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May 08, 2013

What nobody is talking about

There are plenty of hot topics in baseball today, a sampling of which includes:

{exp:list_maker}Justin Upton is killing the ball while his brother, B.J., is getting killed.
The Red Sox and Yankees are 1-2 in the American League East, just as God—or at least ESPN—intended it, while the Blue Jays absorbed the Marlins' big payroll obligations yet continue to absorb loss after loss.
Those same Yankees have compiled one of baseball's better records while nearly $100 million in payroll sits on the disabled list.
Roy Halladay has looked, at best, mortal, at worst, mostly dead, and now he's on the DL.
Los Angeles' two franchises are scuffling along with sub-.500 records despite adding making major salary outlays over the winter.
Strikeouts, strikeouts, strikeouts! Oh, the humanity, strikeouts everywhere!!!{/exp:list_maker}
While all of these stories and many others are quite deserving of the coverage they've received, there's one story that seems to have all but evaporated in terms of the attention it's getting now compared to before the season started.
Click for more...

Posted by: Greg Simons

April 22, 2013

FCC failure

I imagine everyone has seen the video already. If not, here it is.

In it, David Ortiz expressed his thanks to the mayor of Boston, the governor of Massachusetts and the city police department for their efforts in the wake of the April 15 bombing. All well said, and I—and everyone else around the country—agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment.

However, it seems somebody somewhere ought to point out that Ortiz's dropping of the F-bomb a few seconds later to a stadium full of people and to a television audience of millions was in error, even if it was heartfelt. (To his credit, Ortiz did apologize afterward, saying, "It just came out. If I offended anyone, I apologize.")

Instead, the Federal Communications Commission implictly endorsed Ortiz's choice of words with the following Tweet:

David Ortiz spoke from the heart at today's Red Sox game. I stand with Big Papi and the people of Boston - Julius

The Julius credited with this message is Julius Genachowski, the chairman of the FCC. As a Harvard grad—and, again, as an American—his personal feelings on this issue are completely understandable.

However, as the head of the organization charged with preventing indecency on the airwaves, Genachowski should have tempered his approval of Ortiz's language. I don't know if he has a personal Twitter account, but that would have been a better platform for such a statement. Sure, rules are made to be broken, but the rule-makers shouldn't be supporting their breaking.
Posted by: Greg Simons

Allen Webster impresses, disappoints?

I was excited to see Allen Webster take the mound in a Boston Red Sox uniform Sunday night. Yes, I am a Red Sox fan, but I also am a PITCHf/x fan. To my knowledge, tonight was the first time that Webster has thrown in front of PITCHf/x cameras in a major league ballpark. Scouts rave about Webster’s fastball, and about how much it moves. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Red Sox director of player development Ben Crockett had this to say about Webster:

His fastball moves so much that he doesn’t necessarily have to be really fine with it, throwing it to the black at all times. Because of the late action and the velocity that he has on that pitch, he has the luxury of probably pitching a little bit more to the halves of the plate or the thirds of the plate than the corners, like some guys need to.

Webster appeared confident in his fastball in the early going, as he challenged Kansas City’s best hitters with it. His fastball touched 97 mph in the first inning, though it didn’t really return to that level afterward. He threw two change-ups in the first inning, and he was able to generate great arm side movement on them even though his arm action seemed a bit tentative.

The right-hander was able to better spot his fastball in the second and third innings, and he also started to work his change-up in more often. I couldn’t tell if he was throwing one or two breaking balls, but he does throw both a curveball and a slider. He used breaking balls often to get a called strike, and none looked particularly impressive.

After allowing a solo home run to George Kattaras in the fifth, Webster came back with a breaking ball and two change-ups to strike out Elliot Johnson. He began to rely heavily on his off-speed stuff after allowing his second solo home fun in the fifth; it looked like Kansas City hitters were keying in on his fastball, which was no longer looking like a plus pitch.

After a long half inning on the bench, Webster struggled to control his fastball a bit in the sixth. In an effort to be more accurate with the pitch, it looked like he took a little off. His average fastball velocity in the sixth was 1-2 mph lower than in the first. It did look like he threw more two-seam fastballs as the game progressed, but he also was fighting control issues.

Now that we’ve seen Webster throw in front of the cameras, we can evaluate Crockett’s claim quantitatively. PITCHf/x results from the early innings revealed that his four-seamer moved around three inches horizontally and around 10 inches vertically (before accounting for the effects of gravity). His two-seamer had an additional three inches of arm side movement, and less “vertical” movement. According to Texas Leaguer’s league chart, average horizontal movement for four-seamers and two-seamers is about five inches and eight inches, respectively. Webster wasn’t far from the league average in terms of vertical movement, either.

Exceptional Movement? Live fastball? Not exactly.

Note: I heard that classifications on PITCHf/x data (made available a few hours ago) are rough right now , and I might not have been to able clearly differentiate between two-seam and four-seam fastballs. I defined fastballs as pitches that hit 90 mph or higher, and found that Webster might actually have more vertical fastball movement than I came up with originally.

Posted by: Noah Woodward

April 04, 2013

Ubaldo Jimenez: perception vs. reality

Cleveland Indians' hurler Ubaldo Jimenez has a lot in common with his teammates Trevor Bauer and Scott Kazmir—they're all trying to fix various mechanical issues.

Bauer believes how his back leg operated caused a groin strain, so he's changed how he initiates linear movement. Kazmir's velocity dropped like a stone and he started becoming more methodical on the mound; after visiting the Texas Baseball Ranch and Dynamic Sports Training in Texas, he's regained that explosiveness.

Jimenez' mechanical issues have been well-documented on THT by yours truly (original article, recap article), but he and his coaches don't necessarily agree with my conclusions.

In an article yesterday, Jorge Arangure Jr. wrote:

Jimenez would spend hours watching video of his most successful years and comparing it to video of how he currently pitched. The differences were striking. Who was this guy? The new Ubaldo stopped using his left shoulder to balance himself, which in turn sapped him of all the torque that he used to create to throw the ball at high speeds. The new Ubaldo could hardly muster a ball over 90 mph. His delivery had become slow, deliberate and calculated. It was if he had been trying to deconstruct every movement.

This isn't the first time his front shoulder has been mentioned. Terry Pluto of The Plain Dealer wrote:

New pitching coach Mickey Callaway simply asked Jimenez to not pause his windup and to keep his front shoulder pointed toward home plate.

Doug Thorburn of Baseball Prospectus focused on Ubaldo's front shoulder, saying:

I happen to disagree with Kyle's assertion that Ubaldo's struggles have nothing to do with the front shoulder, especially given that the issues with early arm action are mostly harmful if they have the ripple effect of creating early rotation and "shoulder flying open." ... In this case, I had noticed both the early hand separation and the bizarre wrist-flick as the throwing arm reaches its lowest point (in CLE), however I do not consider these to be glaring issues.

Well, it appears that Jimenez has been listening to all this discussion of how to use his front shoulder. To all of that, I have this to say: Be careful what you wish for.

Here's what he looks like in 2010 (96 mph), 2012 (91 mph), and the first start of 2013 (90 mph):



Want to see what he looks like now compared to when he was a fireballing phenom in Colorado—in painfully slow motion?



If Jimenez thinks that what he is doing now is anything like what he did in Colorado when he was at his best, he is... well, obviously incorrect.

Why did he think that he "used his front shoulder to balance himself?" He never used his front shoulder in such a manner; he makes it sound like that he levered it like Andy Pettitte does. Ubaldo never once looked like that. He was more athletic, more fluid, more explosive. His arm action was more efficient; it wasn't forced.

These mechanics below are as close as he has ever gotten to regaining that 2010 tempo, rhythm, arm action, and most importantly, velocity:

Changing arm action without changing arm action

It is widely held that arm action cannot (or should not) be directly changed by manipulating the movement of the throwing arm; that instead, we should use the glove arm and other things in the delivery to make the changes we desire in the throwing arm. That is what Thorburn, Callaway, and others are espousing. Jimenez now has an incredible shoulder tilt, a pitching arm that is pinned to his side during the linear shift, a glove arm that gets no extension, a soft front side, and a stride angle that deflects open by an outrageous amount (which has strong correlation with increased elbow valgus stress).

These mechanics as displayed against Toronto cannot and will not restore his velocity. Will it allow him to be an effective pitcher? Perhaps. But the Cleveland Indians didn't trade for a No. 3 control-type pitcher when they parted with Drew Pomeranz, Alex White, Joe Gardner, and Matt McBride. They thought they were getting a fireballer who could dominate on any given night, a guy who could flash upper 90s heat at-will.

Ubaldo Jimenez will never be that guy again if he continues to throw the way he does——and I believe he will continue to lose velocity throughout the season if these mechanics keep up.
Posted by: Kyle Boddy

March 29, 2013

Mark Appel: What the heck happened?

In my last year's article about Stanford right-hander Mark Appel, I said:

...I kept thinking to myself, "If you have a 96-98 mph heater but can't reliably command it, do you really have it at all?" It's to his credit that he has the intelligence and humbleness to understand when he can't throw his best bolt where he needs it, but that's a trait you want to see from the fringe guys who have to maximize their stuff, not necessarily big-time prospects.

Well, take a look at his 2012 stats vs. his 2013 stats so far:

2012: 2.56 ERA, 0.22 HR/9, 2.2 BB/9, 9.51 K/9
2013: 1.18 ERA, 0.24 HR/9, 1.66 BB/9, 12.79 K/9

Though Pac-12 play is still in the early stages, Stanford's schedule has not been a cakewalk. As of March 29, it ranks 78th in all of Division-I.

What changed?

I've been watching Stanford games on the Internet, and the only mechanical difference between 2013 and 2012 is that Appel is a little faster to the plate and has a bit better rhythm. That would dovetail nicely with the reports I hear from pro scouts about his average velocity being up a tick, more like 94-96 rather than 92-94 with your occasional bolt. I've heard that he's been throwing his four-seam fastball on a more downward plane instead of relying on his two-seam/sinker to get groundball outs, and that could be a big reason that his strikeout rate has jumped.

He still has fastball command issues: When he unleashes his best at 97-98, it is likely to miss up and to the arm side. He doesn't command his best bolt very well and doesn't seem to be able to reliably throw it for strikes, which was the case when I saw him against Washington in 2012. The big difference is that he won't abandon this pitch anymore; he'll just shave off a bit and still aggressively attack the zone with it.

Prior to 2013, I wasn't buying the first pick, first round hype on Appel. But now that I've seen his changed approach and the increasingly ridiculous statistics (remember, he got shelled in his first start against Rice), I've got one leg solidly on the bandwagon of Mark Appel going 1-1 in the draft to the Houston Astros.
Posted by: Kyle Boddy


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