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WEST SACRAMENTO -- A few days ahead of his most recent start for Double-A Midland, Jamie Arnold was issued a challenge from Athletics manager Mark Kotsay about his changeup usage.
“Can somebody relay to Jamie Arnold in Double-A that performance doesn’t really matter and that development [of the changeup] is really important?” Kotsay said on Aug. 14. “That pitch in particular will help him immensely when he gets here. … That’s key to pitching deep in games and key to changing hitters’ timing.”
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Arnold, rated the A’s No. 3 prospect and No. 57 overall prospect in baseball by MLB Pipeline, seemingly heard that message and responded. According to Synergy, Arnold had utilized his changeup just six percent of the time through his first 21 starts. In his start last week against Corpus Christi on Aug. 18, the 22-year-old left-hander nearly doubled that usage. Of his 92 pitches, 13 were changeups, five of which resulted in whiffs. That secondary offering highlighted an outing in which he tossed six scoreless innings with nine strikeouts and no walks.
Throwing the changeup more is something Arnold has been working on all year, mostly in his bullpen sessions where he’s tried to build confidence in the pitch by tinkering with grips in search of what feels best.
“Any lefty in the bigs right now who has success is throwing a good changeup with a good fastball,” Arnold said last week on A’s Cast. “It has really come together since after the All-Star break. I’ve been throwing it a lot more. I’ve settled with a grip that I like right now and had good success with it [in my last start].
“I don’t want to go out there and throw it just to throw it. I want to throw it with purpose and meaning in real counts where I’d use it and really get an in-game feel for it instead of just throwing it to throw it. That’s been a focus for me the last couple of weeks, especially in bullpens and out there in games. Just trusting it and leaning into it.”
Arnold’s changeup grip is slightly different than the norm.
“It’s kind of just a splitfinger and I’m throwing it like a fastball,” Arnold said. “When it’s in-zone and when I trust it, it’s been good. The more I used it and the more I trust it, the more I can have confidence with it.”
Asked about Arnold’s changeup usage increasing in that Aug. 18 outing before Monday’s series opener against the Twins at Sutter Health Park, Kotsay said there is actually a plan in place to have Arnold gradually increase how often he utilizes that changeup from now until the end of the season.
“We’ve put a development plan in place that he and the Double-A pitching coach are fully aware of,” Kotsay said. “We’re kind of mandating the pitch and the usage increase over the next few starts. We saw it increase his last start, which is a great sign, and he had a good outing.”
Overall, Arnold is performing about as well as the A’s could have hoped in what is his first full season of professional baseball. He holds a 3.67 ERA with 121 strikeouts in 108 innings over 22 total starts.
Those numbers are even more dominant over the past two and a half months. Since June 2, Arnold has posted a 2.49 ERA in his past 12 starts with 69 strikeouts and 21 walks across 61 1/3 innings. During that stretch, he has allowed one earned run or fewer in seven of those outings.
“I like where Jamie’s at,” Kotsay said. “I think he’s, in a natural line of progression from a year standpoint, done really well.”
The final step is mastering that changeup, something Kotsay and the A’s coaching staff has also stressed with rookie Gage Jump, who has also been incorporating the pitch more often in his starts over the past month.
“We recently saw a pitching staff in [the Tampa Bay Rays] that doesn’t lead the league in strikeouts and ranks among the fewest hits allowed in the league,” Kotsay said. “A majority of their guys have gone away from that magical sweeper that people love and are starting to throw a lot more changeups. … It’s an important pitch.”