See? I didn’t even trick you with some bogus stat like “pitcher xFIP in the 6th inning on Tuesdays during 100% totality.” The statistic listed in this leaderboard from baseballsavant.com is average exit velocity, and it’s the pitcher counterpart to the number we often see paired with Giancarlo Stanton’s monster home runs.

I don’t think I need to explain exit velocity much more, but this means that, on average, Rafael Montero allows batted balls hit softer than Clayton Kershaw does. Even though Montero has been better as of late with a 3.22/3.56/4.98 ERA/FIP/xFIP over the last month, this still comes as a huge surprise. Limiting hard contact sure feels like a valuable skill, but is it? Let’s take a look.

To start, I ran a simple correlation between exit velocity and ERA in 2017. It’s not groundbreaking stuff, but it’s a necessary stepping stone in the process. Here’s the result:

So there’s certainly some relationship, but it’s far from conclusive. It’s clear here that Montero is a significant outlier, which invites further exploration. On baseball savant.com, there’s a few more exit velocity-related statistics to play around with. Feel free to check them out for yourself here. Using these other metrics, I did a quick check to see if any of them are better estimators of ERA than just exit velocity. Below are the r-squared values for the other stats:

While average exit velocity is good, it seems like this “barrels” statistic might be on to something even better. Barrels are defined by MLB.com as balls struck at an exit velocity greater than 98 MPH, and having a launch angle roughly between 26-30 degrees. There’s a bit more nitty-gritty to it, which you can check out here, but that’s the general idea. Let’s see where Montero falls on this graph.

While he doesn’t quite lead the league in this metric, he’s still well above the average. That’s promising for Montero, but here’s another thought: maybe metrics like exit velocity and barrels, similarly to BABIP, are mostly related to luck and aren’t particularly indicative of any skill.

Despite Clayton Kershaw residing towards the top of the original leaderboard, there were some curious names, after all. To solve the question, I looked at pitcher exit velocity for 2016 and 2017 to see if it was a repeatable skill.

We keep being teased with significant, but not substantial relationships. An r-squared of 0.24 is nothing to scoff at, but there’s also a lot of room for error here. Usually, I’d hang my head and declare that we can’t possibly know if Rafael Montero will continue to limit hard contact. However, we do have a bit data on Montero dating back to 2015, so let’s examine his past exit velocity performances.

Even when Montero has been at his absolute worst (2015 and 2016), he’s always been at least above-average in exit velocity. Is that an encouraging sign? Probably not. If this is the 99th percentile version of Montero that we’re seeing these days, that’s not great. If this happens to be a repeatable skill that can be replicated along with meaningful improvements in other areas (read: control), then there may be hope for Montero. Until then, we’ll take pleasure in knowing that Clayton Kershaw can’t hold a torch to Rafael Montero when it comes to average exit velocity.

 Photo credit: Gregory Fisher – USA Today Sports

1. Tie game
2. Bases loaded
3. Batter: Aaron Judge

Less than ideal, don’t you say? Judge is an MVP candidate this season who’s become known for hitting towering home runs into the third deck of MLB parks. Paul Sewald, on the other hand, has proven himself to be a perfectly capable member of the Mets bullpen over his first 50 innings in the majors. Despite that, it wasn’t exactly a fair fight.

Sewald knows this, and told me during a previous homestand how he relies heavily on scouting reports to develop a game plan against opponents like Judge. “I feel like my fastball isn’t 98-100 mph where I can just say ‘here it comes,’ so I have to have a set game plan. I’ve always had that mentality where if I know the hitters’ weaknesses, I can try to attack it,” he said.

After hearing that tidbit from Sewald, I thought it’d be a fun exercise to follow along through a few of his at-bats masquerading as a scout/pitching coach/baseball operations intern/Paul Sewald himself. We’ll basically gather our own scouting report, and see if Sewald connects the dots on the mound as we’d expect him to.

Let’s start with that Judge at-bat. All season, pundits have looked at this 6′ 7″ specimen and declared that there must be a hole in that enormous swing of his. And all season, Aaron Judge has continued to crush bombs with an apparently hole-free swing. The key word here would be apparently. Take a look at this chart from BrooksBaseball depicting Judge’s whiffs by location.

This chart confirms that it’s actually not so challenging to get a pitch past Judge. Still, though, there is one area where Judge appears to struggle more than others: in that top-right section of the strike zone (up and away from a right-handed batter), where Judge whiffs on almost 25% of pitches. Now, we’ll see the pitch chart for the Sewald v. Judge at-bat followed by a pitch-by-pitch video sequence of the showdown.

Well that was a pretty clear pattern if I’ve ever seen one. Sewald lived on the outside edge, quickly jumping out to an 0-2 count before wasting a slider well off the plate. Then, he challenged Judge with two consecutive pitches in his “cold” zone before jamming him inside to get the pop up. You might notice, though, that Rene Rivera actually set up again on the outside corner, but Sewald missed his spot, luckily missing far enough inside to generate the weak contact.

Next, Sewald goes up against a slightly less formidable opponent in Odubel Herrera. The bat-flipping Phillies center fielder is a different type of hitter than Judge, so he’ll require an entirely new game plan.  Herrera isn’t known to be the most disciplined hitter, so let’s start with a look at his plate discipline numbers.

Sure enough, Herrera’s been doing a lot of swinging this season. His O-Swing% is 10th highest in the MLB among qualified hitters, and pitchers have begun to take notice. Herrera also sees the 19th fewest strikes in the league with a 43.7 Zone%. That’s a pretty clear scouting report, so let’s see how Sewald attacked (or maybe didn’t attack) Herrera in their matchup.

Of the eight pitches that Herrera saw in that at-bat, only two were strikes. Even those two were borderline pitches just on the corner! It was clear that Sewald wasn’t going to challenge him in the strike zone, but that didn’t stop Herrera from flailing hopelessly at a tailing fastball that was 1.39 feet off the plate for strike three. All in all, a great job of executing here by Sewald to tease Herrera with a few pitches close to the zone before going for the punch out.

Moving on, we’ll see Sewald face Keon Broxton now. Personally, I was able to take one look at Broxton in the batter’s box and know exactly just what his weakness would be. Go ahead and scroll down to the video thumbnail below to see if you can figure it out. I’ll wait!

Look at how far off the plate this guy stands! Maybe it’s the SNY camera angle or something, but I can’t fathom a way for him to cover a pitch on the outside part of the plate.  Enough with the assumptions, though. Here are Keon Broxton’s wOBA splits looking only at inside and outside pitches.

For comparison’s sake, that .415 wOBA on inside pitches is practically equal to Giancarlo Stanton’s full season mark, while the .193 wOBA on outside pitches is almost identical to Jon Lester’s overall performance this year. Pitch Broxton inside, and you get Giancarlo Stanton. Stay away, and you get Jon Lester. What say you, Sewald?

Excellent choice. For most of the at-bat, the catcher was content to sit himself right on the outside part of the plate, and let Sewald hit the spot with his fastball. Apparently, Broxton was just as content to watch those fastballs cross the plate en route to an 0-2 hole. After trying to get Broxton to chase twice (which he also has been known to do), Sewald momentarily relented into throwing a 2-2 hanging slider inside. Broxton’s eyes lit up, but all he could do was foul it off.

Lesson learned; Sewald blew Broxton away with fastball perfectly spotted up and away. Without a radar gun, Broxton’s feeble swing might make you think that Sewald offers a fastball in the upper-90s. The truth, though? That fastball registered at just 90 mph.

That’s what’s so neat about scouting reports. This seemingly endless supply of data is just like having all of the answers to the test before you take it! In Sewald’s case, his 90 mph fastball is the equivalent of not studying, and getting Aaron Judge to pop up is like getting an A on the test anyway.

That’s not to take anything away from Sewald, but it’s been fascinating to see how the rookie middle reliever leverages the information available to succeed in the majors despite not having eye-popping “stuff.”

Photo credit: Isaiah J. Downing – USA Today Sports

Blevins has given up 7 runs in his past 13 appearances. He only allowed 3 in his first 30.

— Steve Gelbs (@SteveGelbs) July 4, 2017

Now, it’s not as though Blevins has completely turned into a pumpkin, or even that his struggles are entirely his fault. Even after Terry Collins eased up on his heavy workload, Blevins still leads the MLB in appearances with 43 in the Mets’ first 83 games.

Despite that, he’s well on his way to his second consecutive stellar season in Flushing. He’s been the one of the more consistent members of the Mets’ staff, and curiously leads all of those high-octane arms with a strikeout rate of 32.2%.

In fact, Blevins is among the league leaders in strikeout rate without throwing a single pitch above 92 mph all season. Velocity certainly isn’t his calling card, but it also hasn’t kept him from racking up the punch-outs. Consider this graph showing the MLB strikeout leaders along with their average fastball velocity:

No pitcher with a higher strikeout rate than Blevins throws a slower fastball. While he’s not blowing guys away with the heat, he is known to have a nice curveball. Over the last two seasons, he has the fifth most valuable curve among relievers according to FanGraphs’ pitch type values. This season, Blevins is throwing that fantastic curveball almost 50% of the time!

Don’t worry about the 2015 season, where he threw all of five innings before suffering a season-ending broken arm. Fast forward to 2017 again, and Blevins has basically become a two-pitch pitcher. He’s completely ditched his cutter, and rarely goes to the changeup. According to Pitchf/x, Blevins throws the curve more often than any other pitcher in the MLB.

You’d think that narrowing your pitch mix would make Blevins more predictable. Surprisingly enough, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, Blevins is having more success than ever with his breaking ball.

Just to be crystal clear, that’s an ISO of .015 on Jerry Blevins curveballs in 2017.

Last year, Blevins’ had a good curveball. This year, he has a great curveball. Let’s go have some fun and figure out why.

Well, that was easy enough. Blevins somehow managed to add almost three inches of horizontal movement to his curve, and bumped up his vertical movement by almost an inch to boot. According to Pitch Info, Blevins’ curve now has the second best horizontal movement among all relievers.

So last year, Blevins had good horizontal movement. This year, he has great horizontal movement. Let’s (again) go have some fun and figure out why.

You don’t just magically add three inches of break to a pitch overnight, so it makes sense that this was the result of a substantial mechanical change. Using data from when the Mets are on the road, (to remove any calibration bias from Citi Field’s tracking system) Blevins’ vertical release point has decreased by almost a quarter of a foot. Let’s get an idea for what this new release point looks like.

For your reference, the difference between the higher release point and the lower in that animation is exactly 0.25 feet. It’s not as though Blevins has all of a sudden become a submariner, but it’s not an insignificant change either.

Thinking mechanically for a second, it seems reasonable that adjusting the release point will affect the movement of a pitch. Sergio Romo, for example, gets tons of movement with a lower arm slot, so there could certainly be a connection there.

Interestingly enough, there very well might be. Take a look at this graph of all of Blevins’ curveballs at home over the last two years with the vertical release plotted against horizontal movement:

It’s not perfect, but it’s a reasonably strong relationship between the two. So what we’ve learned here is that a lower release point helps Blevins generate more horizontal movement on his curve.

The question remains, however, whether this adjustment was made after a tip from the front office, or just Blevins fiddling around with his release point in bullpens. Either way, this new arm slot has put his curveball on another level, and his outstanding results from early in the season are sure to return soon enough (or so the team hopes).

Photo credit: Noah K. Murray – USA Today Sports

Heading into 2017, the 25-year-old infielder was ticketed yet again for the bench and expected to contribute mostly against left-handed pitching. Injuries to David Wright and Asdrubal Cabrera opened up just enough playing time for Flores to sneak into the lineup, and his ensuing offensive breakout has since relegated Jose Reyes to the bench.

Flores has always been considered a bat-first, glove-second player who can mash lefties. In 2016, he led the league with a .710 SLG against southpaws, but only posted a .353 mark against righties. Come 2017, well, things have changed quite a bit.

Flores is currently slashing a career high .317/.344/.488 with a 0.9 BWARP that sandwiches him in the Mets rankings between Lucas Duda and Yoenis Cespedes. Over the last 30 days, he’s been among the best players in baseball, batting .391 with a 173 wRC+ that puts him ahead of players like Jose Altuve and Anthony Rizzo. Yes, we’re dealing with some small sample sizes here, but it’s also possible we’re dealing with a new Wilmer Flores.

At first glance, many of Flores’ underlying statistics look the same (if not worse) than previously. He’s striking out at an almost identical rate to last year, walking less, and not hitting the ball much harder than before. His average exit velocity in 2016 was 86.3 mph, up to just 87.0 mph in 2017. While he’s distributing the ball to all fields at the same rate as last season, those types of batted balls seem to have changed a bit.

From the looks of it, Flores is trading out line drives and fly balls for popups and grounders. On the surface, it’s not too sound of strategy, considering Flores isn’t quite the fleetest of foot. In case you need a reminder, this is what he looks like laboring around the bases:

It’s not pretty. How, then, is Flores experiencing this much success despite putting the ball on the ground almost 40% of the time? They say a pitcher’s best friend is a ground ball double play, but what’s a hitter’s best friend? In Wilmer Flores’ case, it’s most certainly batting average on balls in play.

Flores’ BABIP has skyrocketed from .268 to .360 this year, which is well above the league average of .296. Essentially, Flores has been hitting ‘em where they ain’t and reaping the benefits of it. The problem is, this isn’t usually a sustainable skill for players of Flores’ ilk. A high BABIP is typically associated with a player getting lucky, and that luck is likely to run out sooner or later. Consider this video as a perfect example of Flores’ luck this season.

That RBI single was struck at 55.5 mph. Yes, just 55.5 mph. It literally could have rolled along an interstate highway without being ticketed for speeding. Wilmer doesn’t care about that, though, because he ended up on first. These types of hits won’t last for Flores, but it’s not as though every ball off his bat barely rolls into the outfield. In fact, he’s making hard contact more than ever.

Despite an almost identical average exit velocity, Flores has bumped up his hard% by 10 percentage points. Knowing what we know about averages, that must mean he’s been hitting hard balls harder and soft balls softer. Tom Tango at MLB.com recently demonstrated that wOBA, a statistic designed to capture a player’s offensive performance per plate appearance, increases dramatically beginning at an exit velocity of 95 mph.

This season, Flores has recorded an exit velocity greater than 95 mph in 37.1% of his batted balls. That’s not great, but it is a substantial improvement over his 28.6% mark in 2016. However, those hard-hit balls haven’t translated into power, but rather batting average. Let’s take a closer look at how that’s transpired, focusing again on batted ball types.

It all comes back to ground balls. Pretty much everything else is in line with MLB averages, but Wilmer’s having much more success hitting the ball on the ground. His .378 average on ground balls is tenth best in the majors, trailing noted speedsters like Jean Segura and Delino DeShields.

Putting it all together, we’ve come to two main conclusions:

1. Flores is hitting more balls really hard
2. Flores is hitting more ground balls

The fly ball revolution is in full bloom these days as home runs reach peak numbers. The main premise behind this revolution is hitting the ball hard in the air. Flores, on the other hand, seems to have gone in the opposite direction.

I’ll take a moment to explain this table because there’s a lot packed in there. First, Flores’ grounders are almost 1.5 mph faster than the average MLB grounder. As a result, his ground ball xwOBA, a statistic based on exit velocity and launch angle designed to represent deserved wOBA, is up at .259. Going back to the premise of really well-struck balls, more than 35% of his grounders are hit harder than 95 mph.

Putting all of that together, we have a much better explanation than “luck” as to why Flores is experiencing so much success with his BABIP. Even after all of that, though, there’s still a major discrepancy between Flores’ .563 batting average on grounders hit at least 95 mph and the .431 MLB average. That, my friends, is luck, and it’s the reason players show up at the park to play the games on the field instead of playing them on paper.

Photo credit: Andy Marlin – USA Today Sports

It was an unexpected step backwards for a player who burst onto the scene in 2015, adding an exclamation point to his rookie season with a two-homer game in the World Series. Much has been made about Conforto’s three-strikeout, 0-for-5 nightmare against Madison Bumgarner in May causing a downward mental spiral. Others point to a nagging wrist injury that was kept quiet by Mets officials, yet required a cortisone shot last June.

Luckily for Mets fans, Conforto’s performance in 2017 has put us in a position to go back and figure out what went wrong last season – because something definitely did go wrong. Despite originally being ticketed for yet another stint in Vegas to kick off the season, Conforto snuck on to the Opening Day roster and hasn’t looked back since.

I won’t pester you with loads of “Michael Conforto is good!” statistics, because those are readily available anywhere you look these days. What I will do, though, before moving on to the “Why was Michael Conforto bad?” statistics is plop his 2017 numbers here just so we can bask in all of his glory:

And to think that without Brandon Nimmo’s tweaked hammy, Conforto might be teammates with Xorge Carillo instead of leading the Mets in literally all major hitting categories. But why? And how? Why is Conforto having a renaissance season for the ages, and how did he claw his way out of Vegas (and Terry Collins’ dog house) for such a triumphant return? Let’s investigate.

Heading into 2017, projection systems were surprisingly optimistic about Conforto’s potential. Despite his dismal 2016, PECOTA projected the outfielder to hit .254/.329/.454 and rack up 1.3 WARP over 323 plate appearances. That performance alone would have represented a substantial improvement from last season, even as the part-time player he was initially intended to be.

First things first: it doesn’t take Bill James to see that Conforto’s 2016 BABIP of .267 indicated some bad luck. He was striking out more, and the balls that he did put in play couldn’t find grass. This year he’s up at .370, which will almost certainly meander down closer to the league average of .294.

So much ink has been spilled this year on the “fly-ball revolution” that you’d almost think the concept of infielders is defunct. At first glance, though, Conforto is not a revolutionary. He’s gone from hitting 45.0% fly balls in 2016 to 39.0% in 2017. Interestingly enough, those batted balls haven’t turned into ground balls, but rather line drives. This season his LD% spiked from 18.8% to 22.9%.

Alas, more line drives must mean that Conforto is hitting the ball harder, right? Exit velocity, the golden standard of Statcast’s newfangled metrics, can tell us that’s not quite the case. Consider the graph below:

On any given pitch, Conforto actually hit the ball harder on average last year compared to this year. That doesn’t do us any good. However, the noticeable difference came when I broke it down into balls hit in the air versus ground balls. Even though we agree Conforto might not be hitting the ball in the air more often, when he does go airborne, it’s being hit harder. Those few extra ticks of velocity might be the difference between a fly-out and a home run, whereas the lost velocity on groundballs would turn seeing-eye singles into groundouts. While Conforto isn’t easing up on the groundballs on purpose, I’m willing to bet he’d take that tradeoff any day.

Another theory on Conforto’s resurgence has been his new approach at the plate. Spectators and broadcasters have lauded his ability to lay off pitches out of the zone while punishing strikes. I was personally surprised to see that this hasn’t really been the case.

For those unfamiliar with plate discipline stats, “O” means out of the strike zone, while “Z” stands for in the strike zone. As you can see in the first two columns, the differences in Conforto’s plate discipline are modest at best, and the latter three columns expose an interesting new trend in his swing-and-miss tendencies.

It’s unusual to see a player make less contact but have more success with the contact he does make. In 2017, Conforto’s contact rate of 71.21% is well below the major league average of 77.6%, yet he continues to thrive. Going a little deeper, there seem to be some interesting splits when it comes to his ability (or could it be strategy?) to make contact depending on the count.

It appears Conforto has improved in putting the ball in play when behind in the count, but is actually more likely to whiff at a pitch when ahead in the count. This seems strange. In fact, Conforto whiff% when ahead in the count is fourth highest in baseball, but his overall whiff% is only 46th highest.

Now, I’m not inside Conforto’s head, but the line of thinking likely has something to do with taking a more aggressive swing in those 3-1 or 2-0 counts. Sure enough, Conforto’s SLG when ahead in the count jumped from a pedestrian .726 in 2016 to 1.350 in 2017. On the other hand, those hitter-friendly counts would also lead to a more predictable pitch mix, which should decrease swings-and-misses.

To recap so far, the Michael Conforto secret recipe for success is comprised of

1. Be lucky
2. Swing hard

Now that’s some hard-hitting analysis.

The last piece of evidence might provide something a bit more valuable that our previous findings. A broadcaster’s favorite cliché goes something like this: “When *player name* is at his best, he’s driving balls the other way.” Another day we’ll figure out if this is actually true for the rest of the MLB, but Conforto seems to benefit quite a bit from going with the pitch. In fact, Conforto himself admitted that he may have gotten a little pull-happy last season. This neat animation below shows how his heatmap has transformed since last year.

In 2016, there’s a lot of red and orange on the right side of the infield, and that moves up the middle and to left field in 2017. That hit distribution from 2016 is a major reason why Conforto has faced so many overshifts, but it looks like that may be changing.

This is a pretty drastic change. His 46.7% center distribution leads the majors this season, and there isn’t a shift to counter a hitter who can hit to all fields like Conforto. Teams around the league are noticing this too, and have decreased their shifts against Conforto from 48.6% of plate appearances in 2016 to 41.0% in 2017.

What’s at the root of this transformation? Even though that graph doesn’t show it, Conforto has gone back to taking the ball the other way. Specifically, he’s learned to hit the outside pitch to the opposite field instead of rolling over it. Check out this spray chart animation of Conforto against only outside pitches.

The huge clump of grounders to second is gone, and there’s a considerable number of balls beyond the fence out in left field. How did he make this adjustment? To figure this out, we’re going to have to move outside of the familiar area of statistical analysis.

Full disclosure: I’m not a scout, and was never a particularly successful hitter in my playing days. That being said, we’re going to take a look at some video. First, a wonderful example of Conforto taking an outside pitch to the opposite field for a home run in 2017:

Second, a less wonderful example of Conforto rolling over almost the exact same pitch for a groundout in 2016:

So there you go. One of those outcomes is obviously preferred, and we’re here to figure out how Conforto has managed to turn the less preferred outcomes into the preferred outcome on a regular basis this year. Let’s start with his stance.

This year (on the left) Conforto’s hands sit lower holding his bat more upright than before. You’ll notice that the bat doesn’t even go behind his head at all. This presumably simplifies the bat-to-ball path, with less hand movement leading up to contact.

While there wasn’t a significant change in his stride, there’s a noticeable difference in Conforto’s mechanics as the ball approaches the plate. In 2016, Conforto “cheats” as his hips begin to rotate along with his torso, and you can’t see the number on his back. This year, his upper body remains in almost the same position as in his setup, and you can still see the number on the back.

At contact, the big change comes with Conforto’s hips. His hips remain pivoted towards the ball on the left, allowing him to stay balanced and drive the ball the other way. On the right, his hips are already facing the pitcher, and he’s begun the process of pulling off the ball away, resulting in a weak grounder.

Last, Conforto’s follow through takes on two different shapes from year to year. His hands are pulled completely across his body after the groundout, and he isn’t pushing off on his back leg. After the homer, there’s more of an uppercut followthrough (which isn’t a bad thing anymore!), and it’s clear that there’s a lot of power coming from his back leg.

Conforto is back to having one of the sweetest left-handed swings in baseball, and Keith seems thrilled to remind the SNY audience of that on a nightly basis. Hopefully for Conforto and Mets fans alike, both the adjustments and the results are here to stay.

Photo credit: Noah K. Murray – USA Today Sports

Thor reported to camp proudly proclaiming he’d eaten nothing but “bowls of doom” for the last four months, resulting in an added 17 pounds of muscle with an eye towards throwing even harder. (Yes, harder than his 98.9 mph average fastball from the 2016 season.) As pundits around Port St. Lucie tried their best to fathom Syndergaard throwing harder than he had in seasons past, that talk around camp died down before subtly focusing on the exact opposite.

In Syndergaard’s first start of the spring, he went out and displayed his signature upper-90s velocity throughout two shutout innings against the Astros. Along the way, though, he mixed in more than his usual share of changeups–ones that raised the eyebrows of those familiar with Noah’s usual repertoire, and ones eliciting reactions of “mmmm” from Keith Hernandez in the SNY booth. Let’s take a look and see what all of the fuss was about:

Great! A gorgeous looking changeup to strike out Marwin González in a Grapefruit League game. That’s nice, moving on … oh, what’s that Noah? You have something to say?

“I love throwing it. I think it has the potential to be my best swing-and-miss pitch.”

Syndergaard’s got a soft spot for his changeup, and I’m not quite sure how to feel about this. We all know he can throw gas, offers a 95-mph slider, and a “hook from hell,” but there’s never been much commotion about Thor’s changeup until now. If that changeup is going to be a true swing-and-miss offering, it’s going to have to get the job done with two strikes, so let’s take a look at those sorts of scenarios.

For starters, Thor shied away from his change with two strikes, and that might be the best indication that the pitch isn’t up to par with his other offerings. In two-strike counts, Syndergaard threw a changeup 9.52 percent of the time in 2016, below both his curveball (10.5 percent) and his slider (28.23 percent).

When he did decide to use the changeup as a put-away pitch, the raw metrics were less than encouraging:

 It’s definitely not great. Sure, any pitcher with a 100-mph fastball is going to be able to get away with pretty much anything when he’s up in the count. But that’s the thing: Syndergaard isn’t trying to “get away,” he’s trying to dominate. Those numbers aren’t dominant, and neither are these results:

With this data, I think that we can establish that in 2016, Syndergaard was better off opting for a different off-speed pitch in two-strike counts. It yielded less whiffs, more home runs, a high batting average, slugging percentage, and ISO.

“Just stick to the slider!” we all want to yell in unison.

Not so fast. Maybe Syndergaard knows something we don’t. Maybe he knows he was super unlucky with his changeup last year, and pitchers with similar changeups usually have much more success. What a novel idea! Let’s check that theory.

To do this, we should find some pitchers who throw changeups like Noah does. Only problem is pretty much nobody throws a 90-mph changeup, so we’ll instead use the drop in velocity from a pitcher’s fastball to his changeup. Listed below are four of the most similar changeups to Syndergaard’s.

It’s not an awful list, but it’s also not one you would otherwise expect to find Syndergaard on for any other reason. Guys like Ian Kennedy and Tanner Roark stand out to me, because they’re certainly not hard throwers. For them to succeed to the extent they do, they’re probably doing something right with their off-speed pitches. Let’s see how the changeups of these five guys fared in 2016.

All in all, Syndergaard finds himself in the middle of the pack in pretty much every statistic. Unfortunately for Noah’s changeup crush, this was probably to be expected. Guys with similar changeups getting similar results from those similar changeups is about the least shocking thing the data could show.

Looks like we’re out of luck on that front, too. The last hope for Thor’s change is that he’s got something up his sleeve he doesn’t want to tell us about. Maybe he’s been messing around with a new grip, arm slot, or release point. The mere thought of this had me scrambling to the PITCHf/x database at Brooks Baseball only to be disappointed that there’s no data from Mets spring training. Darn.

To simulate the “shiny new toy” syndrome that Syndergaard might be experiencing, I turned to some pitchers who inexplicably started throwing more two-strike changeups in 2016. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s certainly five more guys who, for some reason, leaned as hard on their changeups as Syndergaard claims he expects to do.

We can pretty much toss these players into two different buckets for “reasons they started throwing their changeup with two strikes more.”

• Bucket #1: “I have a legitimately better changeup!”
• Bucket #2: “Guess I’ll try this … ”

From the looks of it, the only player who clearly falls into bucket #1 would be Hector Santiago. Everyone else’s changeup either looks too similar to their old one, or even looks a bit worse. But hey, maybe it’s a command thing. Maybe all of the bucket #2 players have the same changeup, but spent their offseason learning to command it better. That’s certainly possible, so let’s see if the results lend themselves to that theory:

Let’s play the fun game where we put pitchers in buckets again, shall we?

• Bucket #1: “I threw my changeup more and I was happy with the results”
• Bucket #2: “I threw my changeup more and I was unhappy with the results”

By my count, I have Danny Duffy and Hector Santiago squarely in bucket #1, and everyone else somewhere around bucket #2. Sure looks like Hector Santiago knew what he was doing, doesn’t it?

So, what does this all mean for our guy, Noah Syndergaard? I’m afraid to say we might want to tap him on the shoulder and ask him as politely as we can to please not use his changeup any more than he did last season. That is, of course, unless he somehow learned to throw it slower and with more drop like Hector Santiago did. In that case, sure, give it a shot! Otherwise, stick to what got you here: 95-mph sliders, hooks from hell, and countless bowls of doom.

Photo Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports