What is happening? Welcome to the Plus Pitch Podcast.

New morning pitching podcast from Pitcherlist.com.

My name is Nick Pollack.

Today is May 21st.

And yes, we are going to talk about baseball.

Five innings pitch, seven run runs, eight hits, one walk in 5Ks.

Who is that for?

It is Pablo Lopez.

Oh boy, this has not been good.

I focused last night on the SPR roundup on the

changeup and honestly I really should have focused I think more on the sweeper. Both of those

pitches have really let him down. If you remember, Pablo Lopez before his major breakout, I would

say last year with the twins. It was more so that Pablo Lopez was adding a sweeper while on the twins and of course

adding extra velocity to his foreseamer. The changeup has always been there. It was really a

struggle a bit in 2022 for him and then he got it back in 2023. But even when we talked to

Pablo Lopez over the winter, you always said, look, the changeup is always there.

And it is, except it really hasn't this year. It's been a sub 60% strike rate for him, lower

swing strike rates, the lower zone rates. And then you merge that with a sweeper that had a

sub 30% ICR last year, which was excellent. And now it's at 40%. And we're talking like 22%

usage,

like more usage than the change app. So combine those two things and you're getting this

inconsistency from Pablo asking more out of the force of it, which honestly has done its part as

...