Gavin Stone Learned His Best Pitch from the Dodgers After Signing With LA
Dodgers RHP Gavin Stone is one of the quickest rising prospects in the team’s organization. Stone, 24, was a fifth-round pick in the shortened 2020 draft. He wasn’t only a fifth-round pick — he was the second-to-last pick in the entire draft.
Fortunately, the Dodgers saw something in Stone, and decided to pick him right before the buzzer. Stone decided to sign with the Dodgers, in what he told our very own Doug McKain was one of the best decisions of his life.
Now, Stone is rising up the prospect boards, moving up to the No. 5 spot on MLB Pipeline’s 2023 list. A big reason for that? His best pitch: The changeup. However, Stone told McKain in an exclusive interview that he didn’t actually have that changeup coming into the league — he learned it from the Dodgers. You can watch the full interview here.
“I never threw a changeup in college,” Stone said. “And so when I got here, obviously, if I wanted to stay a starter, I would have needed something that went that way. And so I started throwing it, and then when I got here for my first spring training, one of the guys named Ryan Dennick, the pitching coordinator, he kind of tinkered with it a little bit and showed me a new grip, and so I’ve been throwing it the same way ever since and it’s been good so far.”
Ryan Dennick deserves an award for this, because Stone, as McKain points out in the video, has one of the nastiest changeups in all of baseball. He’s showcased it this spring to the tune of a 0.00 ERA in 3.2 scoreless innings. He also has allowed just four baserunners — two hits and two walks — and has struck out six.
Stone has been incredibly dominant earlier in spring, and has proven that he deserves a spot on the team’s roster this season. However, if it weren’t for Dennick and the Dodgers, we may not even be having this conversation.
It’s amazing what happens when you land with the Dodgers organization.
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