BALTIMORE -- For the trio of Athletics rookies currently in the starting rotation -- Jacob Lopez, J.T. Ginn and Jack Perkins -- these final seven weeks of the season are pivotal points in their respective careers.
The development process is ongoing for these three, each of whom has made fewer than 20 big league starts.
For Ginn, Friday night’s outing in a 3-2 loss to the Orioles at Camden Yards was not nearly as dazzling as Lopez’s scoreless 10-strikeout game from the day before, but it was equally important for the right-hander’s continued evolution as a pitcher.
Spotting the Orioles an early three-run lead on a pair of back-to-back home runs by Adley Rutschman and Ryan Mountcastle in the first inning, Ginn went back to the drawing board with catcher Shea Langeliers and pitching coach Scott Emerson after the frame to figure out what went wrong.
Both homers came on sliders, a pitch Ginn typically relies on as a putaway pitch but said he did not have a good feel for early on. From there, Ginn went on to retire 12 of his final 15 batters faced, allowing just one hit -- an infield single -- and a walk to finish with three runs allowed on three hits and two walks while notching a career-high nine strikeouts across five innings.
“He got back focused into the zone and really pounded it,” A’s manager Mark Kotsay said of Ginn, who fired 54 of his 87 pitches for strikes. “He did a good job from the second to the fifth.”
What changed after those two homers?
It began with Ginn’s strikeout of former A’s teammate Ryan Noda to end the first. Shifting away from that slider, Ginn started off Noda with a first-pitch sinker and finished him off with a cutter and three changeups.
When Ginn first joined the A’s as the top prospect acquired from the Mets for Chris Bassitt in March 2022, he almost exclusively threw a sinker and slider as his two pitches, seldom mixing in a changeup.
On Friday, Ginn threw 20 changeups, the most he’s thrown in an outing this season and second most in his young career, upping the usage of both that and his cutter -- a pitch he began toying with last season and only threw four times total in the Majors before this year -- following those two homers.
Of Ginn’s 21 changeups and 18 cutters, all 39 pitches were thrown solely to lefties. In turn, he held the five left-handed hitters in Baltimore’s starting lineup 2-for-8 with two walks, with the only real damage being Rutschman's two-run blast on the aforementioned slider.
“That’s something me and [Emerson] have talked about for a while,” Ginn said. “Just trying to get to the changeup more. Going into the game, Shea and I definitely knew that with the lefty-heavy lineup, we were going to go to the changeup and cutter more.”
Ginn’s ability to adjust his gameplan in the aftermath of that rough first exemplifies the improvements he and inexperienced pitchers like Lopez and Perkins, who makes his second Major League start on Saturday, must make to transform from just promising young arms to quality Major League starters. The A’s believe the talent is there. Now, it’s about getting those reps to find themselves at the highest level.
“These are important weeks for them,” Kotsay said. “The innings they’ve pitched in the big leagues are very limited. … The more they get out there and pitch, the more they can improve.”
For Ginn, it’s about continuing to incorporate the changeup and cutter like he did on Friday night.
The sinker-slider combo will likely always remain his bread and butter. Those two pitches, utilized Friday as the putaway pitches to eight of his nine strikeouts, made him a star at Mississippi State and catapulted him to being drafted by the Mets as a second-round pick in 2020. Honing in this entire four-pitch mix, though, is what could help him become a mainstay in this A’s starting rotation for 2025 and beyond.
“Any time you can go out there and get some innings and learn, it’s going to help you,” Ginn said. “Just learning how to compete in this league and learning what works for me is huge. I’m definitely looking forward to the next two months. I feel like I’m improving every outing. I’m just trying to keep that rolling.”