Whiffs are more important than grounders just as strikeouts are more important than groundballs - the strikeout is an out 99% of the time and the grounder is an out 75% of the time.
Instead of trying to judge which hits were actually hits and not errors, we're just asking if the batter missed the pitch.Īfter correlating the changeup's swinging strike and groundball rate to the pitchers' overall ERA, we can find a way to weight grounders and whiffs. Instead of asking someone to judge what a line drive is, we're asking if the ball went along the ground. Let's try to give individual pitches a score, and then use that score to find the worst changeups in baseball.īy focusing on the "cleanest" outcomes - groundballs and whiffs - we can remove some of the noise that comes with looking at ball-in-play results. Let's use a slightly different method to find the pitchers who should ditch their changeups, though. We can reference these findings as we take a look at some key pitchers below. His findings, in short, were that movement is great either way, but the velocity gap is more important if you use the pitch for whiffs than if you use it for grounders. One method, outlined by Harry Pavlidis, is to look at the shape of the pitch and its velocity difference from the fastball. In an effort to judge changeups, there are two ways to go about things. That would leave arm health as the only concern, and there is no real magical solve for that issue.Īre there pitchers out there who should ditch the change and focus on their slider and curve? It worked so well for Garrett Richards that there have to be others out there who could follow his lead. A pitcher who had a slider (or cutter) alongside a 12-to-6 curveball would theoretically have a platoon-busting arsenal that featured three different speeds. Only two pitches have significant reverse platoon splits: the big curve and the straight change. And they go slower than sliders and faster than curves, so they also offer a change of pace.īut there is one pitch that can do many of these things almost as well as the straight change. They bust platoon splits by offering a pitch that breaks in a different direction than sliders and curves, at least. Beyond health, there are plenty of reasons to promote the changeup as many organizations do.