Chris Paddack's Changeup Continues to Leave Hitters Mystified

To watch San Diego’s Chris Paddack throw his changeup is to watch a hitter realize that his world is made of lies. Of course, this is the measure of any good changeup; it is wholly different from the straightforward humiliation of being overpowered by a fastball or the understandable failure to grasp the geometry of a curveball. Instead, it is something much more bleak, more personal, more insidious: you believed you knew what you were seeing, you thought you could trust yourself, and, oh, look how wrong you were. When Paddack’s changeup is working, it plays this trick just as well as any pitch could. Sure, in a vacuum, it looks pretty—but in context, it is killer. Thrown next to his fastball, it is virtually indistinguishable, same arm action and same initial movement and same everything. For a hitter, it is a pesky trivia question—this is a twin, yes, but identical or fraternal?—until he realizes, too late, that this is someone else altogether, and it just might kill him.

…