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Adam Lind has been a Seattle Mariner for exactly 80 days, which is not a terribly long time. As such, there are probably MANY THINGS that most M's fans have yet to find out about Mr. Lind. For example, one of Adam's favorite off-season activities is to get together with his friends and their dogs and find a big empty field and just watch the pups run around and play; they refer to this as throwing a "dog party". (D'awww.) This is an awesome tidbit, but it does not have anything to do with baseball, which is (ostensibly) the raison d'être of LL. Therefore, I will endeavor to provide you with an Adam Lind fact that is baseball-related. Are you ready?
Adam Lind is very good at hitting changeups.
In 2015, almost 100 qualified hitters in MLB saw changeups more than 10% of the time. Of those gentlemen, only one player (recent A's acquisition Chris Coughlan) was better at hitting the change than Lind. For some perspective, here is 2015's leaderboard of the players who were the best at punishing changeups (in terms of wCH/C).
| Name | Team | wCH/C▾ |
CH% | # of CH seen | BAA | SLG | ISO | BABIP |
| Chris Coghlan | Cubs | 3.82 | 10.7% | 207 | 0.375 | 0.625 | 0.250 | 0.361 |
| Adam Lind | Brewers | 3.16 | 11.0% | 223 | 0.305 | 0.644 | 0.339 | 0.267 |
| Nelson Cruz | Mariners | 3.14 | 10.2% | 249 | 0.349 | 0.546 | 0.197 | 0.475 |
| Asdrubal Cabrera | Rays | 3.02 | 10.8% | 193 | 0.375 | 0.625 | 0.250 | 0.417 |
| Josh Reddick | Athletics | 2.72 | 11.0% | 231 | 0.431 | 0.726 | 0.294 | 0.476 |
| David Ortiz | Red Sox | 2.46 | 12.0% | 252 | 0.311 | 0.644 | 0.333 | 0.294 |
| Joey Votto | Reds | 2.33 | 10.5% | 284 | 0.243 | 0.487 | 0.243 | 0.255 |
| Stephen Vogt | Athletics | 2.24 | 11.0% | 199 | 0.340 | 0.575 | 0.234 | 0.371 |
| Adam Jones | Orioles | 2.09 | 10.0% | 183 | 0.377 | 0.642 | 0.264 | 0.381 |
| Bryce Harper | Nationals | 2.03 | 13.3% | 319 | 0.361 | 0.557 | 0.197 | 0.400 |
Look at that slugging percentage! And an ISO of 0.339! Those are some Ken-Griffey-Jr.-in-his-MVP-season-type of power numbers. Despite seeing changeups only 11% of the time in 2015, Lind hit 30% of his dingers (6 of 20) against the pitch. This is, of course, a fairly small sample size. However, Lind has been quite good at hitting changeups throughout his career. In each of his nine seasons as a regular player, he's been better than average at squaring up this change-of-pace pitch. In fact, since folks started keeping track of wCH/C back in 2002, Lind has been the 24th most successful player (out of 729 qualified players, putting him in the 97th percentile) against the changeup. A lot of this success has come from Lind's ability to use the whole field vs. this offering. He's been particularly proficient at hitting the ball back up the middle.
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Lind's ability to succeed against changeups suggests that he has very good balance and is able keep his hands back during his at bats. It also indicates that he's a pretttty strong dude who can generate enough power on his own to send these slower pitches deep into the seats. For reference, Lind's average batted ball speed in 2015 was 90.1 mph, putting him just above Joey Votto and just below Evan Longoria—that's some pretty good company.
Finally, just for fun, here's Lind absolutely crushing a changeup at the beginning of last season.
That ball sailed more than 420 feet, deeeeep to center field. Boom! Hopefully a bunch of pitchers try to sneak changeups past Lind in 2016 and we see a bunch o' hits just like that one this season. Go M's.