Now that's interesting

I'm trying to follow our young guns quite closely, but it seems I might have missed this in the thick of the chase. Again the credit goes to the invaluable input from Jon Weisman:

I have watched every one of Chad Billingsley's starts this year. Up until his last start, he relied on a fastball and a hard overhand curveball that dropped downward. In his last start, perhaps one third of his pitches were sliders - a pitch that I have not seen him throw all season. He abandoned the overhand curve except for two or three pitches, which he had thrown about one third of the time before this.

While I have seen many pitchers introduce a new pitch at the start of the year (Ryan's changeup, for example), and others throw a new pitch a few times in a game (in the middle of the season), I have never seen a pitcher switch so quickly to a new pitch and use it so frequently in the middle of the season.

Since I don't see a lot of games besides Dodgers, Angels, and ESPN games, I am eager to know if others have seen pitchers introduce new pitches in the middle of the season and throw them frequently.

My only question is this: perhaps Chad *did* have a command of this new pitch (slider), but declined to use it and he did not have as much confidence in it as in the other two (fastball and curveball)? Did he use the slider in the minors?

Matt, know anything I don't, do you? ;)