It didn't take a deep dive into the analytics to figure out something was different with Tanner Houck's slider.
The pitch that had become one of the most unique offerings in all of baseball throughout 2021 had taken a turn for the worse, failing to get the swings and misses so many had become accustomed to.
Just a few days before he would throw his four shutout innings against the Mariners Thursday night, Houck had bemoaned the betrayal of his signature offering.
"It just doesn't feel the same," he had told WEEI.com of the slider. "It's one of those pitches that you're gonna have some feel with in order to really rip it. I don't feel like I'm able to rip it as much. I don't know really what the difference is. I'm not changing. I didn't change anything offseason-wise. When I first came into camp, it was about where I wanted it and it's kind of gone a little bit backwards. ... It doesn't quite it's not quite catching the same as it did last year."
Well, that changed.
Against the Mariners the slider was back for Houck, throwing the pitch more than any of his other options while getting whiffs on half of the swings against the weapon.
And it wasn't just the eye-test. The horizontal break on Houck's slider was dramatically different, maxing out at 20 inches while averaging 13, two more than he had been clocking in at throughout 2022. (Last season, the average horizontal break on his slider was 14 inches.)
In his most recent appearance, the slider's movement had hit a new low, averaging just eight inches of horizontal break, a career low.
Something had to be done, and something was done. That's where Austin Davis comes into the story.
The Red Sox lefty reliever started showing Houck an alternative way to grip his slider, relying on two seams instead of just one. It was a method Davis picked up while working out with former Yankee pitcher Brooks Kriske. (The pair actually split the cost of a $19,000 TrackMan machine to measure their offseason progress.)
While Houck could have very well just kept beating his head against the wall, trying to crack the code of what was wrong with his best pitch, he evolved. The ball was different (higher seams, creating more drag), and the pitcher - for whatever reason - wasn't the same, either.
So, for the past week or so, Houck heeded the advice of Davis.
"Sliders are they're gonna move based off total spin," Davis explained. "Spin creates movement or they're gonna move based off of spin and the drag of the ball. (Houck) is just tinkering a little bit with the style slider that I throw, which is really close to his just a little different key.
"I can just rip it just like a fastball and it's gonna do what it needs to do and you don't have to think about manipulating movement based off, you know, where your hand is in space or anything like that, because it's sometimes very difficult to do so."
"So, the way I see it is sometimes you need to change something," Houck said. "Whether it is a grip whether it isn't a mechanical thing to maybe get the feeling that you're looking for. And it might not be permanent just because you know you're working on something, you might change something. It's not necessarily going to always be like the end all be all like you have to switch it you know you can pick and choose kind of how you do it."
It seems as though Houck has chosen correctly.
"I enjoyed it," he said of his new pitch. "I’m not really scared to try something new. I think that’s kind of the takeaway from today. I’ve been working on it. Felt confident going out there with it. So, I just kind of took a shot. I truly love it and where it’s at compared to where it had been."