MLB Notebook: Kevin Gausman achieves career milestone, the changeup is the pitch of the year

Welcome to a new column I’m doing this season, where I take a bi-weekly look around Major League Baseball to fill you in on the league-wide trends, surging teams, and top individual performances. There will be some highlight clips, some criticisms, and some personal analysis of where I think the game is at and/or going. I hope that, if you’ve had a busy week or haven’t been able to watch as many games as you’d like, this article can be a great way to keep up with what’s happening in Major League Baseball.

So, let’s stop wasting time and dive right in. ⚾️  Baseball is back on NBC:  MLB returns to NBC and Peacock in 2026 ! In addition to becoming the exclusive home of Sunday Night Baseball, NBC Sports will broadcast MLB Sunday Leadoff, “Opening Day” and Labor Day primetime games, the first round of the MLB Draft, the entire Wild Card round of the postseason, and much more.

The Kick-Changeup is the New “It” Pitch in Baseball Two weeks ago, when I looked at how pitch mixes were expanding, I alluded to the increase in changeups that we're seeing around the league. However, it's not just changeups that are becoming popular; it's the kick-changeup. While 2024 may have been the year of the sweeper, and 2025 was the year of multiple fastballs, 2026 is turning into the year of the kick-change.

As described in this video from Tread Athletics , a popular pitching lab, a kick change is a variation of a changeup that uses primarily a two-seam grip and some spike from a bent finger to create more depth than a normal changeup. The "kick" in kick-change refers to "kicking the axis of the ball down," through pressure from the ring finger. The added depth generated on the kick-change means that you're creating splitter-like movement on a pitch that has a changeup-like grip and spin.