[新聞] Santana’s Changeup: Hitters Never See It Coming

[xiemark (aisinjuro)]

March 3, 2008
Santana’s Changeup: Hitters Never See It Coming
By JACK CURRY

Johan Santana carried a baseball with him every day, for hours at a time,
trying to become more comfortable with the feel of his fingers against the
seams. He would scoop up a ball as a minor leaguer with the Minnesota Twins
and immediately move his fingers across the four seams, the same way he held
his fastball and his evolving changeup.

For Santana, clutching the ball was his way of making it feel like an
extension of his left hand. To develop his changeup and have the confidence to
throw a pitch that depends so much on touch, he realized that he first needed
to strengthen his relationship with the baseball.

So when Santana was not pitching off a mound or long-tossing across the
outfield, he marched around with one, all the while pursuing a grip that would
make the changeup his lifelong friend. Santana speaks about a baseball as if
he were discussing a person.

“A baseball is my partner,” he said. “I have to keep it with me at all
times. We have 162 games a year, plus spring training. You spend more than
half the year with a baseball in your hand. You can’t forget that.”

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. Now Santana, a
two-time Cy Young award winner, is doing it with a changeup that makes batters
bend and buckle.

“The thing that makes his changeup so tough is how he controls it,” Yankees
first baseman Jason Giambi said. “He doesn’t bounce it. It just comes to the
plate like a fastball and falls off.”

Mets second baseman Luis Castillo, who was Santana’s teammate with the Twins,
added: “It’s the best changeup in the game. It’s a nasty pitch.”

Santana’s changeup would not be as vicious if he did not complement it with a
solid fastball. Rick Peterson, the Mets’ pitching coach, described the
fastball-changeup combination as “probably the most devastating” in the
major leagues, especially when a pitcher consistently throws fastballs for
strikes.

Santana does that by dominating the inside corner with his fastball, although
there are minor concerns about how a loss in velocity contributed to a slump
late last season.

Whether Santana fires a fastball that zooms in at 90 to 94 miles an hour or
flips a changeup that lumbers in at 77 to 80, he does everything exactly the
same. He uses the same delivery, the same release point and the same exertion.
Then he does it again and again. That repetitiveness helps camouflage which of
the drastically different pitches he is throwing.

“You make them guess,” Santana said. “That’s the whole point. You want to
keep them off balance.”

As Santana spoke about his changeup last week in Port St. Lucie, Fla., he
reached into a teammate’s locker to find a ball to illustrate his points.
After all, he needed his partner.

When Santana tosses the changeup, his thumb is on the right side of the ball
and is the only finger that does not touch a seam. Santana’s index finger is
across the inside seams, his middle and ring fingers are along the top seams
(with the knuckles touching the seams) and his pinkie is on the seams along
the left side of the ball (with the knuckle also touching the seams). Santana
uses a similar grip for his four-seam fastball.

By using the same type of grip and throwing his fastball and changeup from the
same release point, the pitches leave his hand resembling twins. Giambi said
some pitchers “choke” the ball (grip it more tightly) when uncorking a
changeup, so it is easy to detect what they are throwing. But Santana’s
fastball and changeup spin out of his hand the same way, offering no hints
about their identity.

Peterson said: “When you talk to hitters and hitting coaches, the No. 1
factor for being a productive hitter in the major leagues is pitch
recognition. If your fastball is at 92 to 95 miles per hour and it has the
same spin as your changeup, which is at 80, there’s no recognition. We’ve
hid that. We’ve disguised that.”

Santana works exhaustively to make his fastball look like a changeup and vice
versa.

“He’s as good as anyone in the game at doing that,” Yankees shortstop Derek
Jeter said. “A lot of pitchers slow their motion down on a changeup. If you
watch it, you can see it. But he doesn’t do that.”

Santana playfully refers to his changeup as a butterfly. Jeter said some
hitters, but not him, thought it was best simply to wait for that soft pitch.
How difficult could it be to hit an 80-m.p.h. changeup?

Joe Girardi, the Yankees’ first-year manager, said great hitters could try to
wait for Santana’s changeup but added that they had to be “great hitters who
don’t mind being embarrassed.” Giambi said it was useless to sit on Santana
’s changeup.

“You can’t guess with him,” Giambi said. “He’s too smart. He’ll see
that. Then he’ll throw three fastballs down the middle.”

Peterson scoffed at the notion that hitters could guess changeup against
Santana, saying the best strategy was to look for a fastball.

“If your delivery for the changeup is identical to what it is on the fastball
and the spin is identical, you can sit on it all day long, but you don’t see
it,” Peterson said. “It’s invisible.”

It is also multidimensional. David Cone, who won 194 games for teams that
included the Yankees and the Mets, was renowned for his creativity while
delivering pitches from an array of arm angles. Cone raved about how Santana
’s changeup was actually three pitches because “it goes down, in and out.”
By adjusting his arm angle, Santana can make the changeup dive down. He can
also move it inside on right-handed hitters or move it away from them.

“It’s such a weapon because it’s not one pitch,” Cone said.

Santana fiddled with a changeup before 2002, but that was when the pitch
blossomed. After Minnesota sent Santana to Class AAA Edmonton to convert him
from a reliever to a starter, Bobby Cuellar, the pitching coach there,
preached about the significance of trusting his changeup in any situation.

During bullpen sessions, Cuellar would tell Santana to imagine the count was
2-0 or 3-0 and would instruct him to throw a changeup. During games, Cuellar
sometimes had Santana toss seven straight changeups. Although Santana said it
took months to be that bold, Cuellar said he saw “a little glow in Johan’s
eye” as the pitch developed. By July 2003, Santana was in the Twins’
rotation. By 2004, he was a 20-game winner.

The Mets’ Pedro Martínez, another aficionado of the changeup, said, “When
people are dead red looking for a fastball in the mid-90s and they have to
blink when they see this changeup at 76 miles per hour, that’s abuse.”

There will be times when hitters guess right, and times when Santana is
mortal. While Santana’s changeup causes futile swings, he also surrendered 33
homers, an American League high, in 2007. But wherever Santana goes with the
Mets, the grip will be the same. His partner will be with him.

“It’s always there, man,” said Santana, a baseball ensconced in his hand.
“It’s always there.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/sports/baseball/03santana.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=baseball

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◆ From: 211.23.177.130
推 NIKE74731:所以變速球的重點就是練到跟直球一模一樣 嗯 我懂了XD
推 invigorator:變化球的出手本來就必須跟直球一樣
推 ashidaka:但是台灣的球評都說重點在速差耶...XD
推 Jimmy74:速差建立在  姿勢很接近  甚至一樣呀..姿勢不同大家都知道
→ Jimmy74:這球不是直球XD
→ eelce:什麼球種姿勢都要一樣吧 不然打者看了就知道
推 A1pha:蝦式魔球！！！
推 seeyou1002:只要Santana手上有球，誰都殺不了他
推 Kinra:身為一個投手，身上有顆球是很合理的
推 TsukimiyaAyu:降球速，練控球。
推 newseastar:給我三球 攻下打者
推 mjfang:登板搶三K 這是規矩!!
推 lovejeely:三球？！
→ lovejeely:一球！一球攻下打者！
推 griffonshen:山大王是對的...
推 krara:投名狀！
推 spawn:開個變速球給他 讓他尷尬的抓不到timing揮空三振
推 blueflier:投球狀!
推 Pujols5:Sandy Koufax的速球和變化球姿勢就不一樣阿
推 jayin07:你們山字營姓趙啊！！？
推 sauming:直球跟變速球姿勢最好完全相同  其他變化球愈像愈好
推 sylviehsiang:球不厭詐 這是戰爭!!!
推 Hans14:A baseball is my partner
→ Herlin:對,所以Koufax不是靠速差的投手,他自己就覺得速差沒用XD
→ Herlin:他靠速度和movement, 他不在意打者知道他丟什麼球
推 rayven:降球速練控球這蠢話害人不淺
推 mocblp:人無信就是畜生!!