| 11:21 |
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| 12:05 |
Is it me you’re looking for? |
| 12:05 |
: well, I’m here, finally
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| 12:05 |
What Being Married For 10 Years Can Teach Us About Arm Action |
| 12:06 |
This ain’t chocolate. It’s Duda, baby. |
| 12:06 |
Hello Eno |
“So you’re just studying oddity pitchers,” said Zach Britton over my shoulder as I took our conversation over to Darren O’Day. I bristled at the word oddity, because it implied some sort of freak-show gawking. “No! I’m into pitching, and you guys have interesting pitches,” was my earnest response. Eventually, most of the Orioles bullpen was in our scrum, talking pitching and pitches.
He wasn’t wrong, though. At the heart of that bullpen are three very… odd pitches. And checking out the three of them can teach us something about arm action.
As Melvin Upton steps to the plate and readies for the pitch, Buster Posey appraises him. First, he looks at his feet as they dig in. Gradually, his eyes move up Upton’s body, brazenly staring as he takes in information. Down pops the sign as the catcher moves his attention to the pitcher.
It’s not just idle ogling. He’s looking for clues. Which ones?
While working on something Erasmo Ramirez said — that his slider was always in the zone anyway, so he should probably use it to steal strikes rather than for swinging strikes — it became obvious that breaking pitches are much less effective in the zone than out when it comes to swinging strikes. Curves, in particular, are much better outside the zone. You get about one third of the whiffs on a curve in the zone as you do outside of the zone.
Separately, I’m working on a piece for The Hardball Times Annual about command. In it, a few pitchers talk about the difficulty of commanding breaking pitches. “Nobody throws anything that’s truly straight,” is how Trevor Bauer put it.
While sorting the in and out of zone whiff rates, and thinking about command, it came to me that the two are related. Maybe that’s a duh, but a big part of quantifying command is the problem of breaking balls and changeups and their movement. A breaking ball in the zone may often be a hung breaking ball, which contributes to the lower whiff rates.
Let’s take a look at the pitchers that have the most disparate results on their non fastballs inside and outside the zone first, and then try to find a way to spot these pitchers by movement.
Talking to Erasmo Ramirez is refreshing. He always has a smile on his face. Life is fun for him — especially now. He’s having the best season of his career in Tampa Bay. It turns out that changing the use of his slider has been a big part of that success. And certain aspects of his slider may provide a roadmap for other pitchers that should make the same move.
His best pitch is his changeup — “it’s the best one to take me out of troubles,” the pitcher admitted to me — but it’s not good enough to throw every single time. “I try to stay away from it, and show the hitters I’m going to throw every pitch I have in my arsenal,” Ramirez said of his pitching mix.
The grip for the change thrown by Erasmo Ramirez, which has the seventh-best swinging strike rate in baseball (min. 400).
The breaking balls haven’t been great. Even as Tony Blengino waxed positively on the pitcher recently, he admitted that “his breaking balls needed reps” coming up. Ramirez this year has been using his curve less (“I’ve been trying to stay away from it, unless I have it rolling.”) but a key change in his slider usage has been huge.
| 10:54 |
: yolo
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| 10:55 |
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| 12:00 |
IS IT THAT TIME OF THE WEEK? |
| 12:00 |
: Yes.
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| 12:00 |
Don’t “yolo”. Don’t be that guy! |
| 12:00 |
: just for fun, though?
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Around little-league parks, and even on the back fields of certain schools and organizations, you might hear a common refrain from the batting cages. “Chop wood, chop wood,” is how Bryce Harper mimics the coaches he’s heard before. The idea is that a quick, direct path to the baseball — like an ax chop — is the best way to get quickly to the ball and create the backspin that fuels the power.
Turns out, pretty much all of that is wrong.
The first time Sean Doolittle’s career almost ended, he still owned a first baseman’s glove. The second time his career almost ended, he was clutching his throwing shoulder and wondering why he couldn’t crack 90 mph on the radar gun. During his second comeback, often he wondered why he was “pitching with the brake on” as he put it last week.
A tweak to his repertoire and a tweak to his rehab, and things are starting to look up for the Oakland left-hander. He’s now hit 95 mph six times in his last three outings, including Monday in the second half of a back-to-back appearance.
The Mets closer has a new pitch, and it is fantastic. A 95 mph split-finger fastball is already superlative by name, but when you drill down into the arsenal of Jeurys Familia, it starts to look unique… and unfair.
But first we must appreciate the pitch in all its GIF glory.
| 11:29 |
: trying not to be late today!
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| 11:29 |
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| 12:03 |
: I’m here!
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| 12:04 |
BTW, can anybody in the chat room explain why my typing of comments anywhere in FG or RG has become so tediously slow since I upgraded from Windows 8 to Windows 10? It’s not happening anywhere else, e.g., newspapers. I’m not a tech geek, so I’m clueless. |
| 12:04 |
: The Dark Overlord will be back from his vacation soon, I’ll point it out!
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| 12:04 |
Eno, I haven’t been here in what feels like months, have you changed shampoos? |