Shane Drohan's Changing Changeup and the Challenge of Staying Locked In

It's nothing personal. Shane Drohan appreciates the time and believes it wasn't wasted. If the kick-change had worked for him, it might have made a huge and delightful difference for him. Sometimes, that pitch unlocks a lot of good things: more swing-and-miss, more deception throughout the rest of the arsenal, and greater confidence in filling up the zone without running into barrels. The problem is: it didn't work for him.

"Yeah, I tried out the kick-change this spring, tried to make it work," Drohan said Tuesday in Milwaukee, between starts. (He'll go again next on Friday, against the Rockies.) "And I really felt like I found a feel for it, in a couple of my starts at Triple-A. But it just wasn't working; I couldn't quite lock it in and make it fit with the rest of my stuff."

Instead, Drohan has gone back to the straight change he threw for most of his professional career, including last season in the Boston system.

"I feel like that was a really good pitch for me," he explained. "It was worth a shot, but I ultimately decided to just go back to what had worked and feel more comfortable commanding the whole arsenal."

Drohan was called up for his big-league debut on April 8, as an emergency starter. That appearance started with promise, but it went off the rails. After that, he spent the better part of two months in a relief role. When he returned to the starting rotation at the beginning of June, he did so having already abandoned the pure kick-change, but with a modified split-change he was trying in its stead. That pitch never felt comfortable either, though, and working through the opposing lineup multiple times meant he needed a changeup he could trust. On June 13, the straight change came back into his mix, and it's stayed there ever since.

It's easiest to see this by mapping the average movement of his pitches in both dimensions by start. Here, I've placed a box around the cluster into which the straight change he's settled on fits. It's not the version of a cambio on which he produces the most depth, and it can't move as much horizontally as either of the other versions he's tried out. either. It has one key advantage, though: he knows where it's going.

Though he hasn't gone full superstar, Drohan has been a remakrable success story for the Brewers this year. Since getting the straight change back online, he's made seven starts, totaling 38 1/3 innings. In that time, he owns a 3.29 ERA and has struck out nearly a quarter of opponents. The changeup doesn't have to miss bats; it just has to make hitters respect that quadrant of the zone. Once they do, he's more effective everywhere else, to boot.

Over his first All-Star break as a big-leaguer, Drohan did something unusual: nothing. Noted in the spring for his fierce belief in the importance of getting away from the game mentally, he made sure not to get away from it physically last week. 

"I stayed right here [in Milwaulee]," he said. "I didn't want to go home and have those couple of days, and then have to mentally overcome the idea of, 'Ah, it's time to go again,' so I just stayed here, relaxed a little, but I also tried to get moving, threw a little, stayed active, too. It was important to me not to have that letdown; to stay engaged."

Drohan is older and smarter than the average rookie, but that still seems like a surprising bit of maturity and self-knowledge. In that way, it's similar to his experimentation with the changeups, and the abandonment thereof. He knows what will make him most likely to succeed, and he's disciplined enough to pass up the only vacation offered to players over the seven-month baseball season in the name of maximizing those chances. He's good at keeping perspective and seeing life beyond the game. He's also open to change. Make no mistake, though: Drohan intends to be a vital cog for the Brewers all year, and beyond.