https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2023/09/14/robert-garcia-change-up-nationals/Nice article on Garcia's growing reliance on his change up. Early in his career, the Royals pushed him away from reliance on it and encouraged development of a breaking ball. When the Marlins picked him up, their pitching coordinator said the metrics on the changeup were elite, so why is it your 3rd pitch? When the Marlins tired to waive him off their 40 man due to a roster squeeze, the Nats, seeing the changeup, pounced. Now he's throwing it a lot more, even to lefties.
He has a 40.7 percent whiff rate when opponents swing at it. In a small sample of 25 innings, he’s thrown it 28.1 percent of the time (108 change-ups compared to 188 four-seam fastballs and 89 sliders, according to Statcast). And the change-up usage is even more stark when broken down by right- and left-handed hitters.
Discusses how he started using the changeup vs lefties pitching to Arraez, becoming the only pitcher to strike out Arraez twice this season.
“His change-up, man, it’s so good,” Ruiz said. “We know Arráez hits breaking balls really well. And the change-up looks like fastball and then drops a lot. Arráez probably saw it as a fastball until it was too late. We went with his best pitch.”
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Generally, change-ups are the hardest pitch to analyze and understand on their own. As the Marlins first told Garcia, his change-up grades well with advanced metrics, mainly with its vertical movement (a lot more drop than his fastball and most other change-ups). But more than anything, a change-up thrives when it plays off a well-commanded fastball with a good shape.
The article goes on to discuss the use of waiver pick ups since the 2021 sell off, noting that Harvey is probably the big success story so far, and that the current roster features 4 waiver pickups - Harvey, Garcia, La Sorsa, and Call.
But this time, he trusted Ruiz and threw one in the dirt, getting Arráez to swing and miss for strike three. Garcia has struck out Arráez, who has a league-best strikeout rate of 5.8 percent, in both of their meetings. He remains the only pitcher to strike out Arráez twice in 2023.
