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Sign up NowMIAMI — It is not the sweeper that, well, swept across the baseball world beginning in 2023, but the kick-change has begun popping up (and, more literally, darting down) throughout the sport.
Mariners closer Andrés Muñoz throws one. The Giants’ Hayden Birdsong has been an early adopter. The Orioles’ Cade Povich has added it to his arsenal.
And as of this spring, Clay Holmes has joined the kick-change ranks.
The former Yankees reliever and current Mets starter helpfully demonstrated the grip, in which four fingers are flat on the ball but his middle finger is raised at an angle, only the tip of it resting on a seam. Doing so allows the tip of his middle finger to be the last part of his hand to touch the ball before release, the digit “kicking” the ball off its axis.