Javy Baez is coming to Chicago! Thoughts?

Well, if Tanaka's healthy, he's obviously better than Porcello.

Cautious optimism. I am eager to see him swing.

@Jim ... Yeah, he's always risen above the obsession with velocity, but he's throwing even softer now than he ever has. His curveball is one of the slowest around, his fastball tops out around 85 (according to Google it averages 83 this year), and his cutter and changeup are more like 80. Back in his last three or four years with the White Sox, he was throwing his four-seamer up closer to 90 and using it along with his changeup as a bit of a strikeout pitch by drastic change in speed. Power pitchers don't necessarily throw harder, but they have a more apparent change in speed, with a bit of a blow-it-by-you factor and usually a pitch, be it a change or curve, that can get you out in front too. He did that when he turned up the fastball.

Most guys that do that best are speed guys, be it Felix or Chapman or Chris Sale, because when you throw 95 and bring your change down to 87 or 88, it has a much bigger effect to a hitter than going from 90 to 83. In this case, when his fastball started touching 90 and his change stayed stuck at 80, along with that slow curve, the change of speed gave him power as a pitcher. People get that definition wrong all the time but it's not the speed that matters to hitters, the best hitters can all hit the fastest pitches, it's the ability to change speeds. I have a lot more trouble against guys that could drop down from 85 to 68 when I play than I do the guys that top 90 and just throw it over and over and over again.

Buerhle has always been a finesse pitcher at the roots. That's why I don't see him regressing all that much, about as little as a guy his age could. It's not like slowing things down is going to seriously change what he does, as long as he can locate and keep hitters off balance.

Also, regarding the Cubs, they have so many prospects right now that, if they can tap into their potential, they are going to be a really, really good young offensive team soon behind guys like Rizzo and Baez. Theo Epstein for ya.

Point of correction, Felix's change is almost exactly the same speed as his fastball. Its awesomeness is all in the movement.

And RE: Buerhle, he's performing above career levels despite his peripherals being at career levels and his stuff being worse. I'm not saying decline is coming, though it probably will soon, but regression to the mean/his FIP is likely.

Is it really? Is it one of those diving things like his curve does? Those are insane, like a split change or something. Impossible to hit, which fits the bill with Felix...

I don't know ghug, I see a little bit of K-Rod here. He'll have two or three good, revitalized years and then fatigue will kick in, the fundamentals will start to falter, the technique will grow less consistent, and he'll be done.

He has a grip that apparently nobody else uses. It dives like a splitter and tops out in the low nineties. Sexiest pitch in baseball.

I'm just saying that right now Buehrle's over performing, he'll be slightly less productive the rest of the season and it won't be decline. Just regression.

Here's a nice writeup on it with some GIFs.

http://www.foxsports.com/mlb/just-a-bit-outside/story/nine-things-to-know-about-the-best-changeup-in-baseball-felix-hernandez-071814

Has anyone spilled the secret grip... I'd like to try it out.

I don't think it's a secret as much as something nobody has been able to make work, or maybe something he just put a bit of a twist on. I'm not really an expert on pitch grips. Google would probably serve you better.

Lol, maybe I'll drive down the road and ask Lloyd McClendon during the offseason sometime.

Jesus, what the hell is this guy, a god?

4-seam fastball:
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/felix-2012-4fb.gif?w=694

He throws it straight over like a typical four-seamer but he just cuts down so hard that it sinks slightly with a slight tail in on righties. Compared to his other stuff, pretty straight, probably almost looks like it cuts away from righties if you already have a visual on his other pitches.

Royal curve:
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/i68axwspcpsvl.gif?w=694

Basic curveball, tight grip on the middle finger I assume, release out in front and across the body for break. Nothing special, he's just born to throw it. Horizontal break halfway across the plate away from righties, vertical break from upper waist plane to knees.

Slider:
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/ibmcjmhmyfjjhc.gif?w=694

That's literally a curveball that's really fast and carries the seams together. The only difference I can see between it and his curve is that he releases further behind in his motion. To me that makes his curveball his only vulnerable pitch because it's the only one he could give away to a hitter before throwing it, but it clearly doesn't end up that way.

Sinker/screwball/2-seam something or other - lefty:
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/itxgqolwuep22.gif?w=694

That's gotta be a two-seam grip, with his wrist flicking to the right when he throws instead of across his body. Freaking heartstopper.

Sinker/screwball/2-seam something or other - righty:
http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/sinker.gif?w=694

Same as before, just a different location. Starts outside so far that Rajai Davis, a great bunter, thinks he should take it, somehow ends up middle-in.

Over-the-top circle change:
http://giant.gfycat.com/CircularCloseAsp.gif

You were right on, ghug. 90 MPH, knuckling and sinking, looks the exact same as his sinker thingy before with the y-axis 11/5 drop line. Maybe he could do that with a three-finger grip but I can only get that kind of downward movement with a two-finger (middle/ring) split grip. Takes massive hands.

Traditional circle change:
http://giant.gfycat.com/PreciousFlashyDragon.gif

I hope he doesn't run that down and in on a righty and take out his ankles, because there's no way to react to that. Looks the same in every way as his fastball till I would guess 20-30 feet, which is already beyond the point where a batter can recognize a pitch, process it, and adjust his swing. I'd say that as a hitter the only way to hit this is to screw up and miss badly at the pitch you thought you were swinging at.

Split-change:
http://giant.gfycat.com/ImperfectDismalKingbird.gif

This is my favorite pitch to throw but obviously it takes a pitching genius to control it. Index finger on left side over seam, middle finger on right side over seam, ring finger staggered directly underneath middle finger, pinkie off the ball entirely, thrown straight down like a splitter [which is technically a change already] but the off-balanced grip forces tail in on righties if it's thrown hard enough. Coaches don't bother teaching this changeup grip nowadays because you have to first know how to throw a splitter, then know how to throw a changeup, and to combine these two with the kind of movement and of course his trademarked ability control it is unreal. They should upload that shit to pornhub or something, damn...

Seems to me that we're never going to see a guy quite like him again.

I'm pretty sure those are all the same changeup, actually. As far as I know, he only throws the five pitches.

Could be only five signs, but given how well he appears to control his pitches, I doubt it's only five pitches. He would have a slightly different grip, maybe his index finger would be slightly further split on that last one, and he might even throw the first one with three wide gripping fingers. Those gifs don't show enough to say. Regardless, his arm action is almost identical for everything he throws except his curveball, which is the envy of every little leaguer.

As to whether or not he has more than five official pitches, he probably doesn't. Montero/Zunino/Sacre/whoever catches would have an understanding of what their pitcher wants to do, and Felix knows himself better than anyone else. A lot of pitchers with little hitches, kind of like Yu Darvish, will often lay claim to eight or nine pitches when they only throw five or six and just throw them differently in different counts, versus righties and lefties, or whatever. Of course, it's never that simple, it's just an instinctive thing they do. For some, like Darvish, the catchers make the call; for others, like Felix, the pitcher makes the call, and as long as the catcher knows when the ball is going to get to him, he can simply follow it and catch it, similarly to catching a knuckleballer only much easier to read. Look at the sinker thingymajig - same pitch, same grip, same arm motion, but completely different versus righties and lefties. I imagine the change is the same way, where he grips wider and flicks downward harder or puts more tail on it with a tighter grip on one half of the ball depending on the situation.

I'd never believe it if someone said he didn't choose which of those three changes he throws or which of those two sinkers. He's too good at basically everything to just go random.

Oh, I'm sure there are slight variations he does, but given that the change is a pitch he picked up on the fly the year he won the Cy Young, I highly doubt he developed three different pitches. I also spend a lot of time following the Mariners and haven't heard reference to more than one change anywhere, including PitchFX data and interviews with him and others on the change itself.

The split change is absolute filth. It's exactly like mine, only everything is doubly magnified - the vertical break, the tail, and for sure the control, throwing that down and in like that. As for the tailing changeup, you can't make a ball tail like that unless you have some kind of tight grip on the left seam of the baseball, so there's no way that that's a two-fingered changeup, it has to be three. The sinking changeup could be just about anything - split, circle, or simply Felix throwing a sinker. Crazy stuff.

I get what you're saying, that he couldn't have just picked up three pitches just like that, but look at everything else he throws. He already knows how to control vertical drop, he's already got the nastiest tailing two-seamer I've ever seen, and to put those two together isn't terribly difficult if you can throw hard enough. Vertical drop and tailing in on righties are both wrist motions changes in how tightly your fingers wrap around the ball, so it wouldn't have been hard for him to learn a basic changeup and then add on to it as he threw bullpens. Learning how to throw a strike with all those variations is what's amazing.

He probably picked different variations up by accident at that - that's how Mariano picked up his cutter and how Hoffman picked up his changeup. Whatever he did, it's quite remarkable. Those are three distinct techniques, though, so even if they're thrown with the same grip, he throws them intentionally.

Basically what I'm saying in short is that given what Felix already knew how to do, I wouldn't rule anything out.

I think we're just disagreeing on how to classify pitches as separate. I'm sure he varies things, but I'm also pretty sure he just has one main grip that he messes with a little. The gifs you linked are distorted by the camera angles in such a way so as to make the pitches look more different than they. I know from watching him regularly that they're fundamentally the same pitch.

I'm saying that everything he throws besides his curve is basically the same pitch. He just plays around with it, like you say. It's practically magic. The variation is in things the camera can't see, and I can't get a good look at his grips on anything I saw.

Funny how you're usually the guy arguing against the eye test...

The eye test is perfectly valid as a supplemental tool, and you get a bigger sample size watching individual pitches from one pitcher than you do watching at bats or fielding plays from one guy. My line of reasoning is the one I have seen literally everywhere, and, no offense to you, I find it hard to believe that you picked up on something that all of the greatest baseball minds have missed.

Lol, I doubt I have. I'm not that good. My point is that the reason no one can pick up on it is because only Felix actually knows what he's doing and he's not spilling his guts about it to anyone. Whereas you're letting that stand as is, I'm just speculating away. It's what I do.