Ronel Blanco made one change and suddenly gave the Astros pitcher his best 2025 start

Houston Astros' starter Ronel Blanco broke out in a big way last season. With one of the best breaking balls in MLB, Blanco was a pleasant surprise in 2024, and many fans assumed he'd be even better this season. Though the start of 2025 season hasn't gone as planned, Blanco looks like he's returned to doing what he does best, and his brilliant start on Sunday against the Cincinnati Reds was proof.

While his effort did come against a Cincy offense that would struggle against most minor league pitchers, Blanco's performance can't be ignored. He gave Houston eight shutout innings a day after Lance McCullers Jr.'s imploded and forced the Astros' bullpen into emergency duty. Blanco struck out 11 batters and threw a season-high 101 pitches with 65 of them landing for strikes. In short, he was absolutely dominant.

How did Blanco do it.? It's simple; instead of overthinking when to deploy each pitch in his repertoire, Blanco leaned on his slider, threw it a bunch, and focused on attacking hitters instead of trying to nibble around the edges of the plate.

Astros starter Ronel Blanco stopped trying to be fancy and mowed down the Reds' hitters

It's a cliché to talk about the difference between pitching and throwing, but there's a lot of truth in it. There are certain big leaguers who just chuck the baseball toward home plate and hope for the best, while others have a plan for every count and every hitter while heavily relying on hitting their spots. There's a lot of merit to having a great game plan, but it's also wasteful to not use your best weapons to their fullest.

Blanco's fastball hasn't been very good, and is big reason why his overall stat line is rather unsightly. He doesn't throw particularly hard or induce an abnormal amount of movement on the pitch which has resulted in his heater ranking among the bottom quartile in all of baseball. On Sunday, he changed things up and threw his slider 40 times, which resulted in a number of ugly swings and misses.

There were other reasons for Blanco's dominance against the Reds. He threw a lot of first pitch strikes and made a real effort to put hitters away himself instead of relying on soft contact. In Blanco's own words, "I was just focused on going inning by inning and tried to get hitters out with the fewest pitches possible. That was my main focus.”

If Blanco can replicate his performance over the weekend, this Astros pitching staff is going to be a lot of fun to watch. One just hopes he takes the right lessons from his previous start and allows his best pitches eat.

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