What the “kick change” is and why it’s going to be the pitch of 2025

Andrés Muñoz is preparing to kick, change, kick, change, coast.

Over the past couple seasons, the “sweeper” has gone from a fresh coat of paint on a particular style of slider to a common part of the baseball lexicon. This year, there’s a new pitch du jour that’s growing in popularity among pitchers. The “kick change” is here, it’s incredibly nifty, and it may have a massive impact on a number of pitchers this year, including Seattle’s closer Andrés Muñoz and longtime Yankees reliever turned Mets starter Clay Holmes.

The kick change is great for pitchers who already throw sliders and/or cutters. Why? To put it very simply, it allows slider-throwing pitchers to maintain their existing style of movement. There’s a whole lot more to it, but I’ll try to make a tidy explanation first, before a deeper breakdown for those invested.

When pitchers are developing, typically their repertoire will emerge based on their arm’s natural release and motion. Among a host of other factors is the concept of supination or pronation. Supination is the outward rotation at the release point, while pronation is the inward rotation at release. Our focus today is on the kick change, but in order to understand its usage it will be helpful to understand its compatriots.

There are three “standard” changeup styles:

• Straight change – exactly what it sounds like. It’s a fastball grip (four or two-seam) with an added third finger atop the ball that creates friction, which causes the pitch to slow and sink upon release. Think: Trevor Hoffman.

• Circle change – again, it’s written on the tin. The index finger and the thumb pinch together to create a circle, and when the pitcher’s arm comes around they rotate their wrist so that the circle has almost entirely inverted at the time of release. This rotation in release is referred to as “pronating” and it’s the opposite of what we talked about with the kick change (“supinating” or rotating outward). The Royal Curve’s faithful sidekick.

• Split change – you guessed it, you’re splitting your fingers to throw this. For some it’s between index finger and middle finger, for others middle and ring fingers. What’s key here, is that the grip is split between two fingers, limiting spin generation on release which helps the ball lose altitude swiftly in flight. To consistently execute this pitch necessitates some lengthy digits, limiting its utility somewhat. Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, and Bryce Miller have all adopted versions of this pitch in the past year or two as it’s had a league-wide resurgence.

Each of these pitches exist somewhere on the pronation scale, with the circle change being at the most extreme end and the split change hovering more or less at neutral. Pitchers who throw good sliders/cutters, meanwhile, all supinate in their release. And while it’s not impossible for a pitcher to excel at pitches with supination and pitches with pronation, it’s exceptionally challenging. For many big league pitchers, the difference between having a good fastball+slider vs. a good fastball+slider+changeup is the difference between being a starter and a reliever, a long career and a short one, or even a big leaguer and a minor leaguer. That’s where this year’s hot new pitch comes into play.

The kick change is essentially a circle change grip, thrown like a fastball or slider, with a twist. The pitcher spikes their middle finger up to press on the seam, which allows that finger to “kick” the ball forward on release, tilting the axis of the ball forward at release and allowing it to catch more significant air resistance in flight. With this “kick”, despite the ball coming out of the hand with slider-like rotation, it will tail to the pitcher’s arm side and sink due to its lower spin rate and its particular spin axis. The examples I’ve seen tend to maintain solid velocity, akin to hard slider. The folks at Tread Athletics, who train many big leaguers including several former and current Mariners, have a solid tutorial on the pitch:

As a fan watching, it will likely most resemble the movement of a good split change, which have been wildly successful and resurgent in recent years, as well as a staple of many Japanese aces for decades. Until Procrustes starts offering manicures, however, many pitchers without Gilbert’s massive paws, or with a more sidearm release point, are in a bind. The clamor over what Muñoz demonstrated was that in simply picking the grip up, he threw a pitch with elite changeup movement, sinking and running to the arm side immensely, in a way that comes out of the hand looking similar to his slider. Thinking about Muñoz’s repertoire in particular, which features two fastballs that have ample run alongside his devastating slider, the capacity to throw a changeup that can come out of the hand reading “slider” to a hitter and then dive the opposite direction is abject cruelty to hitters.

Baseball is flush with techniques lost and remembered again, and the kick change is no different. The pitch’s modern reintegration seems best credited to former big league RHP Brian Bannister, son of early Mariners star LHP Floyd Bannister. While less successful on the field as his 1st overall pick father, the younger Bannister had a respectable five-year career in the bigs, and following his playing career quickly parlayed his reputation as a tinkerer and analytics adopter into a coveted role in pitching development. Bannister is credited with helping former and current San Francisco Giants stars Kevin Gausman and Logan Webb refine the split-changes that have supercharged their careers.

But Bannister, a supinator in his own playing days who constantly tweaked grips to find the changeup grip that could work best for him, may be Patient Zero for this newest trend. Now the Senior Advisor to Pitching (yes this is the title, don’t ask me why he’s advising pitching itself instead of others about it) for the Chicago White Sox, Bannister has had his influence on at least a few ChiSox arms.

In interviews with David Laurila at FanGraphs late last season, RHP Davis Martin (in the clip above), as well as Orioles RHP Matt Bowman (the latter briefly a Mariners reliever in 2024), discuss the pitch at length, and mention a few pitchers they believe have incorporated the kick change following Bannister’s influence. When the Mariners get a late inning lead this year, we’ll be well-situated to see the fruits of that innovation.