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In honor of Johan Santana, here's my dumb guess at the best Mets changeups
5. Ed Lynch. The changeup pretty much ended Lynch's run with the Mets. He whiffed Mariano Duncan with a changeup. Duncan got pissed and yelled, "Throw something hard."
Lynch yelled back, "Go grab some pine." Apparently Duncan was sensitive about pine, because a fight broke out. Ray Knight intercepted Duncan, but Lynch managed to wrench his back. He hid it from the team, pitched poorly down the stretch and the Mets failed to win the 1985 division title.
4. Pat Zachry. He didn't have much heat to change off of, but on his best days, he had batters lunging out of the strike zone and popping up the other way.
3. Tom Glavine. He was pretty much down to two pitches — fastball, changeup — by the time he got here. His change was straight, and he could make it look like the fastball, but he initially had to spot it exactingly to be effective.
He turned a corner with the Mets when he started throwing more inside. "Hard stuff inside and soft stuff away" is pretty much baseball gospel and it takes a courage to go against that and live with the results.
2. Aaron Heilman. Maybe the shots are better now than when I was younger, because I obviously stacked this list with latter-day guys. Aaron definitely gets the "pulled the string" effect.
1. Pedro Martinez. Certainly Pedro's change is more devastating because he has two other deadly pitches. His fastball used to be a fourth, and the cool thing is that his fastball is still an out pitch because batters are so conscious of the change.
But you still get to see folks flail at the change when you presume they and everybody else know its coming. It's one of the best treats in baseball.
Who are your Mets slopmasters?
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