For starting pitchers, 'off days' aren't what they seem
By Mike Dodd, USA TODAY
If all goes well, a starting pitcher will make an appearance for about two hours every five days.
He'll be in the spotlight, with his performance replayed, analyzed and packaged into the nightly recap shows. He'll be an automatic post-game interview subject for the media, whether he pitched one inning or nine. When the clubhouse empties, he'll slip back into relative obscurity for another four days.
Nice gig. The pay is great and the hours are OK. But to call his time between starts "off days" is a misnomer, because a spot in a major-league starting rotation is a full-time job.
Starting pitchers do more than run their teams' kangaroo courts and NCAA tournament pools on off days. They follow a disciplined routine to help their bodies recover from the taxing activity and to prepare mentally and physically for their next start in five days.
Milwaukee Brewers left-hander Doug Davis, 2-2 with a 5.32 earned-run average in eight starts this year, is fairly typical in his approach, mixing physical and mental preparation in almost equal doses.
In his third full season with the Brewers after spending parts of the previous four seasons with the Texas Rangers and Toronto Blue Jays, Davis features a fastball in the 85- to 90-mile-an-hour range, a cut fastball, a big-breaking curve and a change-up.
To provide a snapshot of a pitcher's work on his "off days," USA TODAY followed the 30-year-old's routine between two recent starts. The rundown:
Game day
Starting the middle of a three-game series April 29 against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, Davis pitches 6 1/3 innings, giving up one run on five hits, to earn his first win of the year. It follows three no-decisions and two poor outings — a nine-run, 2 2/3-inning start against Houston and a five-inning start against Cincinnati in which he walked nine.
Against the Cubs he throws 108 pitches but struggles with control again, walking five.
Day 1
Recovery day is usually the heaviest physical day of preparation, and perhaps the most important.
"You take a little mental shower coming off the game," Brewers pitching coach Mike Maddux says. "You think about what you want to do tomorrow to prepare yourself for your game three days (later). And it's usually a good blowout day as far as conditioning goes." It includes heavy cardiovascular exercise to "get all the bad blood out," he adds. "But you start thinking about your next opponent."
It's a given that the pitcher is sore the next day. What hurts the most?
"The better question is what doesn't hurt," says Davis, who takes two Aleve tablets every morning and two at night. "It's not just your arm. ... Yes, your arm is sore, but it's also attached to the rest of your body and you don't use only your arm."
Most notably, he says, the pivoting and twisting in the delivery and follow-through places significant strain on his back. "If I don't do maintenance on my back, I'm not going to be able to throw in five days," he says.
Because it's a rainy Sunday morning and the workout facilities for visiting teams at Wrigley are sparse, it will be a lighter-than-normal day for Davis.
He arrives at the park about 9 a.m. (for a 1:20 p.m. game), takes his Aleve, grabs breakfast and heads for the training room for what players say is a "fluff job," a light to moderate massage working out kinks in the shoulder and arm muscles. Next, he puts in about 25 minutes on the stationary bike in the cramped clubhouse, using the exercise as his "flush run."
"You're getting blood circulation going through your sore muscles. The muscles revive faster," he says.
Davis tailors his routine to how he feels. If he's particularly sore, he'll take it easy with the rest of his workout, putting it off to the next day. This day, he is sore and there's no weight room for visiting teams at Wrigley anyway, he says, so the routine is scaled down.
Typically, though, he'll start with about 40 minutes of work for his upper body, doing two sets of 10 repetitions of exercises training the major muscles at various weights. "It's not really a heavy weight because I don't want to get really tight in my upper body." It includes "core work" on his abs and back.
The "flush run" typically follows the weight work, about 30 minutes on an elliptical machine that gives him the desired cardiovascular workout without the pounding on the knees and back that he would feel in running. (It's not unusual to see pitchers running the stairs in the stands of empty ballparks as part of their cardio work.)
The routine includes the daily responsibilities of shagging flies in the outfield during batting practice, which has no value in the workout regime. "You're really out there to support your hitters," Davis says.
The day after a starter's turn in the rotation, he draws duty collecting balls in short center field and risking life and limb to bring the buckets of balls back to the mound. "It's the worst job we have," he says. "When we're on the road, I'll pay a bat boy ($20 or so) to do it. ... At home, we don't have anyone (else), so we have to do it."
Day 2
Bullpen Day, the most pitching-specific in the routine.
Davis arrives at Miller Park in Milwaukee about 1:30 p.m. (for a 7:05 p.m. game). He starts with about 20 to 25 minutes in a hot-cold whirlpool, alternating between 50-to-60-degree and 105-degree water at three-minute intervals, designed to revive muscles in the lower half of his body.
He'll play catch in the outfield in the early stages of batting practice, then head for the bullpen for his 14-minute throwing session with Maddux. Bullpen sessions generally have a specific objective, varying from start to start.
Because Davis is struggling with his control, particularly out of the stretch, this session focuses on the mechanics of his delivery from the stretch. Most of the 60 or so pitches he throws, at about 70% of game-intensity, are from the stretch; Maddux stops the action to discuss particular parts of the motion. They make a minor adjustment in the leg kick, correcting a flaw spotted in video review, that enables Davis to get his arm higher in the motion.
In other sessions, it might be a particular pitch that needs work. Sometimes pitchers visualize throwing to certain hitters they'll face next start.
"Some days you can't hit the left side of a barn and it's a conditioning day," Maddux says. "But you always have a subject matter in mind, why you're out there. ... Every pitch has a purpose."
After the bullpen, Davis does the weight work he skipped the previous day, plus the standard second-day work. The Day 2 routine includes lower body work with Pilates and maintenance exercises with trainers who offer manual resistence as he moves his arm through various motions. The goal of the latter is to strengthen the "decelerator" muscles that slow the arm after delivery, so many of the motions are the reverse or opposite of the pitching action. The work routine often ends with ice and electronic stimulation on the arm.
Study for the next opponent also can begin — the less familiar the pitcher is with the team, the more video review and discussions of the scouting reports with Maddux. National League Central Division foes, who play the Brewers between 15 and 19 times a year, require the least review. This week, Davis doesn't start looking at video of his next opponent, the San Francisco Giants, until the third day.
Day 3
Physical work begins to taper as specific preparation for the next opponent increases.
Davis teams with a trainer on "kinetic chain" exercises, forward and side lunges while holding five-pound dumbbells in each hand, again stressing the decelerator muscles. He adds another 20 minutes on the elliptical, plays long-toss catch during batting practice and throws 10 or 15 pitches from flat ground in the outfield.
Next, he heads for the video room down the hall from the clubhouse for scouting work. Video is stored on a computer that enables players and coaches to pull up every opposing hitter's prior at bats against Davis, so he can review his approach and results. He'll also look at the opponents' most recent game against a left-handed pitcher and/or recent games against lefties similar to Davis.
"I've faced (former Chicago Cub) Moises Alou for the last three years. I know how I'm going to go about pitching to him. ... ... I'll watch the guys I really don't know. I don't know (Omar) Vizquel that well, so we went over him a good 15 minutes.
"If it's a team I don't know ... I'll probably go a good three days looking at them, maybe an hour a day, and go over them with Maddux to see what he thinks about some guys."
On the first day of a series, pitchers, catchers and coaches will meet before batting practice to review the scouting reports and game plans.
The Brewers have the Major League Baseball cable TV package, so Maddux encourages his pitchers to duck into the clubhouse to watch their next opponent's at-bats if that game is shown.
Day 4
Rest and final preparations come today with the lightest physical work while gearing up mentally.
Davis does his heaviest video review the day before he pitches and will chart the Brewers' game from the dugout, recording every pitch to Giants hitters — the type of pitch and the result. "A lot of teams don't do that, but we do," he says. "You can learn a few things about the team you have to face, get a hint at what I might want to do" with a particular hitter.
When the Brewers are up, he'll sometimes go inside to do light exercises "just to fire the muscles."
"I'll get my protein shake in me and get my amino acid built back up, maybe take a couple of amino acid pills to build up the muscles," he says.
Maddux says the club has a host of support personnel like trainers and strength coaches to oversee the workouts, but it's the pitcher who has to get his head ready.
"It's four days of mental (preparation) for one day of physical," Maddux says. "The physical's a given. What separates guys in the major leagues is the mental edge."
Game day
Davis arrives at the park about 9:30 a.m. for the 12:05 p.m. start, watches more tape and eats his standard pre-game meal — a tuna fish sandwich. He heads for the training room at about 11 for stretching and takes the field for warm-ups about 30 minutes before the first pitch.
Against the Giants he pitches six innings, giving up no runs on four hits, to record his second win in a row. "He's almost 100% back on track," manager Ned Yost says.
Davis says the outing was just OK. The three walks are an improvement but still too many for six innings.
"We went out and worked in the stretch in my last bullpen and worked on staying back and letting my arm come through," he tells reporters. "I'm getting the walks down ... but there's still more work."
For any pitcher, it's always a work in progress, with a routine repeated about 35 times a year. And it begins again tomorrow
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