During his bounce-back 2024 season with the Mets, Luis Severino relied heavily on a pitch that he had thrown just 85 total times in his eight seasons with the Yankees. The key to filling out his arsenal and getting quick outs turned out to be a sinker that Severino threw 0.6 percent of the time in 2022, 4.3 percent in ’23 and then 24.6 percent in his only season with the Mets.
This spring at Mets camp, Kodai Senga picked up a sinker that he showed off Tuesday in his first start of the season. Paul Blackburn already had thrown a sinker, but after talking with Mets coaches, he tinkered with it as he strove to engineer more horizontal movement on the pitch. Brandon Sproat called his own new sinker a “work in progress,” and the top prospect will have time for that process to play out.
It is common for the topic of conversation around a team’s spring training to revolve around a pitcher’s new pitch.
It is less common for so many of the pitchers to be working on the same pitch.
