Mets pitching prospect Blade Tidwell holds it together while learning three new grips
Mets pitching prospect Blade Tidwell throws for the Binghamton Rumble Ponies, the team's Double-A affiliate. Credit: Bronson Harris
BRIDGEWATER, N.J. — A year after the Mets drafted him, instantly installing his powerful right arm as perhaps the most talented in their farm system, Blade Tidwell is getting a grip — on his secondary pitches and, because of that, on professional baseball.
Tidwell, 22, already has made it to the upper minors, promoted recently to Double-A Binghamton. His start Wednesday, just his second at the new level, was one of his best anywhere: a career-best 7 2/3 innings, two runs, seven strikeouts and, notably, zero walks.
The improved control was tangible evidence of the headway he has made in recent months after acclimating to an evolving repertoire.
“It’s been awesome,” Tidwell said this week of his first full season in pro ball. “At the start of the year, I went through some struggles and a little bit of growth pains. I think as the year has progressed, I’ve gotten a little bit better and overall my development has gotten a lot better. I’m pretty pleased with it so far.”
Consider the opening two-plus months of the season, when Tidwell was with High-A Brooklyn. He had a 4.14 ERA and 1.89 strikeouts per walk. Included within those figures were lots of strikeouts, which was promising, but the rest left something to be desired.
Over the past month and a half or so, though, those numbers are markedly better: 2.27 ERA, 3.67 strikeouts per walk.
The key, he said, was adjusting to “a different slider, a different curveball and a different changeup.”
Wait, what?
Apparently, Tidwell has altered the grip on all of his offerings except his fastball over the past 13 months. That created pitches that are “a little bit harder to control because they have better movement,” which sounds like a good problem to have — once he learned how to control it.
First came the slider, a signature pitch during his time at Tennessee. Kyle Driscoll, now the assistant pitching coordinator/pitching coach for Triple-A Syracuse, last year suggested a tweak that made for a version that featured more sweeping, sideways movement, a trendy switch throughout baseball.
“I was playing catch the second day I got to Port St. Lucie last year,” Tidwell said, “and Driscoll came up to me and said, ‘Try this.’ Then I literally never threw the other one again. I only threw that one from then on.”
When he got to Brooklyn this year, the pitching coach there, Victor Ramos, showed him a new way to hold his changeup.
“My changeup is just completely different. I wouldn’t even be able to explain it,” Tidwell said. “I literally, like, I don’t know. It’s super weird. The shape is kind of like a splitter almost. But it still spins like a changeup.”
And along the way he turned his curveball into more a “slurve,” a slider/curve hybrid, Tidwell said.
Altogether, it made for a different collection of pitches, which took time and practice to get used to, particularly with the changeup and curveball. That didn’t really happen, he said, until about a month and a half ago.
“Getting more comfortable with it helped me to throw more strikes, which is what I needed to do to begin with,” he said. “I was getting behind in the count a lot earlier in the season. I needed to really start getting ahead of batters.”
As for his primary pitch?
“I’m rolling with the same fastball,” Tidwell said. It has steadily been in the 93-95 mph range and topped out at 98.
That is part of why Tidwell has “probably got as good a chance of being a [Nos.] 1 or 2 [starter] as anybody in our system,” as director of player development Kevin Howard put it during spring training. Tidwell is at or near the top of a group of pitching prospects that has filtered into the upper levels of the farm system. That includes Mike Vasil (took a no-hitter into the ninth inning with Syracuse this week), Tyler Stuart (minors-best 1.70 ERA and now with Binghamton), Dominic Hamel (the Mets’ minor-league pitcher of the year in 2022) and Christian Scott (2.93 ERA and now with Binghamton).
Most of those guys are pitching together in a rotation that Hamel called “nasty” and “probably the best in the Eastern League.”
“It’s been enjoyable,” Tidwell said. “I like the change of pace from Coney Island to Binghamton. I think it’s a nice place. There’s a little bit more food options, which is nice. And the baseball is just a little bit better.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
