Snodgrass'Muff said:
Losing his feel doesn't necessarily mean losing it entirely. Feel pitches can come and go, and that can mean from night to night. If he's throwing in the pen before a start and doesn't have a feel for the chagneup, he's not going to use it that night. If he does, he will. Just because it's effective when he does throw it, that does not mean his statement about losing his feel for it is incorrect. I mean, the pitcher himself is saying it. I think we can take him at his word. What reason would he have to mislead people about it? It's kind of ridiculous to assert you know what's going on more than Buchholz does.
Not only that, but the empirical data, and the eye test are also consistent with what Buchholz has said. In fact, the assertion that Buchholz abandoned the pitch because he was obsessed with cutters has literally zero support from anyone. It's no wonder that Nick had to secure a quote from a
National league scout in order to back up his thesis.
Snodgrass'Muff said:
Look at this page, which charts movement. His horizontal movement in particular is of note. He has three months this year in which it's moving more than in any month in 2013, meaning it might be getting away from him a bit at times. The change up, especially one like his which has a lot of movement, isn't as useful if he can't spot it. When it starts to run like you are seeing in the April, June and August numbers, it's tough to trust it.
Not to quibble, but I think you need to combine the
horizontal movement ,
vertical movement, and
velocity data in order to show the variability in Buchholz's changeup because the change in all three appears to be related. At times, his changeup does three things that are bad: increased horizontal movement, decreased vertical movement, and increased velocity. All of which combine to make his changeup both more hittable and an easier pitch to take for a ball.
Interestingly, Buchholz's best changeups appear to have occurred in 2010; they had average horizontal movement, high vertical movement, and decent separation from his fastball. It was also the year where Buchholz's changeup had the best linear weights scores.
ivanvamp said:
I meant to finish this post off. Sorry I didn't. I do not believe that Buchholz' change is "lost" in terms of effectiveness. He can still throw it. We've seen it from time to time this year. So whatever mechanical changes he's made haven't been such to render the pitch ineffective. He just doesn't use it that much.
If you look at Brooks' page where it classifies Buchholz' pitches by usage and outcome, and then sort for whiff percentage (see:
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/outcome.php?player=453329&b_hand=-1&gFilt=&pFilt=FA|SI|FC|CU|SL|CS|KN|CH|FS|SB&time=month&minmax=ci&var=whiff&s_type=2&startDate=03/30/2007&endDate=08/25/2014), you'll see that he's still getting a high percentage of swings and misses on his change….pretty much the same as ever. A little more inconsistent, but on the whole, still a lot of swings and misses.
Then sort by batting average against, and you'll see the same trend (
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/outcome.php?player=453329&b_hand=-1&gFilt=&pFilt=FA|SI|FC|CU|SL|CS|KN|CH|FS|SB&time=month&minmax=ci&var=baa&s_type=2&startDate=03/30/2007&endDate=08/25/2014)- a similar BAA against his change as ever.
So I don't see it as being a less effective pitch. He just isn't using it as much. Why? Who knows. I don't see why, at least in this particular case, they can't just move his repertoire towards more change ups.
I don't know, I see a downward trend in his changeup whiff rate per year, with an uptick in the beginning of 2013 (i.e. when he was pitching well), just saying. I'm not a big fan of using batting average as a measure for pitch quality, however, there is a more volatile (but still visible) downward trend with an uptick in early 2013. I'm not saying his early 2013 success was due to finding the changeup again, more that there is a noticeable downward trend for the pitch itself.
I also think you're cherry picking outcomes here. Take a look at isolated power, slugging percentage, and line-drive rate in 2014. Buchholz' whiff percentage is highest in the month where his isolated power against is 1.00, and second highest (a big gap) where his isolated power against is 0.17. Those are not good numbers for a changeup and suggest that he is getting hit hard.
His line-drive rate against is highest for those months as well. On the other hand, the remaining three months have the third-fifth lowest whiff rates of his career.
In other words, over the past year, when the changeup is getting whiffs, its also getting hit.
