On his last weekend in Chicago before the All-Star break, Shane Smith was tying together travel arrangements to Atlanta for himself, his family, his girlfriend. But to get him to talk about pitching in the game itself was a bit like asking him about his plans for going out before his homework is done.
Arresting a streak of four-straight clunker starts (15.1 IP, 21 ER, 10 BB, 12 K) heading into the All-Star break was the task at hand. Even after an abbreviated three-inning outing on Friday afternoon, which itself was marred by back-to-back solo homers that distracted from his most dominant fastball in weeks (five strikeouts), Smith spoke like a weight had been lifted.
"Felt like it was probably the best step in the right direction so far," Smith said. "Facing an eight-out-of-nine-lefty lineup, throwing the changeup for strikes early on. Maybe one too many curveballs that they were sitting on for the homer, but I'll live with that."
Even living in an age where there is more video available of minor league pitchers than ever before, and no one should truly be able to sneak up on MLB hitters, there's still a visible window between an emerging pitcher being effective in a new manner, and opposing teams crafting capable countermeasures. Smith's seemingly simple mention of throwing his changeup for a strike is a nod to the way he's witnessed opposing lineups trying to slam that window shut.
The thing about Smith's profile-flipping, one-seam, seam-effects changeup that he mostly taught himself over the offseason is that it's too good. In a sense, at least. At 90 mph with slightly less than an inch of inverted vertical break, Smith's changeup dives toward the Earth with near-fastball velocity and chase pitch movement such that tagging it as a sinker is a common Statcast error.
A Statcast error which spiritually still feels accurate, because like the best sinkers, Smith's changeup cannot be lifted. Despite having the highest average exit velocity (91.9 mph) of any of his pitches, it has the lowest opposing slugging percentage (.232) and is the only piece of Smith's arsenal that has not been hit for a home run all year. Part of the pitch shrinking to ~15 percent usage over Smith's last five starts is opposing hitters seeing no upside in swinging at it -- or any area where it appears in -- ever, especially if he's not going to throw it for strikes.
"A lot of the time, a lefty, if they see anything down or down and a way, they just take it," Smith said. "Because if it's a fastball, OK. But if it's a slider or a changeup, dead-on you're going to get a fastball later in the at-bat. I don't know if that's true, but that's just what I've seen and felt. I just don't get the swings and misses down and away to changeups in non two-strike counts. So I definitely feel the adjustments being made and it's something that I'll work with [Ethan] Katz and the catchers to maybe not be unpredictable, but we've got to switch up how we're going to get to the changeup down and away. We just have to set it up a little bit differently."
That could mean more low heaters to set up Smith's changeup, but he also clearly wants to establish that hitters will see changeups in the strike zone regularly enough that they must account for it. To that end, Smith thinks the other part of the equation is simply commanding it better. And there's meat on the bone there because it turns out a one-seam, seam-effects changeup is sort of complicated.
"I think a lot of the changeups recently have been pull-yanks that have been uncompetitive," Smith said. "I'm playing around with pressures with the fingers because a lot of it is so grip-oriented. You might feel like the feel out front is good, but you're still not doing everything right. So I'm playing around with where my pinky is located, the different pressures between my middle finger and my ring finger because I'm not finishing it like a traditional changeup [Ed note: Smith doesn't pronate his wrist].
"So if I have the wrong pressure compared to my ring and my middle [fingers], when I come across it, it can kind of take it [glove side] instead of setting it up to catch the wind. You take away the seam effect if you're yanking it with the wrong finger. That's what I've learned. I'm still playing around with it, still trying to get to the feel I had in the winter and spring training when I was throwing it for strikes and it had good action. I think I'm getting back on that track now, but it's a new pitch and it's doing a lot of new things. You tinker with one thing, and one thing kind of takes a step back. Tinker with another, another takes a step up. Still trying to learn all that."
Only true diehards will read this and notice parallels to Jonathan Cannon's labors in last year's second half, when his breakout was followed by sputtering inconsistency as he tried to grapple with how delicate of a balance his new seam-effects arsenal required. A year later, Cannon's changeup is obviously his most reliable pitch and for the first time in probably his life, he's talking about refining his arsenal rather than expanding it.
For the same reasons that Smith's journey from Rule 5 pick to the All-Star Game is incredible, it's probably unwise to expect him to follow any other pitcher's trajectory too closely. He's also been working on a new slider grip --"Instead of going with the horseshoe, kind of went against it and I felt like I just get on the side of the ball rather than trying to flip it at the end" -- for a pitch that has become more cutter-like in shape and velocity at times, and taken even more of a backseat in Smith's arsenal than the changeup. So this process is a bit more complicated than just flipping the circuit breaker labeled "changeup command" and calling it a day.
But if part of the marvel of Smith's emergence is that he adapted the changeup the White Sox wanted to teach him before Brian Bannister could even work with him one-on-one, it's not a total loss to find out that his process was simply inverted. Sure, White Sox fans have still had to watch him try to find the balance on a tricky secondary while on the job. Yet as he enters a second half that's simultaneously crucial, which also could include more three-inning teases, everyone has already seen the version of Shane Smith that's worth waiting on and working toward.
