Logan Henderson's Search for the Right Breaking Ball Has Led Him to a New, Old Pitch

Among the young pitchers vying for a rotation spot in Brewers camp, Logan Henderson may have the most impressive big-league résumé so far—except, it's one of those CVs that fits on an index card. In five starts last season, the 23-year-old posted a sparkling 1.78 ERA, 3.20 SIERA, and 33.3% strikeout rate.

Henderson induced whiffs on 27.6% of swings while working almost exclusively with his signature fastball and changeup pairing, both of which have deceptive movement from his low arm slot. The two offerings comprised 89% of his pitches thrown. Still, questions remained about the rest of his arsenal.

As an extreme pronation-biased pitcher (meaning his wrist naturally turns inward before he releases the baseball, leading his thumb to point downward and his palm to face outward), Henderson excels at throwing pitches with arm-side run but has struggled to make the ball break the other way. Even though his fastball and changeup have excellent separation, he knows he'll need that different look to stick as a big-league starter.

"I had the success with the four-seam and changeup last year and felt if I was going to get burned, I was going to get burned on one of my best two pitches," Henderson said. "I still feel that way, but at the same time, the book is out on me, and I know that I need the third and fourth pitch."

Last season, Henderson threw a cutter and a short bullet slider as those third and fourth pitches. Public stuff models liked the slider more because of its depth, and Henderson felt it was in a decent spot by season's end, but he always felt more comfortable with the cutter, which had more consistent glove-side movement. The slider, meanwhile, often backed up.

All along, Henderson thought of reviving the curveball he threw in college as a pitch with true glove-side break. That thought grew as he watched Los Angeles Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto slice through the Brewers' lineup in last year's NLCS with his secondary pitches.

"I don't quite have the stuff that he has, but similar four-seams, low slot," Henderson said. "His curveball is incredible, and it's hard not to go, 'What if I had a curveball? What if I started throwing that again?'"

Pitching coach Chris Hook told Henderson during the series that the pitch could work nicely with his existing arsenal, so he reintroduced it over the offseason. When he threw his first session of live at-bats on Wednesday, Henderson threw curveballs instead of sliders.

"I wouldn't say that the slider's completely gone, but the aim is more towards throwing the curveball right now, and I think that fits my arsenal a little bit better than the slider did," he said.

Henderson's slot gives the pitch a slurve-like shape, similar to the breaking ball Chad Patrick added during the second half of last season. Most importantly, he's spinning it in a way that creates true glove-side break.

"I wouldn't say it's a true 12-6—maybe you've got a little bit of slurve to it—but I would say it's pretty much a true curveball," he said. "I've got a low three-quarter arm slot, and it's about what you'd expect from that arm slot. It turns left more than the slider did, for sure."

Henderson has yet to dive into the movement metrics, but he feels the pitch doesn't need any tweaks to its shape. The next step is getting more comfortable locating and sequencing it in competition.

"The movement's there, for sure," he said. "It's about execution now, and being able to throw it in spots I want to, when I want to. It's definitely a work in progress, but I showed it a couple of times in lives today, and it was okay. But I really am pleased with the progress on it so far. I think it's gonna help my arsenal a lot."

There was nothing fluky about the swings and misses Henderson's best two pitches generated last year. If he now has a legitimate breaking ball to support them, he could leapfrog some of his teammates in a wide-open rotation battle.