Bailey Ober. Right-on-Right Changeups, and How This is All Going to Work

Though he surrendered five hits and a walk, Bailey Ober allowed just one run and struck out two over 2 2/3 innings Thursday, in his second appearance of the Cactus League season. He threw 53 pitches, of which the Red Sox swung at 24, and induced seven whiffs. Five of those seven whiffs came on his signature pitch: the changeup.

There were encouraging signs, then, but there were also some red flags. Ober's fastball sat around 89 MPH in the first inning (though he reached 90.7 on one sinker in that frame). By the third, he was barely sitting 88. The story of Ober's 2025 was an inability to consistently show his usual, excellent command, which was a result of nagging injury issues. However, another manifestation of those hip and other problems was diminished velocity, and with Ober, any loss of speed reduces his margin for error almost to zero.

When he's commanding his whole arsenal well, he can maneuver within even that zone of necessary perfection. He's dependent not on power, but on precision and execution. He has to be able to produce the pitch shapes he wants and hit his spots, more than he needs to have the ability to overpower hitters or put them on the defensive. Even last year, in an otherwise frustrating campaign, there were a few days when he was brilliant, because a pitcher who can manipulate the ball as deftly as Ober often can is a dream to watch and a nightmare to face.

Some of that was on display Thursday. Ober showed good command of his changeup, which has long been the most important part of his arsenal. He induced five whiffs and got one called strike on 19 total changeups. Three of the whiffs came against one batter, the utterly stumped Marcelo Mayer, but it was still a positive sign. Ober's changeup showed great depth, and he was able to both land it in the zone and throw the strike-to-ball version designed to induce chases outside the zone.

The other two whiffs came against right-handed batters, though, and so did his lone called strike with that pitch. Of the 36 total pitches he threw to righties, 12 were changeups. That's an important development.

For each of the last three years, Ober has thrown the changeup a little more than a third of the time to lefties, and a little under a quarter of the time to righties. Holding those usage rates constant might work, but ideally, he could ratchet each up slightly this year, without overexposing the pitch. He needs to better protect his fastball, which doesn't miss bats the way it did two years ago and looks very unlikely to start doing so again. However, Ober's slider was a major problem last year, and doesn't look like a reliable pitch for him against either lefties or righties at this stage. His sweeper is better against righties; his curve works better against lefties. But neither of those pitches can be his main alternative to the fastball, if he wants to reduce his reliance on that offering. 

Throwing the changeup a bit more to lefties shouldn't be a problem, if he has command of it the way he did on Thursday. (If he doesn't have that command, he's in big trouble, anyway.) Going to the changeup in right-on-right matchups, however, is often uncomfortable for pitchers. It's easy to understand why. The natural movement of that pitch is down and in toward a same-handed batter, so if the pitch isn't well-located, it runs right into an opponent's barrel. Because it's usually a pitch used to move off the outside corner to opposite-handed batters, it can also be hard for a pitcher to get used to starting the ball in a different place. A good changeup to a same-handed batter needs to start lower but farther toward the glove side, so its movement will keep it on the plate but get below the zone. Running it off the edge the way one does against an opposite-handed batter makes for an easy take (and sometimes a relatively painless trip to first base for the batter, via plunking). Leaving it in the lower, arm-side third of the zone, the way one often does to opposite-handed batters, makes for mashed taters.

Here's where Ober threw his changeups against lefty batters last season.

The difference between that distribution and the same plot for righty batters is subtle, but it's there.

When Ober's on (as he was Thursday), he can manipulate that changeup well enough to attack hitters on both sides with it. He changes start lines on the pitch; he changes its shape; and he still finds his targets. However, it's hard to count on having such good feel for that pitch as often as he will need to in 2026. For fans, how well he can utilize the changeup—especially to righties—is the thing to watch from start to start all spring. For Ober, the tough task ahead is to establish a new level of consistency with that offering, to make up for the diminishment of much of the rest of his repertoire.