What I didn’t see back then was that his change-up had gotten far better, and yeah, it does help when you’re not tipping your pitches every other inning. It also helps when you use two other good pitches to set up your best one. After a forgettable first start in Detroit, Rodriguez has been gunning for the strikeout and hasn’t looked back since.

Let’s start with the second half of 2016. Rodriguez had been back, but he was inconsistent. As the calendar turned to August, he started ramping up the strikeouts, culminating in a 5.1-inning effort in Tampa where he struck out 13 batters. 13 out of a possible 16 outs. That’s insanity, and not something you would’ve expected out of E-Rod. The key for him was how effective his changeup was with two strikes during the last two months of the season. Whenever Rodriguez threw his changeup in a two-strike count, batters whiffed 31 percent of the time. His changeup was the pitch batters swung the most at, and it was filthy enough to get a swing and a miss nearly half the time they swung. If the ball ended up being put in play, it was a grounder over 70 percent of the time. Rodriguez had found a strikeout pitch in his superb changeup, and with a good fastball/slider combination supplementing it, it looked unhittable.

Come 2017, and Rodriguez has fully embraced the fastball/changeup life. His sinker and slider are still there, but he’s not throwing them as much anymore. And why should he, when everyone he faces still can’t hit his changeup? Apart from his lackluster Detroit start, Rodriguez has been getting a lot of whiffs with the changeup, even in his weird one-inning stint in Toronto.

The Pittsburgh game is a strange one, as he got 14 whiffs and eight strikeouts, but also walked four and served up a dinger to Andrew McCutchen. Everything after that? Stellar. Rodriguez got five whiffs in a single inning of relief in Toronto, and then went on to stifle two very good offenses in Baltimore and Chicago. In Baltimore, you can see that most of the strikeouts early were with the fastball, and then he slowed down and used the change-up as the game went on.

As long as you don’t look at ERA predictors, Rodriguez was dicing up the Orioles in that one. They had one hit over six innings, but Rodriguez also walked five while striking out seven. Changeups and sliders don’t usually end up in the strike zone anyway.

The Cubs game was something else. I don’t know about you, but I think Eduardo’s figured it out:

Assuming Rodriguez’s night is done, yes, he finished with 16 swing-and-miss, nine on the changeup. One run on five hits, two walks, nine Ks https://t.co/ehmqJI4nTz

— Jen McCaffrey (@jcmccaffrey) May 1, 2017

Remember how prolific Rodriguez was with his changeup in two-strike counts last year? Because he got better with it. That’s not hyperbole. Batters have swung at the changeup 64 percent of the time in those counts, and they’ve hit nothing but air two-thirds of the time. That’s a wipeout pitch. And it isn’t particularly better for batters in general either. Overall, batters have swung at his changeup 47 percent and whiffed over half the time. There’s only so many times I can call that pitch filthy or disgusting until it starts sounding like a Gordon Ramsay soundboard. But if you’re still not convinced – and if you’re not, I respect the stubbornness – here’s what he did to a strong Cubs lineup:

I counted five strike-three whiffs on his changeup alone, possibly six if you count the first as a missed location. He’s getting what he wants out of that pitch.

Of course, unless you’re Mariano Rivera or a knuckleballer, you’re not going to survive on just one pitch. Rodriguez’s fastball is no slouch either, as it still gets swings and misses over 11 percent of the time. He doesn’t use his slider or sinker much, but the slider still gets the occasional whiff, and the sinker generates grounders, which he’ll need if he wants his 26 percent groundball rate to improve. Overall, his swinging strike percentage (14.9%) is better than those posted by Noah Syndergaard, Sean Manaea, and James Paxton – three pitchers who are (or in Thor’s case, were) racking up the strikeouts. This isn’t a fluke.

I don’t know if you can say Rodriguez has “arrived”, since he was good for a sizable part of the 2016 season. He’s been here for a while already. But what you can say is that he’s gotten better. From what we saw from him last year and what we’ve seen so far, that’s an exciting statement to make.

Photo by Bob DeChiara – USA TODAY Sports

Division Winners

Postseason

#hardware

• Four teams are unanimous picks for their division, with just the two-man carousel in the NL East and the AL West party getting different results.
• Of the Astros, Blue Jays, Mariners, and Rangers, one’s gotta go. With our staff, it’s usually the Mariners. Sorry, Seattle.
• Devereaux says the AL MVP award should be named after Trout from now on, and I can’t disagree.
• He also said the NL Cy Young should just be named after Kershaw as well. See above reaction.
• Slavin’s Margot pick for NL ROY is, as he tells it, “the first dose of retribution for Trader Dave”. That one made me laugh.

Game-by-game, it breaks down thusly:

Which brings us to…

David Price’s Starts 2016, Ranked [Updated]

1. 66, third start, 4/16 — Seven crisp innings against the Blue Jays on a lovely Fenway Saturday.

2. 61, first start, 4/5 — Six strong on Opening Day at the Jake.

3. 43 second start, 4/11 — Five innings against the Orioles at home, one of which was Trumbo’ed.

Of these three starts, the second one drew the most attention, given that Price was allowed an extra day of rest to provide Steven Wright his normal first turn through the rotation. This kept Price off the mound in Toronto on a Sunday, and put him on the mound for Fenway’s home opener, away from his late-2015 stomping grounds, and he got got. Perhaps in response to this, John Farrell let Price pitch on regular rest for his third start, at which point the ace posted his best start of the year.

How is he doing it?

I was intrigued by the idea of doing a Price deep-dive so that I could familiarize myself with some of the more in-depth analytics that are available to me on the tubes; I mention this just to make it clear I’m feeling my way around in the early going, so feel free to skip ahead if you’re caught up on Price’s Brooks Baseball profile.

Three games isn’t a huge sample size, but it’s big enough to give us something. In this case, it’s clear that Price’s velocity is down across the board, even if just a tick:

To that end, check out this craziness:

Noah Syndergaard average changeup this year: 91.5 mph.

David Price average fastball this year: 91.4 mph

— Brandon Warne (@Brandon_Warne) April 18, 2016

Which isn’t necessarily a knock on Price, because, as Pedro said, “Thooooooooooor!” But it might be a little concerning. If he clocks in for April at 92.87 average miles per hour on his four-seamer (the sinker’s at 93.01, the cutter 89.1), it would be the lowest mark of his career for any given month. He’s only been under 93 for any month twice in his career — the last two months of 2014 — and he’s never had an April under 94.

Sometimes, though, velocity isn’t everything: The Trumbo homer, Price’s only HR allowed on the year, came on what MLB.com calls a 2-seam fastball, but I’m gonna say was a 4-seamer, at 94 miles per hour. Speed most decidedly did not kill Trumbo, but the stage was set for a big hit before Price let go of the pitch, his 24th of the inning, and the most likely culprit was Price getting in his own head.

This is just one theory, at least, but after Price gave up a leadoff double to Joey Rickard to open the game (but escaped the jam), he looked extremely tentative to Rickard in the third, walking him on five pitches. Follow that with a HBP to Manny Machado and a single to Chris Davis, and there was something bad hanging over Fenway that manifested itself in Trumbo’s impressive blast just to the right of the triangle.

This is most definitely armchair psychology, but even at the time he seemed so unnecessarily tentative to Rickard that it was clear the double was weighing on him. This time Rickard got him less directly, but was merely the first domino in a chain reaction that eventually led to Price’s lone bad inning of the year. We will live. For now.

But enough about the bad stuff

The Price we saw on Saturday was the one we’d been waiting for, as evidenced by this video of him striking out, among others, Bautista and reigning MVP Josh Donaldson:

Yeah, the Donaldson pitch was three inches inside. We’ll take it. That guy is a house on fire, and Price managed to put him out. It’s worth mentioning that Price’s last two starts have been against the lumbering offenses of Baltimore and Toronto, and he’s merely managed to be pinched once, and in impressive fashion, no less. Starting with Thursday’s game against the Rays (for whom he used to pitch, I’m told). Should be fun, especially because Price’s presence means no Corey Dickerson, an no Dickerson leaves a neutered Rays line. Their current listed pitcher is listed as “TBA,” but knowing the Rays, it’ll be someone of whom we’ve never heard and who is amazing… but not as good as David Price.

Photo by Butch Dill/USA Today Sports Images