Bryan Woo and the changeup
The changeup became a vital part of Woo's success in 2024, lets dissect.
A publicly available but little-known fact is that Bryan Woo’s favorite player growing up was Brandon Crawford. This, my friends, is relevant because it is ironic — Brandon Crawford has never been able to hit a changeup for the life of him. Bryan Woo’s changeup has perhaps changed his career arc and raised the ceiling on his potential to be a top of the rotation starter.
To grasp the importance of the use of Woo’s changeup, we need to step back a year to 2023 where in 180 left-handed batters faced, they crushed him. Lefties held a .283/.389/.539 slashline including 9 home runs, 23 issued walks and a .394 wOBA. All of that amounting to a 6.65 FIP vs. left-handed batters.
Sheeeeeesh.
Despite dominating right-handed batters (they held a much more palatable .179/.226/.268 slashline against Woo), the Alameda High School product would need to find a way to be better against left-handed pitching to become more than the fourth or fifth guy in any rotation.
Enter: Two best friends. The changeup and the sweeper.
Bryan Woo effectively uses his Sweeper (not to be confused with his slider) almost solely against right-handed batters. He threw it 126 times to RHB in 2024 and just 30 of ‘em to LHB and garnered just 4 hits allowed on the pitch in all of 2024. That is a stark difference from 2023 where he threw his sweeper 78 times to righties and 50 times to lefties and it got a bit touched up (.257 BA, .457 slug against).
Here’s Brent Rooker waving at the sweeper for a strikeout:
Don’t worry, we are getting to the changeup.
In 2023 Woo threw his changeup just 53 times, 47 of them to LHB. In 2024? That number ballooned. He threw 12 changeups to righties and 150 to lefties and allowing just a .186 batting average against it.
Here he is making JJ Bleday look silly with a 90 mph changeup:
One more for good measure? Let’s do Juan Soto.
The pitch itself holds above average horizontal break and sits higher in velocity than most other changeups around major league baseball. Having that kind of weapon in your arsenal combined with what might be the best fastball/sinker combo in the league means owning leverage on sluggers that were previously just looking for a fastball they could manage to get the barrel to.
I put together an overlay of the fastball and changeup, they sequence together extremely well:
The fastball rising from Woo’s low arm slot, with the changeup staying on the same track and then dipping off horizontally at the last moment.
Woo seems poised to continue to improve on his pitch sequencing with his not new — but more used — weapon and we may see him throw it a touch more to righties as his confidence grows in the pitch.
Enjoy Baseball!