This Is a Garrett Richards Changeup

There’s not a lot of footage out there of Garrett Richards throwing a changeup. This is because he would pretty much never throw a changeup, and this is because doing so never made him feel all that comfortable. So, in the past, Richards wouldn’t throw many changeups, but, below, you can see Richards throw a changeup from just a few weeks ago. As a bonus, I’ll also include an additional changeup, thrown on Tuesday.

Here’s the older one. We’ll come back to it.

Here’s the one from Tuesday. The video might as well be worthless, because we don’t get a speed reading, and the camera angle is terrible. You get very little read on what this pitch did, seeing it from the side. But, whatever, footage is footage, and maybe if we point out how awful these angles are often enough, they’ll eventually be eradicated.

All right, back to the first one, now. It was an excellent changeup, not only because it got a swing and miss — the execution and location were more or less perfect, which is why you see the catcher give Richards positive feedback. This is from Richards’ only spring outing in front of PITCHf/x cameras, and you know how I know that was a changeup? Here’s a game plot of Richards’ pitch speeds against their horizontal movements:

At the highest velocities, of course, are the fastballs, of the two- and four-seam varieties. Richards throws incredibly hard. In the lower right, you see a few curves. Closer to the middle, you see a group of sliders. That changeup is off by itself. There’s also a fastball that’s off by itself, but at that speed, there’s only one thing it could’ve been. And the changeup? Who throws a changeup at 92 miles per hour?

You’ve read these headlines before. Pitcher Works On Changeup In Spring. Historically, Clayton Kershaw has thrown something like 10% changeups in spring training, and then 2% changeups in the season. Tons of pitchers want a changeup, and trying to work with one in spring is almost free of downside, but more often than not, the pitch doesn’t earn very much trust. The pitcher doesn’t have enough confidence in it, so it almost goes on the shelf. Richards has barely thrown a changeup before, so if one were to bet, you’d figure he’d barely throw a changeup in the future, but maybe — just maybe — this case is different. If you listen to Richards, it’s like a light turned on.

Alden Gonzalez wrote about this a week ago. I’ve probably read that article four or five times, because this speaks directly to my interests. Richards is a pitcher, and I’m a definite pitcher dork. Richards throws stuff that’s easy to love, but he also isn’t yet what he could be, so he’s a work in progress. Big talent and an ongoing adjustment? This is in my pitcher-dork wheelhouse, and though I recognize Richards might go into the year looking the same as ever, you should see what he had to say.

On the history of the changeup:

Then, during a Spring Training game earlier this month, Richards leaned up against the dugout railing and spent five innings listening to veteran closer Huston Street talk him through the mentality behind that pitch.

Said Richards: “I didn’t realize that I had been throwing a changeup all wrong this whole time.”

On how it’s going now:

“Every outing I go out,” Richards said, “it gets more comfortable.”

On what the future holds:

“I’m definitely going to use it,” Richards said. “All year.”

On the action:

“Getting the extension and pulling the ball down, it’s giving me better movement late,” Richards said. “It’s got a two-seam movement on it, but if I do miss, it’s down. That’s another thing. A changeup up in the zone is not a good pitch. It’s enabling me to throw it for quality strikes and to be able to throw it below the zone if I need to. I think just mixing that pitch in is going to open up a lot of things.”

Richards listened to Street and then worked the recommended changeup into a bullpen. That led to using it in games, first against minor leaguers. He used it heavily in an intrasquad game, and while I don’t know how often he used the pitch Tuesday, it’s certainly been getting plenty of work. That 92 above might be an outlier — the linked article says the changeup tends to hang around 88-90. As you might’ve been able to predict, an Angels source said that when it works, Richards’ current changeup looks like the one thrown by Felix Hernandez.

Felix’s changeup has been sort of the gold standard, so that’s an unrealistic bar, but the ideas here are similar. You have a power pitcher throwing a change with diving two-seam movement, at a velocity some pitchers reach with their fastballs. You’d have something less than the ordinary fastball-changeup velocity gap, but any difference is a functional difference. Richards just wants to give hitters another look. Right now, a hitter could eliminate the curveball and look fastball-slider. If there’s a changeup in there, that’s obviously a weapon, and perhaps, like Felix, Richards could use his change against righties and lefties alike. Richards doesn’t own a big platoon split, thanks to his naturally cutting four-seamer. A changeup could keep hitters off his two-seamer, and then they’d be forever caught in between.

Working against Richards is historical precedent. There just aren’t many cases of a starting pitcher going from almost no changeups to a significant amount of changeups. This is because, of course, picking up a changeup is hard, and Richards’ tone might be very different in a week or two. One example we have is Yovani Gallardo, who threw less than 1% changeups in 2014, and who then threw more than 5% changeups in 2015. But 5% still isn’t much of a rate, and the pitch mostly wasn’t good. Let’s say Richards were to throw the pitch, oh, 10% of the time. That might well be unprecedented in recent years. When a pitcher doesn’t have a changeup, it’s almost always been safe to assume he’ll never have a changeup.

But I’ll say that Francisco Rodriguez didn’t have a changeup when he first emerged. Never threw one. Then, barely threw one through 2006. Last year he threw one almost half the time. Rodriguez figured it out and turned his changeup into something elite. It’s enough to keep you hopeful. Picking up a changeup isn’t impossible.

Especially if it turns out you’ve just been throwing it wrong. The truest test for Richards comes in less than a week, because he’ll be starting for the Angels against the Cubs on opening day. We’re going to have information on every single pitch, and every single pitch is going to count. Come next week, we might be able to refer to Garrett Richards as a pitcher with a changeup. He was already scary enough before.