Little did Jordan Jankowski know that when he taught Astros teammate Brad Peacock how to throw a slider in 2016, he would help turn Peacockinto one of the best strikeout pitchers in baseball.Peacock is 10-1 with a 3.20 ERA and 107 strikeouts in 87 innings this year and leads the Astros in wins. If he were to to sa few more innings this year,his11.8 strikeouts per nine inningswould rank fourth in baseball.Much of that can be traced back to his decision to scrap his old slider and ask Jankowski for help while they were at Triple-A Fresno.”To tell you the truth, the past couple of years what I was doing really wasn’t working too well so I had to change some stuff last year,” Peacock told Omnisport.”I did it at the All-Star Break in Triple-A. I changed my arm angle and learned a new pitch from one of my buddies and just practiced it down there and brought it to the season.”Peacock primarily was a fastball-changeup-curveball pitcher in 2013-14 for the Astros, but now throws his slider more than 35 percent of the time and has a batting average against of .201, much of that due to the slider.”I used to have Denard Span Jersey a slider that was really hard and it was getting hit pretty well down there in Triple-A so I was going, ‘I need like a sweeper slider,'” Peacock said. “So (Jankowski) had a good one on the team and he showed me how he threw it and how he holds it and I just ran with it.”The end result has been Peacock’s best season to date both out of the bullpen and in the starting rotation. He will get the start Thursday when the Astros, who lead the AL Central by 13 games, take on the White Sox.Peacock has kept hits down and the numbers look real. When a pitcher has a low batting average on balls in play (BABIP), it means he’s getting lucky. Peacock’s BABIP is right on line with the league average so the results are backed up by the advanced stats. Add that to his strikeout numbers and his succe s is hard to ignore.This all comes after he mi sed most of 2015 with hip and back injuries and pitched in Triple-A almost all of 2016 after being one of the team’s promising young starters the previous two years.”A lot of ups and downs, a lot of learning,” he said. “I got hurt, my back, I had surgery and I expected to be in Triple-A last year for a good bit until I could prove I was healthy and they gave me a chance at the end of https://www.raysedge.com/tampa-bay-rays/chris-archer-jersey the year and I did pretty well and I’m glad I got another chance this year.”What he has done with this year is succeed. A big portion of that has to do with his new slider, but also a change to exclusively pitchfrom the stretch.”My first outing of the year I just felt terrible out of the wind-up and I was just, like, since I’m in the bullpen, I’m just going to go out of the stretch and that’s why I did it,” Peacock explained. “I was pitching well and I just kept doing it.”He actually wasn’t sure how people would take it, so much so he actually asked pitching coach Brent Strom if it was OK.”I just did it on my own and I asked Stromy, to tell you the truth, if it was OK if I did that and he said, ‘Sure, a lot of guys do it,'” he said trying to hold back a laugh. “And I was like, ‘OK, sounds good.'”Whatever Peacock is doing this year, it’s working and he’s been able to bounce back from each of his two bad starts. Both times this season he was knocked out of starts earlyhe came back and struck out at least eight batters the next time out. The Astros hope he can bounce back again Thursday after Peacock was touched for seven runs on nine hits, including three homers, over six innings in his last outing Aug. 4.Peacock mi sed Houston’s playoff berth in 2015, and the 29-year-old hopes to be part of a deep postseason run this year.”I’m here to do whatever they tell me to do,” he said. “Whether it’s starting or relieving I’m just happy to be here, because in spring training I didn’t know what was going to happen, so I’m just happy to be here and happy to help the Evan Longoria Jersey team out any way I can.”
The Overlooked: Brad Peacock may be the Astros’ most valuable pitcher
