When Paul Blackburn faces the Athletics organization he spent eight seasons with on Tuesday night, he won’t be quite the Paul Blackburn Oakland knew.
Since being acquired from the New York Mets at the trade deadline, Blackburn has changed his pitch mix to emphasize his cutter and changeup at the expense of his four-seam fastball and curveball. The Mets didn’t explicitly tell him this, but they built it into the game plan for Blackburn’s starts against the Angels and Rockies. In those games, he had a 1.50 ERA over 12 innings with 12 strikeouts and four walks.
“I think our team has highlighted how good his cutter and his changeup are,” said pitching coach Jeremy Hefner, “and we should lean on those points when discussing the lineup, especially against left-handers.”
Check out Blackburn’s pitching in Oakland compared to New York.
— Stats courtesy of Brooks Baseball
“I know that analytically my cutter is one of my better pitches, if not my best,” Blackburn said. “I just take that and run with it. I really use my best pitch as much as possible.”
That was one of the simple but big changes in pitch usage over the last decade. Instead of throwing a subpar fastball more than 50 percent of the time, you can throw a curveball more often than any other pitch like Rich Hill does, or use a cutter almost all the time like Corbin Burnes does.
“That’s the way the game has changed the most,” Hefner said. “It used to be that you had to establish your fastball. I still think you have to read the game and read the hitter. But what’s the most missable or weakest contact in a leverage situation? If you commit to those throws, you’re probably going to have success because they were good for a reason.”
“There were moments earlier this year when I got hit on some fastballs,” Blackburn said, “and afterwards I thought, ‘What am I doing? I’m throwing my fourth or fifth best pitch?'”
The cutter is actually Blackburn’s best throw, largely due to the ways he can manipulate it in different ways. Over the last two seasons, he’s figured out how to throw the ball hard to left-handers to make weak contact and to their back foot to smack the ball and make it miss.
“I feel like I can make this throw different,” he said. “It’s the exact same grip, but to the hitter, it’s just two different throws.”
You can get a sense of the difference Blackburn is talking about when he takes a swing in his last start against Colorado. Here are consecutive throws – consecutive cutters, mind you – to Ryan McMahon. The first ball lands in McMahon’s hands.
The second is on his back left foot.
“If you can attack him early with more of that cutter shape, they’ll see the same spin and expect the same action,” Blackburn said. “Now he’s not cutting, he’s sliding.”
Blackburn does something similar with his changeup. Against left-handers, he tries to throw the ball more on the arm side away from the batsmen, while against right-handers, he wants to drop it more like a splitter. In this case, he moves his middle finger just a little to achieve the desired movement.
Contrary to what one might think, Blackburn feel that their greater use of two pitches has helped them get further into the game.
“One thing I noticed is that the amount of cutters we threw inside to left-handers really opened up the outside position later in the game by the second or third at-bat,” he said.
Blackburn isn’t the only Met changing up his mix. Jose Quintana has relied heavily on his curveball in recent weeks. Sean Manaea has been more of a two-pitch pitcher lately, playing his slow sweeper with his hard fastball. When a pitcher changes his repertoire, it’s only a matter of time before opposing teams try to adjust.
“They may know it, but can they adapt?” Hefner asked. “If we put it where we want, I don’t think we’ll have to change much.”
For Blackburn, the cat-and-mouse game will be particularly strange on Tuesday when they face the Green-Goldens.
“It’s going to be a lot,” he said. “It’s going to be weird. Obviously, I know everyone on this team and have a great relationship with the guys. My first start at Citi Field, my first start against my old team – it’s going to be a lot of fun.”
(Photo by Paul Blackburn: Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
