Daniel Hudson and the Tale of Two Pitches

“Nobody really knows that I had a good changeup 10 years ago,” Daniel Hudson admitted to me earlier this week. Well, almost nobody.

I saw every one of Hudson’s starts in 2011 — 33 in the regular season and one in the postseason. His changeup wasn’t good; it was great.

I often thought of this pitch while watching Hudson fire slider after slider out of the bullpen during the second phase of his career. What happened to the changeup?

“What’s crazy is I never really could make the ball go left,” he says, referring to the direction that a traditional slider breaks for a right-handed pitcher. “I couldn’t throw a slider. I had a good fastball... I think if you looked at it back then [with the technology we have today] it would probably have really good run and really good ride.”

Indeed, his fastball as a starter would sit around 94, which was above average 15 years ago, with great life through the zone. A fringy slider was serviceable. At best, it would play up in a repertoire with two plus pitches.

“I had the good changeup,” Hudson continues, and here’s where it gets really interesting: “But you know what? I used to pronate the hell out of it… I had that kind of Devin Williams-like changeup where it’s high spin, and I would turn it over so hard. As I got older — and after the two arm injuries — I just couldn’t do it anymore. I just could not turn it over like I used to.”

What I’ve been wondering since our conversation is whether maximum-effort pronation caused elbow injuries, or if, indeed, wear and tear inhibited Hudson from sustaining his arm action.

“I think if you had Edgertronic on my changeup back then,” he says, acknowledging the high-speed cameras that capture thousands of frames per second, “I bet at release my palm was facing center field. I turned it over that hard. And, you know, I was pretty max effort... I basically just threw everything as hard as I could every single pitch. And that, obviously, had a negative effect on my elbow as well. But the torque on it year after year… I just couldn’t do it anymore as I got older.”

Hudson was drafted by the White Sox in the fifth round of the 2008 Draft. In rookie ball that summer, his changeup emerged as his best secondary offering and a real weapon. He made his big league debut the following season.

Recently, he and I spoke about his 2011 season and the Diamondbacks team that year, he shared what it meant to retire a winner after this past World Series, we discussed the mental load of the season and the physical demands of playing deep into October, he reflected upon his evolution as a pitcher and a teammate, and we connected over fatherhood. There are plenty of stories in there, but I’m fascinated by the pitcher whose changeup wore down his arm.

The perils of kids throwing curveballs too early is well documented. A changeup is supposed to be safe (though, yes, I think Hudson would admit that his changeup is not what anyone should teach a 13-year-old pitcher).

Hudson’s first Tommy John surgery took place in July 2012. After logging 222 regular-season innings the year before, perhaps the accumulation of the pronating torque caught up to him.

During his first rehab outing about 11 months after surgery, he tore the UCL in his pitching arm again. Pitch selection was no longer relevant. The bigger question was if Hudson could still pitch.

After through a few innings for the D-backs in 2014, he appeared in 64 games in 2015. The following year, he threw his slider more than his changeup for the first time ever. Prior to the 2017 season, he signed a free agent contract with Pittsburgh, where he developed a slider.

“Finding that slider changed my career path,” Hudson says.

After years of pronating, he found new life in his arm by supinating. (Pronation involves turning the palm down while throwing; supination brings the palm up. If you extend your arm, palm down, in front of you and rotate your palm up, you’re supinating. Your shoulder won’t like it as much if you pronate.)

“I finally had something I could throw underneath the lefty, you know, back-foot to a left-hander and away from a right-hander. That really helped me… I went to the Dodgers in 2018 after the Pirates, and they were like, ‘We want you to throw your slider more. We want you to throw, like, 60% slider.’ And I just never really could commit to it… Using it more, I got more comfortable with it, and kind of figured out how to put it in the right spots to lefties and righties. I still had a changeup, but I couldn’t get swing-and-miss on it anymore. It was more like a show-me pitch. You know, I made a joke where I threw it enough just to get it on the scouting report, just so they knew that I had one. It was kind of a joke with a lot of teams. I remember when I came back to the Dodgers in ’22, I asked our assistant pitching coach in Spring Training, ‘So, about this sweeper craze,’ and he just looked me dead in the eye and goes, ‘Huddy, they swing and miss at your slider, like, 50% of time. I don’t think you need to learn a new pitch right now.’”

Last year, Hudson threw his slider 41% of the time. He threw his changeup only 4%. “I think the arm injuries had a big effect on my changeup... I just couldn’t turn it over anymore,” he concludes.

Hudson suspected last spring that 2024 would be his last season. He was grateful to remain healthy.

He retired after a Major League career that covered 15 seasons, two Tommy John surgeries, and a pair of World Series championships. He struck out Michael Brantley to clinch the 2019 World Series, as the Nationals defeated the Astros in seven games. Five years later, he was warming up in the visitor’s bullpen at Yankee Stadium alongside Walker Buehler, who took the mound for the Dodgers and closed out the clinching Game 5.

In addition to suiting up for the White Sox, Diamondbacks, Pirates, Nationals, and Dodgers, he made brief stops in Toronto and San Diego. This spring, Hudson’s stops are mostly at dance recitals and swim practices for his three daughters. For the first time in his adult life, he’s not reporting to camp. His arm has felt fine lately, and he’s happy to keep it that way.

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