Carter Capps’ Delivery Is New, Still Basically Against the Rules
Major League Baseball would never root for its own players to be injured, but sometimes the timing of certain injuries can be convenient. We spent a chunk of 2015 talking about whether Carter Capps‘ throwing motion should be allowed. Parallels were drawn to Jordan Walden, who has his own unorthodox delivery. Nothing was approaching the level of a crisis, but Capps was drawing a lot of attention, and he was dominating all the while. Then he got hurt, and he didn’t pitch in 2016. Walden also didn’t pitch in 2016. Baseball didn’t have to deal with anything, here, because nothing was happening. The deliveries were out of sight and out of mind.
Walden is still working his way back. There’s a chance he might never return to the majors. But, Capps? Capps has recovered from his elbow surgery. He’s been throwing in Padres camp, and based on early looks, he has made a mechanical change. Yet it still seems to be against the rules. Once more, this could turn into an issue.
Dennis Lin tweeted out the first clip I saw. Here’s Capps at full speed:
The Padres’ official Twitter account helpfully slowed everything down.
At this point it’s worth re-visiting what Capps looked like the last time he was healthy.
Do you see the change? Capps generated headlines because of his hop. When he was pitching with the Marlins, he would essentially leap forward from the rubber. That’s what put his delivery in the gray area. Now there’s a new twist. Capps no longer hops once, but twice. He ends up with basically the same extension as before, but the initial hop is smaller. He disengages the rubber, then he disengages the dirt. Maybe this is supposed to give Capps better body control. Maybe this is supposed to help him stay healthier. Maybe this is just to make his delivery look a little more subtle.
But based on MLB’s own interpretation of its own rules, this shouldn’t be allowed. From April 2015:
The next day, the Marlins contacted Major League Baseball seeking clarification on what Capps, who has 88 games of big league experience, was doing wrong.
“They just said they wanted me to make sure I dragged my foot and not get too elevated in the air, and make sure it’s more on a lateral plane,” Capps said. “As long as I do that, they have no problem with it. But it was very strange.”
More, from that July:
The issue is not leaping forward from the rubber but maintain contact with the ground with the toe of his right [back] foot. If any pitcher maintains contact, no matter how light, then it is legal.
“They sent to me the same heads up to make sure Carter has a drag line, which he does,” Jennings told WEEI.com. “It was a light drag line. Earlier, it was a little bit heavier. I know someone sent me some video. I think it was NESN. But they really focused on his foot. You can see it’s a light line, and that’s all he has to do, make sure there’s a drag line. We’ve been in compliance with MLB and the umpires. And the umpires have been great to help us.
“They sent us some video a month ago, right before we sent him down to work on it. We’ve been in compliance with what they say constitutes a legal pitch. The one thing you don’t want to do is change a kid’s mechanics and see a kid hurt his arm. As long as he’s dragging the drag line with his toe, then it’s good.”
According to the league, Capps can throw how he likes, so long as his back foot never comes completely off the ground. I’m not going to go frame-by-frame, but if you re-visit the slow-motion video from this week, it would certainly appear that Capps’ back foot lifts off the mound during the initial hop. That’s what allows the toe of his cleat to change direction so quickly. During the second hop, maybe there’s a drag line, and maybe there isn’t. I don’t know. But Capps’ delivery has not become any more conventional. It’s just differently weird.
Could be, this would be an easy fix. Alternatively, could be the league doesn’t care. This one issue is really two issues. (1) Is it allowed? (2) Should it be? Even if the league decides Capps can keep doing this — and I assume that’ll be the case — this is going to go right back to being controversial, with Capps healthy and on a big-league roster. The relief of 2016 was only temporary, and Capps is going back to traveling. And while, on the one hand, no one expects the Padres to play a bunch of important games, an effective Capps could easily get traded around the deadline. So then the league could have Capps pitching in the playoffs, or even in the World Series. I’ve never before seen a delivery quite like this one, so I can forgive the league for not being prepared, but this has potential headache written all over it.
Conveniently, the footage of Capps in the bullpen is also footage of four other pitchers in the bullpen. So to help explain how the double-jump confers an advantage, I’ve approximated pitcher release points in here, with Capps in red.
Remember: It’s insane. It’s all insane. According to Baseball Savant, Capps’ forward extension effectively adds 3.6 miles per hour to his fastball. His fastball already clocks in around the upper 90s. No other pitcher has such a positive difference between actual velocity and perceived velocity. Tyler Glasnow, at +3.0, is the only pitcher within one tick. Capps’ fastball becomes completely terrifying.
…which works to the benefit of his curveball. Hitters have to brace themselves for the heat, because the necessary reaction time is borderline impossible. So it’s unfair when Capps breaks something off. In 2015, hitters swung at 84 of Capps’ curveballs. They missed with 64 of those swings. The numbers don’t make sense.
When Capps was last healthy, he posted the lowest contact rate of the PITCHf/x era. He posted the fourth-best FIP-, and the third-best xFIP-. His exaggerated delivery played a big part in that, and now, although the delivery has been tweaked, it still accomplishes the same thing. If anything, it might allow Capps to be more consistent. He’ll begin the season with an also-ran, but if he dominates, he’ll be highly sought after. He could go to a contender, and he could bring back a haul. Which would be significant, given how much disagreement there is over whether he should be able to throw like he does in the first place.
The last time Capps pitched, the league provided some clarity regarding what it would allow. Even that clarity seemed to be made up on the spot. Capps has now doubled his number of jumps, and it looks like, at least in the first one, his back foot comes completely off the ground. My hunch is, baseball isn’t finished having to respond to this. As long as Carter Capps is healthy and able to pitch, people are going to wonder why on Earth he can do what he does. And one shouldn’t forget that younger players like to mimic the things they see in the majors. I’m not sure how much MLB wants to see Carter Capps end up in the spotlight.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
I normally have nuanced, sometimes verbose views on things, but this is pretty simple: it either is against the rules or the rules should be amended to more clearly disallow it.
It needs to be a rule that is actually enforceable too. I have no idea how an umpire is supposed to be able to see if he drags his foot for each pitch. Just make a hop forward illegal. MLB should avoid being too cute here (like the NFL eg-“completing the act of catch”, etc). Rule should be black and white; easily enforceable.
The issue is that every pitcher drags their foot forward a considerable distance. My personal drag marks are over a foot long and I throw in the 70s. So you’re going to be dealing with some kind of gray area.
Pushing off the rubber and dragging your foot is one thing, but Capps adds a hop (with a toe drag) after the initial push off. That hop is what moves it out of the gray area into the illegal. What is to stop anyone adding 2 or 3 more hops?
The mound eventually ends
additional hops would decrease velocity and control/command
The NFL’s rules are obnoxiously nuanced because teams are so adamant about finding loopholes and things to exploit. If the NFL had a rule that said “you can’t use two hands to catch the ball,” players would learn to catch with their fingers instead of palms because “well, you didn’t say fingers!”
Anyway, I wonder if MLB couldn’t just say “hey Carter, YOUR delivery is illegal, stop it.” I’m sure there are legal reasons why they can’t. But instead of muddying up a rule, just tell this one player that there’s been a ruling about his specific motions.
Yeah, I don’t know how to add nuance to this. It’s clearly not fair. It’s not like he’s doing this to get to “pretty good.” He’s doing this and making himself the best reliever imaginable and it is excruciatingly clear that it he is only that good because of the hop. It is anti-competitive and unfair.
Here’s video of Capps’ delivery beginning in 2018:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty_QxHOeErw
Wow! And look at the strength of Gary Sanchez’s arm.
So this is 100% cheating, right?
Not according to the rules lawyer-ish point of view that anything not explicitly disallowed is okay.
Yeah I think this is more clear than the old one, he jumps forward resets and lunges again, clearly not throwing from the rubber. At least the lunge appears way less violent.
He begins at the rubber. NO pitcher releases with the back foot on the rubber.
Does this new one actually look more illegal, or is that just me? Before it was just one hop, which you could sort of write off as a really explosive push off, but this is legitimately taking two hops toward the plate and decreasing the distance he had to throw the ball (the old one was too, but at least it was basically all one motion). I mean, if this is legal, why not take more hops toward the plate? How many hops are legal?
Yeah, seems like they’ve got a draw a line on that one more clear than “as long as his foot maintains contact with the ground.” Theoretically, you could sort of toe drag/hop until you’re 20 feet away from the hitter then, right?
And yeah, I totally just hopped around my office on one foot to see if I could hop around while still dragging my foot on the ground. I think it worked? Also, I’m blaming Sullivan when they send HR to ask me about what I’m doing hopping around the office
He could totally just shamble, zombie-style, to just outside the batter’s box and throw a fastball from 5 feet away.
The toe-dragging rule is just waiting to be exploited by a forward-thinking front office!
If he was a baseball coach, Bill Belichick would be all over this.
Scouting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW1XG–YBLE
Yeah, the old motion I could at least connect back to the idea of pushing off the rubber. But if you can do two hops, where does it ever end?
If you ask Bryce Harper, he’d probably say that this is a great “making baseball more fun” example.
They will downvote the Hell out of you, but you’re right.
Did he have a more conventional delivery as he came up in the minors/college? It feels like something an organization would discourage unless the player had already tried a normal delivery and not found success.
He used to have a more conventional delivery (including in the minors and, I believe, before going to the Marlins when he was with the Mariners). Here’s an old video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvfmdVS_K5o.
This is an 80 grade title for me.
MLB needs to nip this in the bud now. If they continue to allow this it won’t be long until we see the equivalent of a full crow hop (while carefully dragging one’s back foot) and essentially throwing the ball at the bottom of the mound or even touching the grass.
Every time I see a video of Carter Capps pitching, I just laugh and wonder how it is that MLB has allowed this farce to continue this long.
I always thought Walden’s was illegal, but by their statement that dragging the foot allows for the hop, Walden’s and 2015 Capps were legal. However, pushing off twice (foot dragging or not) is illegal. If it is legal, why should he stop at just two push offs? You could get 20′ off the mound and a 80 mph pitch would be unhittable. The only drawback would be if someone was on base.
I’m a huge Capps fan but he’s by no means a sympathetic figure here. It’s not like he hops due to some deformity or health problem — he hops because it’s a huge advantage and because MLB hasn’t gotten their ish together enough to outlaw it.
And that’s absolutely what they should do. They should outlaw it. I was back and forth on this in 2015, but now frankly I don’t know what I was thinking.
The rule change you’d need to make is easy: “No hopping allowed.” It would not be ambiguous or hard to enforce.
And Capps’s response would be easy too. There’s nothing about his mechanics to suggest he can’t simply take a normal stride, which he should be able to get used to with just a few reps. Then he’ll just be a “normal” pitcher with 99 mph heat. Poor him.
I mean if this is going to be allowed…can’t wait for players to sneak in functional running head starts.
Forget where I read it but you can’t do that. IIRC, you must start your motion in contact with the rubber.
Sprint toward the mound from 2nd then start your hop-step crap when you hit the rubber (only with the bases empty so as not to balk)…. but they’ll always be empty because nobody will hit your 110mph+ perceived velocity.
Olympic triple jumpers could be the new market inefficiency
No. That’s explicitly prohibited. There’s a rule that prohibits a “quick pitch” which is stepping onto the rubber and delivering the pitch without coming to a stop. See the comments to rules 5.07(a)(1) and 5.07(a)(2).
You’ll hear “quick pitch” used these days, but they mean something different than this pitching infraction.
It is also quite odd how he wrist wraps and drags the ball across his butt cheek as part of his arm action. It must literally look like he’s pulling the ball out of his ass to a batter.
He’s hiding the grip from the batter. Because of the hop(s), he can’t bring his arm forward in sync with his leg kick, so he needs a place to put it (the arm) while his lower body does its thing such that the batter can’t catch a glimpse of the finger arrangement before the pitch is spun.
Most pitchers lose contact with the ground/rubber but the re plant and second push is clearly wrong.
The movement is still one continuous motion even though virtually every pitcher loses contact with the rubber before he actually releases the ball. There is nothing continuous about what Capps is doing.
Actually, with regard to pitching motions, “continuous” means that there is always something moving, so Capps’s motion is actually “continuous.”
Frankly, im surprised it took 100+ years for someone to try this.
Or, those who had tried it never made it anywhere near the MLB.
I had seen a couple guys do something similar in my area years ago. I believe one made it as far as AA.
This is my favorite pitcher in baseball not named Kershaw. I hope this stays legal unless others imitate him.
I like the uniqueness of it. Baseball is better for having special snowflakes everywhere. Ideally those hurling or whacking spheres at 100+ mph. But at some point, uniqueness has to take a back seat to rules.
Personally, I’m fine with pitchers disengaging the rubber as they complete their motion toward the base. Basically everyone does it anyway. But the difference is that their arms are already progressing toward the batter (and usually well past their torso) by the time it happens, and I think this might be the easiest way to rule out deliveries like this. Disengaging the rubber is fine, but only under two conditions: the plant foot must maintain contact with the dirt, and the hand of the throwing arm must be past the midpoint of the torso perpendicular to the line from the pitcher to the base to which he is throwing. Play is reviewable.
The wording is a bit awkward, simply because there aren’t any nice midpoints on the first/third base lines, but you get the idea. Basically all current pitchers would be fine, and the wording is general enough to account for a all of the different throwing motions (from submarine to straight over-the-top and everything in between), since it is phrased in terms of the hand, not the elbow or the angle of the torso. But while current pitchers (who we generally agree are very acceptable) are fine, Capps would be ruled out since his arm doesn’t move from his hip until after the rubber is disengaged.
Okay, how about if mlb allows every player to cheat in one way, and players put a patent on their way of cheating?
Dibs on steroids
I don’t get mad at much. But this makes me angry. As said if his new motion is legal why wouldnt he just continue doing it 3 more times? Why is this so hard? One guy does it. Here’s what mlb should do. Ready?
“You can’t hop.”
“We’d like clarification on what a hop is.”
“You can’t hop.”
“Can you explain that?”
“You can’t hop. He’s hopping. When he stops hopping we will let you know”.
Problem solved.
My thoughts exactly.
“You cannot replant your pivot foot during your motion. You know what that means.”
That’s what the rule needs to say. But it doesn’t say that now.
I so wish fangraphs would let me post that James Franco “Same but different but still the same” gif…
See, this is totally different. That one is “din din din di-di-din din” while mine is “DIN din din din di-di-din din”
I, for one, would like to see Capps eventually hop all the way to home plate before completing his pitching motion.
i more want to see someone else do this to troll capps
Bartolo Colon should attempt it and then promptly retire as the ultimate mic drop.
If Bartolo did it, he might violate the MLB pitch clock rules. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVfOLcd0otc
This is ridiculous – and it needs to be dealt with now and made clear before it even comes near a game. The MLB has to take a lot of responsibility for this, they had an opportunity to use common sense and sort it out – they didn’t – and now Capps is taking a mile when given a yard.
Get a backbone and sort it out, MLB.
Dude looks like he’s crow hopping the ball to home plate
I asked Eno about this during today’s chat. His response was “God I hope it’s just a practice thing”. If it isn’t cheating what is? C’mon baseball and get your head out of where the sun don’t shine.
What MLB has to do is to make it explicitly illegal for the pivot foot to plant a second time during the pitcher’s delivery. Some rule sets refer to this as a “crow hop.”
It is not currently illegal under the Official Baseball Rules. It is illegal according to the interpretation MLB issued in response to earlier complaints about Capps’ delivery.
Yes, I know in a windup, a pitcher’s pivot lifts and resets. That’s been referred to as “clearing the cleats” and is not considered a violation.
I can’t wait for him to pitch opposing Trevor Bauer who will trollingly hop halfway down to the plate and throw a pitch and look around confused as to what he did wrong?
Screw it, hop 48 times and place the ball in the catchers glove.
All the comments boil down to “it’s not conventional, so it’s illegal, or should be”. He’s just pushing the rule to the limit. Complaints like “it’s not fair”, or “it violates the ‘spirit’ of the rule” are not valid arguments.
If you want to argue about something truly strange, argue that a right handed pitcher can make a throw to third, but every left handed pitcher who does it gets called for a balk.
Yes, they are valid arguments. That you fail to understand that is your problem. He’s not pushing a rule to its limits. He’s breaking the rule. And yes, the “spirit” of the rule is very much relevant. If you don’t understand why a rule was made in the first place, you have nothing to go on. The point of the rule is to prevent excessive forward motion during delivery that significantly shortens the distance between the pitch and home plate. Recognizing that the whole point of the rules is “fairness” is ENTIRELY valid. In fact, nothing else is. What are you even talking about?
Your second paragraph is your own fallacy. Why complain about *this* when you could be complaining about *that*?!? We’re allowed to point out multiple things that are wrong.
Can you cite the exact rule that’s being violated?
Actually, no he isn’t. There is nothing in the Official
Baseball Rules that makes his move illegal. 5.07(a)(1) and 5.07(a)(2) are for windup and set positions, respectively, and 6.02 defines pitcher illegal actions, and none have anything that covers this move.
Just hop and slide to about 10 feet from the plate and unleash a fastball.
The problem for me really isn’t his fastball. Sure, it’s fast and it looks faster than it is, but it’s no worse than Chapman’s ridiculous natural speed. The problem is the curveball, because moving closer with the hop step means that it comes from an angle that is more or less impossible to achieve while in contact with the rubber. It’s both much farther forward and much closer to the ground than is possible otherwise (because he’s literally hopping /down/ the mound as he goes).
i’m not sure “it’s no worse than chapman” is really the… i mean… what if chapman himself did this. we’d all be dead
I dunno, man. Part of me honestly questions whether Chapman could even throw a strike if he tried a hop step; he’s wild enough as it is.
That aside, if Capps throws 98 mph on average (though that in itself is probably slightly skewed because he’s closer to the radar gun’s pickup point [ten feet in front of the rubber iirc] than another pitcher would be), then his perceived speed is around 101.6 mph. That’s… pretty much dead-on Chapman speed. And unlike Capps’ curve, Chapman’s slider is easier for batters to hit off of than his fastball.
“I dunno, man. Part of me honestly questions whether Chapman could even throw a strike if he tried a hop step; he’s wild enough as it is.”
that’s part of the reason we’d all be dead
I haven’t heard this brought up yet, but I think this delivery is actually dangerous too (in addition to illegal). Just like he is reducing the time the batter has to react to the pitch, he is also reducing the time he has to react to a batted ball coming right back at his head. And the closer you stand to the batter, the more likely you are to get hit. MLB needs to act.
That also means that if he ever gets it in his head to throw AT a batter, they have less time to dodge or turn away. I hadn’t considered that before, but that’s just… not acceptable.
I don’t see how making two jumps towards the plate can possibly be legal. On the other hand, I saw an NBA player make two jumps towards the basket and not get called for traveling.
If Capps’ two jumps are legal, what if a pitcher makes multiple jumps halfway to the plate, maintaining a “drag line” the entire time? Still legal?
I read this article, and watched the videos, and have an MRI scheduled for 3pm
This just shouldn’t be an issue. Both of the deliveries are transparently illegal. Mlb has been fortunate in the sense that as soon as capps gets into a serious playoff-type situation, the absurdity of the situation will be obvious to baseball fans in general and they’ll be forced to change, but they won’t be able to do it until the following season and a world series title might be decided by their laziness in dealing with this issue,
Where in the rules does it specifically say that a pitcher can’t run halfway to home plate out of the set position before delivering the pitch?
The rule just says you have to pitch from the set position. This is not pitching from the set position. It’s hopping forward and then pitching. In the same way that you can’t get set and then run halfway to home plate before pitching, you can’t do this.
That is exactly the problem. The Official Baseball Rules do not explicitly make the hop and replant illegal. I think this is a case where the rule writers did not anticipate anyone trying this.
This move would be explicitly illegal in softball rules. It’s referred to as a “crow hop.” MLB just needs to adopt that rule, or something very similar.
carter this is not ‘nam, this is pitching. there are rules
The Umps are “still basically” saying its not “against the rules”
I am almost certain that a few years ago there was a Rockies pitcher who did the same thing, maybe even more pronounced. I say it because I was fooling around playing stickball and hopped before delivering which drove the batters nuts, and then soon after I saw a Rockies pitcher do it in a game. Since he got away with it, I claimed my delivery was legal too.
Just tried to physically attempt his delivery – It is really hard to get any kind of consistency in my mechanics, so I don’t foresee many pitchers following suit. It must cannibalize command, which makes almost anyone using the delivery a reliever.
I knew about Waldens funky hop he does, but this one is really cool. Love it.
Capps is saying this is just a spring training thing, his delivery will be the same as always: http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/sports/padres/sd-sp-padnotes-20170219-story.html
How many hops will he have to add before the MLB shuts this down.