Change-Up

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Give me Mets whose best pitch was the Change-up, and/or those who might have a better pitch but who's who's change would be in consideration among the team's best changeup-throwers, past or present.

[MFS62]

John Franco (or did he throw a screwball?)

Later

[Guest d'Kong76]

I think of Tug for the screwball? Or maybe just because that's the
name of his book and he was a screwball!

[Edgy MD]

No, Tug was all about the scroogie.

Most effective Mets pitcher who lived and died by the change, in my mind, is Pat Zachry. But the best change I saw was Pedro Martinez's.

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Johan Santana was a change-up man
Aaron Heilman had an effective one, especially against lefties

[Guest John Cougar Lunchbucket]

Viola

[seawolf17]

Pedro.

[Edgy MD]

Santana's I think was a palm change. Pedro's too, I think, though he probably mixed in the circle change as well.

Glavine threw about the straightest straight change I remember. He threw nothing but the change and the fastball. And despite the change being dead straight and the the fastball not being that much faster than a change itself, it mostly worked.

[Guest d'Kong76]

Glavine's extra five inches on both sides of the plate in the heyday
were dead-straight aggravating.

[Ceetar]

per 100 pitches, runs above average is Dickey, deGrom, Martinez.

Of course, that's only since 2002 and speaks to the result more than the actual pitch movement/location/etc.

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit≶=all&qual=y&type=7&season=2016&month=0&season1=1871&ind=0&team=25&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=6,d

[ashie62]

Matlack

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

Edgy MD wrote: Santana's I think was a palm change. Pedro's too, I think, though he probably mixed in the circle change as well. Glavine threw about the straightest straight change I remember. He threw nothing but the change and the fastball. And despite the change being dead straight and the the fastball not being that much faster than a change itself, it mostly worked.

Location, location, location, right?

Pedro threw at LEAST two different changes, IIRC.

[Frayed Knot]

MFS62 wrote: John Franco (or did he throw a screwball?)

A good change-up, because it rolls off the smaller fingers of the hand, often has a bit of a opposite break 'screwball' action to it. Franco's and Ojeda's in particular are the guys I think of with that kind of movement but neither really 'turned the ball over' in the way of a classic screwball. There are probably a few others but my list of NYM screwballers pretty much starts and ends with Tug from the left side and Mike Marshall from the right.

Not sure if there's even anyone in baseball throwing a true scrooge today, much to the dismay of the previously mentioned and self-appointed pitching guru Marshall. He claims it's healthier for arms but there's certainly debate on that and it's not exactly a natural motion, next time you turn a door handle do so in the 'opposite' direction from how you'd normally do it (counter clockwise for righties) and you'll know why. The Greg Maddux-Style 'cutter' now the preferred method for pitchers who want back-up movement on their pitches.

The best known screwball artist was 1930s NYG ace Carl Hubbel. I remember seeing a posed picture of him once, just standing straight with arms at his side, and it was until you looked closely that you noticed a quirk in the picture, namely that both his palms were facing in the same direction, the right one faced inward towards his thigh the way you'd expect but the left one hung with the back of his hand closest to the leg. All those years of turning his pitching arm outward as he threw had permanently stretched/contracted the muscles in his (left) pitching arm that his southern paw naturally faced outward.