Changeup
Most Valuable: Hyun-Jin Ryu (3.64)
Least Valuable: Jose Quintana (-2.51)
Ryu has the most valuable fastball and changeup? No wonder the dude is having a Cy Young-worthy season. We’ve already talked about how good he’s been earlier in this article, and even spent an entire separate article talking about how good his changeup has been. So there’s no need to do any repeating here — the moral of the story is that he’s been really good for a really good Los Angeles Dodgers team.
Jose Quintana has had an interesting start to this year. The southpaw’s 4.50 ERA and 19.5% strikeout rate don’t look terrific, but he’s cut down on his walk rate (9.2% to 7.6%) and his 1.3 fWAR in 88 innings nearly matches what he did in 174.1 innings last year (1.6 fWAR). He’s dropped his fastball usage by about five percentage points, and that difference has gone to his changeup. He’s thrown it at a 10.7% clip, his highest rate since 2015 (10.0%).
Quintana’s performance with this pitch has continually gotten worse since 2017. Opposing hitters posted a 46 wRC+ against it that year, followed by 132 in ’18, and 147 so far in ’19. His strikeout rate with this offering has also gone from 31.1% to 13.5% when compared to last year.
Honorable Mentions: Cole Hamels (3.48), Noah Syndergaard (3.32), Rick Porcello (-2.35), Zach Eflin (-2.14)
About Matt Musico
Matt Musico currently manages Chin Music Baseball and contributes to The Sports Daily. His past work has been featured at numberFire, Yahoo! Sports and Bleacher Report. He’s also written a book and created an online class about how to get started as a sports blogger. Check those out and more helpful tips on sports blogging at his website.
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