Ricky Romero

By the time you realize that it's an off-speed pitch, it's not.

It's far too late, and you're swinging at it like it's 99 coming down the middle.

Yeah.

I know.

There were a couple of really good change-ups he threw towards the end of the game.

I'm blanking on who it was against.

Yeah, there were some that were low and away to a lefty that are coming to mind.

But, like, I was reading, and I mentioned this last night on the show, I was reading an article by Jared Greenspan about the changeup in for Cease, and it made me go back and look at his changeups that he was throwing last year because I wanted to get an idea of what that looked like.

Now, granted, very small sample size, but the velocities for those pitches that he threw last year were all over the place.

like anywhere from 77 miles per hour all the way up to I think one came in at 91 so you've got the the change up inconsistency there but a lot of them were missing way up in the zone and to your point if you can just show batters that you can throw it for a strike doesn't even necessarily matter where it is in the zone whether it's top or bottom if you can just show them that it's a strike it's another pitch that they know that they're going to have to deal with but

Yesterday, maybe not as consistently in the zone, but he did get some swings and misses.

And that's the whole point of throwing it, right?

You're just trying to get the hitter's timing off enough to where they can't get to it.

I like that word, platooniness.

Yeah, I really appreciated what he said.

I believe it was last night after the game talking to Arden about just getting back to what he does well.

And what he does well is he has great plate discipline and he's all over pitches that come in the zone.

And so I really appreciated his at-bats from last night because you look at the first at-bat.

Three pitches, three straight strikes.

He doesn't swing in a single one.