With three straight strong starts, trade deadline acquisition Freddy Peralta is starting to look like another success story for the Tampa Bay Rays.Since arriving in Tampa, he’s made some changes to his mechanics, which have helped him rediscover his dominant fastball. But the changes to his pitch mix might be more fascinating. What he’s doing with his changeup is becoming a Rays’ signature — and it looks like it’s a wrinkle born from insights gained by statistically modeling pitches.First, yes, Peralta ditched the windup. He also found his release point again, a couple of inches further out in front from where he was releasing the ball with the New York Mets over the last few months. The new release point is a couple of inches closer to where he’d been in the past when he was “Fastball Freddy.” That, and an arm angle that he’d been working to raise since it dipped to an all-time low in June, has made his fastball play up again.Batters are hitting .200 against his fastball during this strong three-start stretch (two runs and 10 hits allowed in 18 innings), and getting his arm angle up and the release point out further are both a big part of that success. There’s often also a lot of noise and luck in any three-game stretch, but those mechanical changes, at the very least, are likely benefitting him.Freddy Peralta has made several changes since joining the Rays, some to his mechanics and one change, in particular, to his pitch usage. (Parker Freedman / Getty Images)But while it’s not surprising to see a pitcher benefit from mechanical changes, it has been more interesting to see Peralta surge after the Rays had him use his changeup differently. Batters were hitting .280 and slugging .449 against the changeup when he was in New York. He moved to the Rays and they decided to turn the dial … up? With the Rays, he’s thrown the changeup nearly a third of the time, a jump of more than 10 percentage points.Viewed in the context of his entire pitch mix, maybe it makes sense. His slider isn’t moving like it used to, and not getting the results it’s gotten in the past, either. Lefties were slugging much better against Peralta than righties, so he obviously needed something to attack lefties with. Boom. More changeups.Except that what has really ticked up with the Rays is Peralta’s changeup usage against same-handed hitters. In his first start with the Rays, he threw more right-on-right changeups than he had in his last four starts combined with the Mets.And that’s something the Rays do a ton of. More than any team in baseball. Way more.