Sunday Notes: Rockies’ Bettis, Padres, Adonis, Indians, IBBs, more

Chad Bettis throws both a cutter and a slider. Or maybe he throws cutters but not sliders? That determination largely depends on how you parse pitches. Whatever your opinion, you probably won’t get much of an argument from him. The Rockies right-hander isn’t 100% sure himself.

“Both,” was Bettis’s initial answer to my ‘Cutter or slider?’ question. That was followed by less-than-definitive elaboration.

“It’s the same grip; it’s just me manipulating it to make it shorter or bigger. With one, I’m more behind the ball and with the other I’m a little more on the side of it. When I want to make it a little sweepier, I can. When I want to make it short and tight like a cutter, I can do that too.”

Bettis had a slider at Texas Tech, although he’d already begun developing a cutter by the time Colorado selected him in the second round of the 2010 draft. Prior to last season, the cutter is all he’d thrown in pro ball.

The reintroduction of a slider — if that’s what you choose to call it — came about mostly by accident.

“For whatever reason, there were a couple of games where my cutter got a little big on me,” explained Bettis. “I realized what was going on and then decided I didn’t want to lose that. I began to understand how the ability to manipulate those pitches is really effective. I wanted to take it another step further, so I played around with it more over the offseason and got a better feel for it.”

Bettis told me he’s not sure what the usage ratio is between the two pitches. He did say it varies and is mostly hitter-specific. “Some guys hit cutters better than sliders, and other guys hit sliders better than cutters. Depending on who I’m facing — depending on their swing path — I might want a little more depth and side-to-side movement.”

Listening to his explanations, it sounds like the 27-year-old righty does throw both a cutter and a slider. Then again, the answer isn’t quite so simple. Again, he’s not quite sure.

“Maybe the best way to put it would be to say that my slider is a bigger cutter,” mused Bettis.”I don’t really know.”

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Alex Dickerson doesn’t have anything left to prove on the farm. The 25-year-old outfielder out of Indiana University is slashing .307/.365/.498 in 2,027 minor league plate appearances. This season he’s been a beast. Playing for San Diego’s Triple-A affiliate, the El Paso Chihuahuas, he’s eating up opposing pitchers to the tune of .409/.450/.687 over 34 games. No one at any level has a higher batting average or OPS.

The left-handed hitter has tasted big-league life. He received a cup of coffee with the Padres last September, and he went 2 for 10 in a follow-up cameo earlier this month. One of the two hits was a grand slam.

Like all accomplished hitters, Dickerson does a good job of recognizing pitches out of the hand. That doesn’t mean he always knows what he hit.

“Hitting isn’t entirely a conscious thing,” Dickerson told me this spring. “Sometimes you’re just reacting. I’ve had a number of ABs with a good result where I came in and was asked, ‘What pitch was that?’ and my answer was, ‘I don’t know.’ It could have been a two-seamer and it could have been a changeup. It might have been a four-seamer. I just saw it and hit it.”

Reaction aside, the earlier he recognizes a pitch, the better his chances.

“A lot of times, the amount of break isn’t a big deal,” said Dickerson. “With changeups, it’s ‘How long does it look like a fastball?’ With that Bugs Bunny with a 15-mph speed differential you might determine what it is right out of the gate. It’s the one that looks good on TV, but in reality is an easier pitch to hit. The harder ones are when you’re convinced it’s a fastball until it disappears under your bat.”

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On Friday, we ran an interview with Indians’ right-hander Danny Salazar. Not included was a brief exchange on his changeup. When I asked how he’d describe it, Salazar smiled and said, “It’s amazing!”

As the righty laughed, Trevor Bauer opined from the next locker that the pitch is actually a splitter. Salazar responded: “It’s a changeup, Trevor. Come on.”

After explaining the grip to me, Salazar turned to his teammate and said, “See, Trevor. It’s not a split.” Bauer, with his hand imitating a tumble, answered back: “Watch how the ball comes out. If it comes out of your hand like this, it’s a split.”

Salazar, still smiling, then returned his attention to me.

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Adam Ottavino is doing a lot of studying as he recovers from Tommy John surgery. The Colorado Rockies reliever has been venturing into the video room during games, getting real-time feedback on spin rates, spin axis and release points. He wants to take that learning a step further.

“Every ballpark has a TrackMan system, but my real goal is to have a setup like Trevor Bauer has,” Ottavino told me. “I don’t actually know Trevor, but I believe he has high-speed cameras at release, so he can see exactly how he’s holding the ball and what the result is. He can get immediate feedback, which helps him design and optimize his pitches.

“I’m very curious about spin axis. Spin rate has shown to be pretty hard to teach, but spin axis is more about how you grip the ball and throw it. That’s an adjustment a player can more easily make. If I can find some sort of trend in my pitches, some way to optimize them… I want to look for that. I’m trying to become as fluent as I can with all of those numbers, because it’s where pitching is headed these days.”

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From time to time we’ll hear an older former player criticize modern-day baseball. They think infield shifts should be banned. Sabermetrics? Nothing but a joke. Get off my lawn kids; the game was better back in the day.

Joe Sambito isn’t one of those older former players. The lefty reliever played from 1976-1987, but he’s no dinosaur.

“I have no problem with any of that,” the 63-year-old Sambito told me recently. “It’s just the evolution of the game. You can’t live in the past. Teams can do so much more and there’s no reason they shouldn’t. I have nothing against the shift. If batters don’t like it, they should hit the ball the other way to make them stop shifting. Why not be smart?”

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Adonis Garcia isn’t one of the higher-profile players to come from Cuba. The third baseman-outfielder has a .733 OPS in 86 games with Atlanta over parts of two seasons. Originally signed by the Yankees in 2012, he came to the Braves after being released last April.

Garcia is currently with Triple-A Gwinnett, but while he’s slashed .356/.413/.616 since an early-May demotion, his outlook is cloudy. The Braves are rebuilding, and the former Cuban National Series stalwart is 31 years old. And even if he does have a future with a big-league team — Atlanta or otherwise — it will likely be as a role player.

Like many players who star in Cuba, Garcia had his eyes on MLB. There were obviously challenges. Along with the need to defect — he ultimately did so via Nicaragua and Mexico — there was the question of whether he would be good enough to play at the highest level. He decided he take that chance.

“I’d always viewed MLB as the premier league, but I never seriously considered making the transition until about 2010,” Garcia told me through Braves’ Spanish interpreter Franco Garcia. “At that time, I felt I had developed enough to be up to speed. I was looking at some of my fellow countrymen — guys I’d played with who were here — and thought to myself, ‘If these guys are playing there, maybe I can too.’’

Garcia wasn’t able to contact his MLB countrymen for advice prior to arriving on US soil. Once he did, they told him to “play the exact same baseball I was playing in Cuba.”

When I asked Garcia if the quality of play is what he expected, his answer was a combination of paradoxic and philosophic.

“It’s one thing to look at the game from an outsider’s perspective, and it’s another thing to be in the middle of it,” said Garcia. “When I first got here, I was surprised to an extent. But in the same sense, I wasn’t surprised, because I knew this was the highest level of baseball. I guess you could say I was surprised, but still expecting it.”

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Ty Van Burkleo hit one home run in his brief big league career. It came on August 16, 1993 as a member of the California Angels. He doesn’t recall the blast being particularly interesting. Basically, he got enough of a pitch from Detroit’s Bill Gullickson for it to carry out.

Van Burkleo — now the hitting coach in Cleveland — remembers a non-home run as being far more interesting. It happened in his third big league game, in Anaheim against the Twins.

“I hit a ball really good to dead center against Kevin Tapani,” explained Van Burkleo. “As I was running hard to first, I was thinking, ‘This has a chance to get out.’ Right before I got to the base, I saw Shane Mack jumping up. Just at that moment, I clipped the bag and tripped. I face-planted, and my helmet came down over my face, so I had no idea if the ball went out or not. When I looked at the umpire as I scrambled to my feet, he gave me the out sign.

“It would have been not only my first home run, it would also have been my first hit. Instead, I got robbed. I saw the play later, and half of Mack’s body was at the top of the fence as he was bringing it back. It was a great catch.”

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In last Sunday’s column, A.J. Hinch weighed in on his willingness to intentionally walk a hitter with the bases loaded. The Astros manager told me “it’s a dangerous play, but it’s certainly a viable option.”

A few days ago, I asked the same question to Walt Weiss. The Rockies manager responded this way:

“It’s hard to never say never. It’s hard to make a blanket statement like that. You’d have to know who the pieces were that were involved.”

If Hinch or Weiss, or any other manager, ever does decide order an intentional walk with the bases loaded, it will be the sixth in MLB history. Per renowned baseball researcher Bill Deane (thanks to SABR’s Jacob Pomrenke for passing this along), here are the five substantiated instances:

May 23, 1901: White Sox player/manager Clark Griffith walked Philadelphia’s Napoleon Lajoie.

May 2, 1928: Giants manager John McGraw had Larry Benton walk Brooklyn’s Del Bissonette.

July 23, 1944: Giants manager Mel Ott had Eward Pyle walk Chicago’s Bill Nicholson.

May 28, 1998: Diamondbacks manager Buck Showalter had Gregg Olson walk San Francisco’s Barry Bonds.

August 17, 2008: Rays manager Joe Maddon had Grant Balfour walk Texas’ Josh Hamilton.

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Tom Hamilton has been the radio voice of the Cleveland Indians since 1990. He’s seen a lot of great players over the years, some of whom were playing in their final season. I recently asked him about David Ortiz.

“I hate when the game’s great players retire,” Hamilton told me. “We all know it’s inevitable, but when you lose a Derek Jeter or a David Ortiz… you’re talking about the best of the best in my time. They made the game special. Ortiz probably has more flair for the dramatic than any player I’ve seen.”

Hamilton and I were conversing in the visiting radio booth at Fenway Park. I asked him if he ever looks down from his birds-eye view and thinks about how he’s seeing a great player perform for the last time.

“I really haven’t, and I probably should,” admitted Hamilton. “Sometimes we take for granted that we’re here every day, and for us there will be another game tomorrow. We probably should step back and appreciate what we’ve seen. This guy is going into baseball’s Hall of Fame, and how many Hall of Famers do you get to watch?”

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LINKS YOU’LL LIKE

Mike Axisa of CBS Sports wrote about Tony LaRussa invading the Pirates radio booth during a game to dispute a beanball accusation.

Josh Norris of Baseball America wrote about how the Double-A Hartford Yard Goats may remain without a yard until next year.

Writing for Baseball Prospectus, Meg Rowley opined that we should let ballparks get old.

Over at baseballhall.org, Bruce Markuson took a look at the oldest living players.

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RANDOM FACTS AND STATS

Indians pitcher Josh Tomlin has a .600/.600/.700 slash line in 11 big-league at bats. His BABiP is 1.000.

Francisco Rodriguez earned the 400th save of his career on Tuesday. The Tigers’ reliever ranks sixth all-time.

The 11-game losing streak Cincinnati broke yesterday was the team’s longest since they lost 13 straight in the final two weeks of last season. The Reds have won 17 out of their last 64 games.

On this date in 1916, the San Francisco Giants won their 17th consecutive game after starting the season 2-13. They later went 26-0, plus one tie, from September 7-30. The Giants finished fourth in the National League with a record of 86-66.

Ted Williams reached base 4,714 times. He missed his age 24, 25 and 26 seasons, and all but 43 games of his age 34 and 35 seasons, serving in the military.

Two major league players have died while serving the country, both in World War II. Elmer Gedeon, who played for the Washington Senators in 1939, was killed in action in 1944 while flying a bombing mission over France. Harry O’Neill, who played for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1939, lost his life in Iwo Jima, in 1945.