Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. Bright copper kettles and warm woolen … wait, sorry. Wrong list of my favorite things.

When you write enough about baseball, you find yourself starting to fall in love with certain things that stand out among the myriad of at-bats and plays in the field that make the game a unique experience for every fan who loves this beautiful game. Bat flips, an outfielder throwing out a runner at third, a walk-off hit to win a big game- these are genuinely a few of my favorite things about baseball. The past year, though, one thing has taken the top spot in my hardball life, and that’s the simple beauty of an elite changeup. Dependent on the right combination of movement, deception, and strategy, it feels like the thinking man’s pitch. When paired correctly with a fastball, it’s the pitching equivalent of the Rope-A-Dope Ali used to take down Foreman. I have never seen hitters look foolish quite like they do when flailing at a good changeup.

The other day, I was looking through a list of the best changeups by pVAL and saw most of the usual suspects, like Luis Castillo, Jacob DeGrom and Hyun-Jin Ryu. One name in particular, though, stuck out to me, and that was John Means. Last year (his rookie season), Means’ changeup was worth 14.1 pVAL, which was the 9th-best changeup of any pitcher in the majors who threw more than 100 IP. Naturally, I thought I had to check it out. Let me tell you; it’s a doozy.

Watch the end of that pitch again. At first, it moves like we expect a changeup to move: Down and away to the glove-side, but at the last second, it curves back arm side. I didn’t even know physics could do that. It’s practically a screwball. Now that I was sufficiently hot and bothered, I had to fully dive into John Means and his 2019 rookie campaign.

By all accounts, Means had a great debut season for the Orioles.

There’s a lot to like there. The hard part is that it’s coming with a 19.0% K rate, a 6.0% BB rate, and a 5.02 SIERA. Looking at that, most people would say his success just isn’t sustainable. I don’t disagree at all with being skeptical whether Means can repeat those numbers in 2020. I’m honestly not here to sell you the idea that Means will be a sleeper stud in 2020. When our esteemed Papa Nick Pollack did his player profile on the Orioles’ starter, he labeled Means a Toby, and as it sits right now, he’s correct. Thing is, Means was a 26-year-old rookie. We’d be hard-pressed to assume he’s anywhere near a final product as a pitcher. It’s not like the template isn’t there either. So far, Means has flashed a four-pitch repertoire consisting of a mediocre fastball, an above-average slider, a godawful curveball and the aforementioned fantastic changeup that got us all started on this journey. The question that remains for Means is if we all accept as given that he isn’t going to develop a 96 mph fastball this offseason, or suddenly have Max Scherzer‘s slider. Is there a blueprint already out there for him to follow that would allow him to take the skill he already has and still break out as a pitcher? The answer is yes, my friends, I do believe that there is. Come. Walk with me.

I want to compare Means to two different pitchers. One is a near-perfect match for his skill set, and the other shows the ultimate path to his eventual career ceiling. The key is that both of these pitchers have two of the best changeups in the game and poor-to-mediocre fastballs. As is required by the unofficial fantasy writer bylaws, I am contractually obligated to reveal my blueprint pitchers in the form of a mystery game!

2019 Player Comparison

In a general sense, we are seeing three different pitchers with below-average K%, similar overall profiles, and pretty high SIERAs. Mystery Player A is changeup-wielding extraordinaire Kyle Hendricks. Mystery Player B? Well, that is none other than ace pitcher Zack Greinke. All three pitchers have very similar arsenals (Hendricks doesn’t throw a slider, but as a changeup-first pitcher with a poor fastball, he feels like the perfect model for Means.) 2019 Greinke represents just how high his ceiling can get if every single variable fell perfectly into place over his career. By putting these players side-by-side, we can perhaps determine what improvements we need to be looking out for early on in the season and throughout spring training to see if we should be jumping on the Means bandwagon in 2020 and beyond. To do this, I want to go through each pitch these guys throw and see how they are similar and what changes need to happen for Means to fulfill his destiny.

Changeup

There’s no sense in starting anywhere but with the golden goose: The changeup.

2019 Changeup Comparison

While they aren’t a perfect match in terms of movement, I have a feeling the horizontal movement is skewed a bit by how Means’ off-speed pitch curves back arm-side at the very end. The key though is that all of them are a changeup with significant horizontal and vertical movement in its flight path. For the record, I also suspect that the high active spin and elevated spin rate are responsible for that late arm-side break. In the long run, a higher spin rate is a good sign for Means’ changeup, as it indicates it should remain hard to hit. Greinke also throws his much faster, and considering his fastball comes in at about 89 mph or so, you have to wonder if that is part of its success. Since they mostly throw it roughly around the same amount of the time, I want to take a look at when and where they each throw their off-speed pitch. Here’s Means’ zone profile for his changeup.

Means threw 776 changeups last year, with 33.5% of them landing down and out of the zone. This is good, exactly what we want him to do, especially when you consider that he got a 38.9% O-Swing with a 68.2% O-Contact with his changeup. Hitters had a .170 xBA with a 0.057 ISO when they made contact with his off-speed pitches out of the zone. These are all great numbers. To add to that, 20.1% of his changeups were located at the bottom of the zone, and 9.8% were in the zone on the hands to right-handed hitters, and 2.7% in on the hands to lefties. These numbers are important because when you can also throw changeups in these spots, it can help blur the line between when the pitch is going to land for a strike or a ball. That’s huge for a changeup’s effectiveness, especially as a strikeout pitch and getting chases out of the zone. That’s 66.1% of his pitches going exactly where we want him to throw his changeup. How did the others fare?

So, Hendricks threw his changeup down and out of the zone 48.1% of the time, with a 46.9% O-Swing and 63.5% O-Contact. When batters made contact with said pitches, they managed a .193 xBA and a 0.049 ISO. Again, that’s pretty darn good. In addition, he threw 25% of his changeups in the bottom of the zone, 11.9% in on the hands of righties, and 7.3% inside to southpaws. We’re talking about 92.3% of his changeups in the best spots to throw them. That’s really, really good. What about Greinke?

Greinke threw 67.9% of his off-speed pitches down and out of the zone. This is combined with a 45% O-Swing and a 60.8% O-Contact, which held hitters to a 0.022 ISO and an unreal .102 xBA. 20% of them were at the bottom of the zone, with less than 1.0% coming inside against righties and 5.7% inside to righties. That’s 94.6% of his changeups in the ideal spots. That’s near-perfect placement.

This points to the first big change Means need to make for his changeup. It’s already a great pitch, but he could take it to the next level if he starts locating it even more often down in the zone and outside the zone. He’s already getting hitters to chase it at a pretty great rate, but once he starts to blur the line between what is a strike and what’s not, the pitch could take an even bigger leap. You can see how Hendricks and Greinke got better results with their changeup. It can’t be a coincidence that they better located their changeups than him.

Last note on the changeup: Means allowed 11 homers on his changeup, compared to seven by Hendricks and three by Greinke.

Check out their location. All but three of them were located in either the middle or up in the zone. Again, this can’t be a coincidence. Let’s say we take away the five home runs that happened up in the zone or the heart of the plate. That would bring his HR/9 down to a much more respectable 1.05. That’s much closer to Hendricks’ and Greinke’s numbers from 2019.

Fastball

Now that we’ve looked at the elite stuff, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. Outside of excellent changeups, the other thing all three of these pitchers have in common is a mediocre-to-bad fastball.