Pablo Lopez Has a Kick-Changeup?! Slade Cecconi Left His Cool Pitches at Triple-A

Pablo Lopez, Slade Cecconi, Grant Holmes, Noah Cameron

• Twins Pablo Lopez might be tinkering with a kick-changeup? To put this in context, from 2023-2024, Lopez threw just 1 changeup with <0” induced vertical break (aka, a lot of drop). This season alone he’s thrown 27, with 6 of them in Milwaukee. His changeup averaged 0” vertical break yesterday, the lowest in a single game of his career (and it still averaged 88 mph). The video below is the only shot of the grip I’ve found. I think his middle finger is slightly spiked onto the seam to kill spin and add drop. The changeup shown has 5” vertical break, it took off on him a bit, but it was only 1,100 rpm, substantially lower than the 1,900+ rpm his changeup averaged last year. I’m confident he’s intentionally altering the shape to add more drop. 👀

  • Lopez has a 2.86 ERA with a 2 FIP and a 26% K-BB rate since returning from the IL. He’s throwing a touch more non-four-seamers in pre-two-strike situations to righties, and his sweeper is crushing in two-strike counts (45%+ whiff). Against lefties, we’re seeing more four-seamer, jumping from 44% in the second half last year to 54% since returning from the IL. He’s holding a 28% swing-miss rate with a 73% strike rate on the pitch to southpaws, both stellar numbers for a four-seamer. Each of the last 2 seasons, he’s generated less whiffs to lefties. This kick-changeup could be a fun way to balance that out.

Pablo Lopez’s potential “kick-changeup” from last night’s game.

• Guardians Slade Cecconi made some usage tweaks with his new club. The first notable change is a higher release point (5.6’ to 5.9’), which isn’t accompanied by higher/lower extension, suggesting something could be different with his trunk into release rather than a wholesale mechanics shift. He sat 95.4 mph compared to 94.2 last season on his four-seamer. We’ll see if it holds or falls back after his season debut. At Triple-A, he threw a new sinker to righties and a true cutter shape to lefties. We only saw one sinker and no cutters in yesterday’s outing. The largest approach tweak compared to 2024 was a cut in four-seam usage to lefties, going from 56% to 35%. Yesterday was his lowest four-seam usage to lefties in a game in his career (min 30 pitches thrown to lefites). 👍

  • We also saw a small uptick in his slider usage to righties, throwing it 50% before two strikes compared to 43% last year. I’m intrigued by the idea of a sinker and cutter, but we may need to wait to see them consistently. I wonder whether there was a cue change here in his delivery to lift his release height and pick up the tick of velocity. Even if it falls back to ~94, the four-seam usage cut alone might be enough to project him ahead of his 4.30 ERA, which is mostly based on last year’s numbers.

  • I wrote about Cecconi this offseason and theorized the Guardians would play with the changeup and curveball. Curveball looks the same, and his changeup has 400 fewer rpms and more depth at higher velocity, but the grip looks the same. Perhaps there’s a cue or subtle orientation change I’m missing?

• Braves Grant Holmes stopped using so many fastballs to right-handed hitters in two-strike counts. I wrote about this in early May, completely perplexed why he was ripping so four-seamers when he was ahead to righties and his slider was a superior pitch. In his 3 starts since that post, his two-strike four-seam usage has fallen from 43% to 19%. Success! His swinging-strike rate has risen from 12% to 19% in two-strike counts against righties. 😀

• Royals Noah Cameron feels mostly like a mirage. You can see that through the 0.71 ERA next to his 4.37 FIP, but not much of what he does from a shape standpoint stands out. The perplexing thing to me is that his stuff backed up from Triple-A last season. He’s down about 1 mph, and he appears to be cutting the ball more, which has clipped off 2-3” vertical break from his four-seamer. His cutter shape is probably the most appealing thing in his mix—87 mph, 5” vertical break with 5” sweep to righties. He mixes it in off his heavy inner-third four-seam usage to righties, succeeding likely because of the interaction of the two pitches rather than the cutter’s raw traits. 🤷‍♂️

  • Cameron appears to have a slightly more down-action version of the cutter that he throws to lefties. I’ll be more open to optimism if the four-seam shape looks like it did at Triple-A last year (92.5 mph, 16.4” vertical break with 4” arm-side).