeups.

———

Dallas Keuchel, Chicago White Sox

“A changeup was the first pitch I learned growing up. My dad never let me throw a breaking ball. He just had me split my fingers and try to throw a fastball as hard as I could. That was probably … let me think for a moment with my Rolodex here. I was maybe eight years old? Regardless, I don’t know how many miles per hour it was off, but it had some good deception and movement, so that’s what I rolled with through a lot of my childhood.

“I didn’t grip it like a palm ball, but a kid’s fingers are obviously smaller than the baseball, so we just tinkered with splitting the two fingers. What stuck was splitting three fingers together, instead of a circle change. It’s more of a three-finger prong changeup. When I say prong, what I mean is like a fork. But it worked well for me. It just kind of rolled off, and I’d get some whiffs and some weak contact. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and once again, we’re hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features a pair of right-handers — Toronto’s Trent Thornton and Minnesota’s Josh Winder — on their distinctly different sliders.

———

Trent Thornton, Toronto Blues Jays

“Last year, I struggled with putting away righties. My slider wasn’t playing very well. I feel like curveballs are normally better to lefties anyways, so I started tinkering with a new slider grip that [Blue Jays pitching strategist] David Howell showed me. I started throwing that halfway through spring training, saw some pretty promising results, and took it straight into this season. I feel pretty confident with that pitch, being able to throw it in the zone, or out of the zone.

“It’s kind of an interesting grip for a slider. Normally, when guys are throwing a slider they want to think fastball as long as possible and kind of get that short, late action. But with this one, I’m almost thinking, ‘Completely on the side of the ball.’ In my mind, I’m trying to up-shoot it almost. I want to go straight across. It’s weird, because when I throw it, my wrist is literally like this; it’s kind of sideways. Basically, I’m thinking about bringing the back of my hands straight at the hitter. Read the rest of this entry »

The Learning and Developing a Pitch series is back for another season, and we’re once again hearing from pitchers on a notable weapon in their arsenal. Today’s installment features Wil Crowe on his circle changeup and Nick Martinez on his made-in-Japan Vulcan changeup.

———

Wil Crowe, Pittsburgh Pirates

“I learned a changeup when I was about eight or 10 years old. Ex-big leaguer Steve Searcy lived in Knoxville, and my dad wanted to find me lessons — he’d played college ball, but wasn’t a pitcher — and that’s who he found. Steve was always big with fastball/changeup. I didn’t throw a curveball or slider until I was a senior in high school. Growing up, it was fastball/change. Locate the fastball, and the changeup comes off of it.

“The grip is a circle change. Now it’s a little modified; it’s out in my fingers a little more than it used to be. Middle finger and ring finger hold onto the laces, and the thumb is underneath. So it started out more of a traditional circle ball, and now it’s more on the end of the fingers. I did that in college, after I grew into my body. My hand was bigger and I was able to grip the ball better. But I think that starting at such a young age helped, because it’s a comfort thing. Read the rest of this entry »