Henderson is the Brewers' new high-spin changeup artist

This story was excerpted from Adam McCalvy's Brewers Beat newsletter, with MLB.com's David Adler filling in for this edition. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

Changeups, as a general rule, are low-spin pitches. That's what makes them tumble. But if you watch the Brewers, that's just not what you see.

Milwaukee has an unusual history of throwing high-spin changeups. Devin Williams' airbender spun as much as any changeup we've ever seen, and moved like a screwball. There was also Craig Yoho's changeup, and Trevor Richards' when he (very briefly) came over in a trade in 2021, and even Chase Anderson's back in the day.

And now the Brewers have Logan Henderson, their star rookie whose nasty changeup is all about generating spin, not killing it.

Henderson, who takes a 2.60 ERA into Friday's series opener against the Rangers, throws the highest-spin changeup of any starting pitcher in the entire Statcast era, which goes back to 2015. And for current pitchers, it's not close. Henderson is 200 rpm higher than the next-closest starter this season, and 800 rpm higher than the average starter.

SP with highest-spin changeups, Statcast era
1. Logan Henderson: 2,556 rpm
2. Ryan Pepiot: 2,476 rpm
3, Jackson Kowar: 2,421 rpm
4. Danny Duffy: 2,379 rpm
5. Domingo Germán: 2,371 rpm
MLB avg. SP: 1,755 rpm

Henderson's changeup is weird, and it's good. It's good because it's weird. His changeup is holding opposing hitters to a .195 batting average, generating a 38% swing-and-miss rate and getting a strikeout in one out of every three plate appearances.

"It gets results," Henderson said with a laugh. "It's unique, and there's not a ton of pitches like that in the league. And I think the fact that it's unique, and not a lot of guys have it, makes it a good pitch."

There's more than one way to create movement on a changeup. Henderson, like the Brewers who've come before him, does it the uncommon way. Spinning the baseball is much more typical for a "rising" fastball, or a breaking ball. But you can do it for an offspeed pitch, too, if you do it right.

Henderson does also have one of those rising fastballs, but his changeup actually spins even more than his heater. That's fun. The average four-seam fastball spin rate for a starter this season is 2,312 rpm, 600-ish rpm higher than the average changeup at 1,727 rpm. Henderson has those flip-flopped. His fastball spins at 2,340 rpm -- more than 200 rpm less than his changeup.

For both offerings -- the big 1-2 punch in Henderson's arsenal -- the spin matters a lot. When Henderson throws his heater, that spin translates to 17.2 inches of rising movement and 11.5 inches of arm-side run. When he throws the changeup, the spin yields more than 19 inches of horizontal break.

That's a lot of movement for both pitches, and particularly the changeup. There's only one better than Henderson's on the horizontal movement leaderboard. That's Williams’ airbender.

The interesting thing, though, is that the movement on Henderson's changeup is purely horizontal. It basically doesn't drop at all. The spin goes straight sideways -- almost like Henderson is throwing a two-seamer, just one that's 10 mph slower than his four-seamer.

A changeup with a ton of horizontal movement but no depth? That's a funky pitch. And that just might be why it works.

"Out of the hand, maybe because it doesn't have as much depth. It tracks as a heater longer than it would [if it had more drop]," Henderson said. "That's all pitching is, is just selling every pitch to be the same until you can make it break the last five feet before it crosses the plate. I've never stepped in the box against myself, but if I had to guess: It tracks as a heater for a long time. And because it has so much movement, it's hard to screw it up."

We have one big piece of proof that Henderson is onto something there: His changeup gets A TON of early swings.

Statcast just came out with a set of swing timing metrics this season, and they're the perfect ones to use here. Hitters swing too early against Henderson's changeup 72% of the time, the highest rate of early swings induced by any righty and second-highest of any changeup thrower behind only Cubs southpaw Matthew Boyd.

What would make a hitter swing too early at a changeup? If they think it's a fastball! Henderson doesn't have to step into the box against himself to be right about that.

And it all comes back to the spin. Spin it like a fastball, make it look like a fastball, get hitters to time their swings like it's a fastball.

Henderson's changeup profiles particularly well against left-handed hitters, since it sweeps so strongly away from them. That's how most righty changeups work anyway, but we're mentioning it here because of one interesting tidbit about Henderson's season: He's gotten to face A TON of lefties.

More than two-thirds of the batters Henderson has faced this season have been left-handed. Of the hundreds of pitchers who've faced at least 100 hitters, no one has faced lefties more often. Whatever the reason -- whether it's lefty batters dominating today's game, or teams stacking their lineups with lefties against Henderson to create a platoon advantage, or just luck of the draw -- it's the perfect storm for Henderson's changeup. He's gotten to use it often, against the hitters who he's most likely to have success against.

Ironically, even with all the high-spin changeup throwers to come through Milwaukee, this is NOT something the Brewers taught Henderson. It's just something they encouraged from him. He's always had it.

"I'm just naturally able to spin the ball that way," Henderson said. "I remember, in high school, throwing on backfields with some of my buddies, and throwing it from a couple hundred feet, and that's just the way it came out of my hand with the movement I was trying to create. And I think it complements my arsenal really well."

Milwaukee is great at pitching development, but that's not always about adding new pitches or changing an arsenal. It's also about targeting outlier stuff and tapping into it.

The Brewers have helped make Henderson's changeup a better pitch, sure. That's how it became such an integral part of his arsenal. But it's his pitch, not their pitch.

"I've had this pitch before I even knew any of the metrics or anything," Henderson said. "Since I've been in the system, they've preached that, 'OK, this is a really good pitch. You should throw it a lot.' It was never something I chased analytically. It was just something that I happened to have."