I’m not a NY Mets fan, but here’s a really neat feature about their newly acquired superstar pitcher, Johan Santana. <\/p>\n
And he’s a rarity – a pitcher whose strike-out pitch is a changeup.<\/p>\n
Santana\u2019s Changeup: Hitters Never See It Coming – New York Times<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Six years after Santana began meticulously honing his four-seam grip as a starter in Class AAA, he is still doing it. Except now he is doing it as the premier pitcher in baseball and the new ace of the Mets<\/a>. Now Santana, a two-time Cy Young award winner, is doing it with a changeup that makes batters bend and buckle.<\/p>\n \u201cThe thing that makes his changeup so tough is how he controls it,\u201d Yankees<\/a> first baseman Jason Giambi<\/a> said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t bounce it. It just comes to the plate like a fastball and falls off.\u201d <\/p>\n Mets second baseman Luis Castillo, who was Santana\u2019s teammate with the Twins, added: \u201cIt\u2019s the best changeup in the game. It\u2019s a nasty pitch.\u201d<\/p>\n Santana\u2019s changeup would not be as vicious if he did not complement it with a solid fastball. Rick Peterson, the Mets\u2019 pitching coach, described the fastball-changeup combination as \u201cprobably the most devastating\u201d in the major leagues, especially when a pitcher consistently throws fastballs for strikes. …<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m not a NY Mets fan, but here’s a really neat feature about their newly acquired superstar pitcher, Johan Santana. And he’s a rarity – a pitcher whose strike-out pitch is a changeup. Santana\u2019s Changeup: Hitters Never See It Coming – New York Times Six years after Santana began meticulously honing his four-seam grip as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6785,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3948\/revisions\/6785"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n