Pitching over the years!

I was reading some articles, some on the web and some in baseball mags and found some interesting info.

I grew up as a lil RHP, I didn't throw hard but I could dice the plate and make hitters look silly by changing speeds. I also learned how to spin the ball at age 11 which I feel hindered my pitching velocity but I can not 100% pin point that accuracy about not being able to gain velocity.

Over the last few years watching some random LL games and the LLWS, I have yet to find any pitcher who is currently in the ML who threw a curve ball/cutter/slider. Can anyone identify a current ML pitcher who threw cb's in LL and saw this for themselves?

When I received my BA in PE years ago, I wrote a paper on pitching mechanics and the pitchers I studied back then were Bob Gibson, Steve "Lefty" Carlton (my favorite all time pitcher by the way), Tom Seaver, Randy Johnson (he was at USC at the time and I got to see him in Omaha a couple of starts before his ML debut) and Nolan Ryan, then today I look at the top 2 innings pitchers in both the AL & NL, Felix Hernandez and Roy Halladay and to try and compare each of them, is crazy, as all of them had different deliveries and pitched/pitch from different arm angles or slots if you will. Oh and a lil lefty named Dan Boone who pitched for the Padres and went to Cal State Fullerton and pitched for Augie at 5'7 or 5'8 and 140 lbs soaking wet.

In the 70's before the mound was lowered for some odd reason, you could see the top ERA or innings pitchers were a minority in numbers then and those pitchers I guess were a freak of nature? Perhaps! Steve Carlton won 20 games in the ML 5 times, threw over 300 innings 2 times, never had surgery before his end of days in the majors. He threw a wicker slider and later in his career he could turn over a change up when he lost velocity of his fastball.

Bob Gibson, who I know a little bit as his son, Chris played HS ball with my son at Bellevue East HS and 15-16 yr old summer ball, we called Jr Legion. Bob had some very quick twitch muscles from the highlight reels and games on TV that I could remember when I was a lil punkin and really never had any arm injury and he knew when the time to hang up his spikes. Bob had 20 wins 5 times and 2 times pitched more than 300 innings and had over 40 starts in one season, "Lefty" did that 2 times, exceeding 40 starts.

Tom Seaver, had the ol' drop and drive type delivery but sustained a pretty good career, winning 20 x 5, achieving at least 290 innings 2 x and never had 40 starts in a season but was in the upper 30 games started. I remember trying to immulate his delivery one year and it worked pretty much but my pants wore a hole in them, LOL, but I walked the fewest batters in a season ever that season in HS.

Randy Johnson, won 20 x 3, achieved more than 300 k's in a season 5 x and 271 innings was his max. His delivery was basically a stand up type with a low to average 3/4 angle. Granted he's also the tallest pitcher on this list, listed at 6'10, I wonder when the last time he was measured before he broke into the majors, LOL.

Nolan Ryan, achieved 300 innings 2 x, won 20 games 2 times, had a one season of 383 k's and started 40 games 2 times in his career. I don't ever recall a season he had surgery during the year on his arm, perhaps off season he might have, but I've never heard that.

What did all of these guys have in common? A few of them had very long and successful pitching careers and threw up to or past 300 innings, today Felix & Roy pitched 250? Well, when the aforementioned pitchers first started out in the ML they were very thin in build, all have long arms and legs, all have very large thighs, even RJ, and when Roy & Felix were first signed and pitched in the minors, they were thin built and have the long arms and strong thighs as well. Felix maxed at 249.2 innings this year and was shut down for his last scheduled start by his club and Roy pitched 250 ip, had 33 starts and completed 9 of those starts and on the whole season threw two no-no's, one was a perfecto!!

While I realize all of the pitchers I mentioned had/have their own unique pitching styles, what else I found out is that they were better at other positions as amateurs along the way, talking to old timers, some that are no longer on earth with us and one common trait I was told and witnessed for myself is that all of these pitchers have very quick arms, they tend not to labor too much and they often make hitters look absolutely silly not just in one at bat, two at bats, but basically have some of the hitters number so to speak each time they come up, except Cody Ross had Doc's number in the NLCS! OUCH!

Another thing I read somewhere along the way was all of these pitchers used to play a lot of sandlot ball, stick ball if you will in their youth and they would play "catch", not just 30-60 foot catch and go back inside and be done for the day, but they would work at it and work at it. Eventually each of these men filled out their frames a few years into their careers and appeared even stronger, and they probably had to work hard in the off-season. A common thread each of these pitchers have during their windups is in watching their glove hand and pitching hand, where they are located at start of the windup, how their arm swings in the back swing portion of their delivery, when does their pitching arm come up to move forward and where is there front side and what is their front side doing, and then look at their legs, are their legs straight during initial windup, do they pitch off a tall back leg or do they tend to dip and drive towards home plate? All have their own style again, but all have been very successful as well. DO you see kids playing stick ball today in your 'hood? Do kids even play wiffle ball anymore? I remember years ago, we'd have neighborhood games with no backstop and you had one pitch to hit sometimes and kids from all creeds, races, religion, would get together after school or the weekends to participate in neighborhood pickup baseball games, or we'd take a baseball and see how far we could hit it in the air, I think we called the game "500" or something like that and put point values on fly balls caught and if you hit a grounder, you were out! LOL

The key I think to longevity and good health is the "legs", having a quick arm and properly warming up and playing catch on their off days. We have to remember too, that back in the 70's or even before then, teams did keep track of pitch counts, but we never heard about it like we do today with the evolution of cable tv, super channels, videos and the internet. Things are broken down a lot more by the tv analysts, many are former players, Tim McCarver for instance, who was a personal catcher of "Lefty" and he caught Bob Gibson among others, and I loved the way Tim played the game. I remember reading where Kerry Wood threw a tremendous amount of pitches during districts or state action in HS and ended up having a tired arm for a short bit and former ML Todd Van Poppel, the same thing happened to Todd and he never ever really lived up to his potential or press clippings and I remember the Braves were thinking about taking him over a kid named "Chipper" Jones. I saw somewhere in a publication that Dylan Bundy threw a lot of innings, pitches in a matter of a couple of days. All I can say after I threw 170 pitches within 3 days and two starts is, I ended up taking a year off of baseball because I couldn't pick up a ball and throw it after my Pony League championship in 1974.

When I was a kid, I also remember in the neigborhood, even being a military brat, we would play stick ball games, or a buddy or two of mine, we'd go out to the playground or a large area and play catch, starting at a short distance and gradually working our way to longer distances and we'd do this for an hour sometimes and I don't ever remember having a sore arm. I think the only time I came up with a sore arm and I've seen this done in other sports, is taking the ball and heaving it without properly warming up, that will cause a shock to your arm in a heart beat. Another thing we never did was throw with a jacket on, we only put the jacket on when their was a breeze blowing or it was pretty chilly out and when I was a kid I remember pitching when it was 40 degrees out in early June at 9 am in upstate New Yawk!

Radar guns? I don't think I ever saw one of those until I moved to Omaha and went to a College World Series game as a kid and they had some gun called the "Decatur ray" gun and the "Jugs speed or Jugs supergun", both measured the baseball at different speeds and one had a better range of picking up a baseball from the outfield, some just picked the ball up from the mound to the plate in one reading. When we tried out for ML teams as amateurs I remember the old timers telling us they were looking for 86 (decatur ray gun) or 90 on the jugs, I think that pretty much is the staple today even. When I got a bit older, I saw radar guns at games when I was in HS and in college and many times I would see my team mates "throw for the gun" so to speak and sometimes they left their arm in the bullpen and were never the same thereafter. I think the radar gun is a nice tool to have and it should only be used to measure velocity for a pitcher perhaps in the first inning and then put away by that scout until later if that same pitcher happens to be in their 6th or 7th inning, then you can write down the velocity, but often, a pitchers fastball will tell you if they are throwing harder or slower after a few innings, the hitters will let you know too if they are swinging and missing a lot or if they are crushing the ball, LOL.

When I hear of pitching coaches trying to change a pitchers angle slot, or leg kick, etc., I cringe. When I was playing youth ball I would help my dad as his pitching coach for his LL teams and when I was teaching pitchers how to pitch, I would only tell them to keep their eyes on the target, keep both feet on the rubber, turn their back leg perpendicular to the rubber and stride while breaking they were breaking their hands and try and touch the catchers mitt without taking their eyes off of it. Those pitchers ended up with pretty good control and eventually they got better, and better and better, one of them even pitched pro ball for a short time eventually. I really believe a pitching coach should not really tinker with a pitchers' delivery unless there is a specific stopping point where the pitcher has their balance and it's not going to alter their arm action whatsover. The radialus and arm bones/tendons if you will all usually work in unison, some pitchers have bigger bones than others do, some have quick twitch muscles and some have large slower twitch muscles, so to try and change pitchers to be like one type of robot pitcher to me, is like messing with mother nature, you are going to mess a kid up and some parent is going to be pee oh'd! You can always teach them how to change grips, hold the ball back into the pitching hand or put pressure on one side of the ball, but changing the arm angle which might not be natural motion for the pitcher is dangerous. A natural throwing motion is how a kid picks up a ball and how he delivers/throws it, some can alter their body position and drop at the hips to throw side arm, like O'Day does for the Rangers, but only a select few are ever able to duplicate that transformation and to change a delivery has to be something that can be done naturally for that pitcher.

When I was a kid in the early 70's, you never heard of Tommy John surgery and if a pitcher blew their arm out, typically they never came back fully, and if they did come back, it was usually because they took some time off and did some strength building of sorts to strengthen certain muscles in their fore arm or shoulders, and many of them worked with their legs more, running more hills and doing more knee bends, etc. We used free weights back then, today you have all these universal machines, some are good and some seem very robotic to me, so I leave them alone, LOL. But today, the sports docs, like Andrews and Jobe, etc., they evolved over the years and found ways to help pitchers bounce back from arm surgery or elbow surgery, and it takes time for those pitchers to fully come back, sometimes up to 18 months. I hear many of these pitchers throw even harder after the surgery and I have yet seen that happen and perhaps I'll start tracking that in my logs of pitchers I've seen over the years and got a gun reading on them to see if in fact that after their rehab the did in fact throw much harder. I just wonder if they ended up throwing hard, because perhaps, they threw that hard at one time and regressed in velocity before they ended up blowing out their shoulder or elbow. Maybe they did or maybe their rehab regimen strengthened muscles they weren't using like they should have, especially their legs, the legs are so important in any pitchers' delivery. I know I disliked running when I was a kid but I grew to love it, especially when my arm would bounce back quicker after running for not just a mile or two, but for 30-45 minutes, sometimes even an hour, running threw trails, etc., and I wish back then I had the i-pod so I could have listened to music, LOL. Kids that don't like to run, let me tell you, if they want to play professionally or have a long baseball career, they better like running, LOL!! A pitcher is only as good as their legs, just ask Dave Dravecky or Tony Saunders, two lefties that shattered their pitching arms, and Tom Browning, all three are lefties, Dave had cancer in his bones that was detected later after his tragic arm injury. Something else I noticed in the three aforementioned pitchers was how their left arm and hand really turned outwards more than a lot of righties naturally do, and pitchers that did it seemed like they hyper extended just to get more movement.

Watching and listening to the broadcasters when they talked about Nolan Ryan as an executive/owner, how he stated he wanted his pitchers to stay out there longer, maybe it has some credence and it's working for their turnaround, because in years past the Rangers staff usually ranked in the lower echelon in stats, runs given up, losses, etc. Nolan has been around alot longer than I have and we all know that scouting and baseball is not an exact science, but for these pitchers I mentioned other than the three lefties who blew out their arms above, for them to last as long as they have and endure basically a healthy career before time caught up to them naturally to degress in their stats must mean something about warming up, not tinkering with their delivery, working on finger pressure on the baseball to get better movement, sink, break, etc., and all seemed to have pretty easy deliveries, granted Randy landed on a stiff front leg at times, but when you are 6'10 or so, how the heck are you supposed to land? LOL, just kidding, but if you watch him and slow him down on a video you might see what I mean.

I think Curt Schilling had a pretty good career too and he was a pretty strong guy on the hill and had a lil drop and drive in his back leg ala Tom Seaver, and I remember seeing him when he was in th O's system pitch one night and the ball basically disappeared out of his hand on the fastball and even when I was behind the plate evaluating, my knees buckled when he threw his curveball before he learned the cutter and change and split, LOL. I also remember the split being a fad pitch for a few years taught by Roger Craig and only a select few pitchers really could throw that pitch and have some longevity and some pitchers who threw it and got away from their other "stuff" ended up hurting their arms or saw a huge drop in their velocity, because moving the fingers apart and stretching them over the baseball between the seems is not natural and if you feel your elbow and tendons, they move don't they? How how far do they move? Remember the words, pronate/pronation and suppate/supponation.

Moral to this hole story is, pitchers need to pitch, properly warm up, run, get the legs strong, and don't do something that feels un-natural and pitching coaches that never pitched, please don't tinker with a pitcher unless you can effectively have that pitcher stop at a balance point and show them on video or by stopping them, why you are stopping them, "so they can get the ball out of their glove quicker or have them get a lil more back swing in their arm motion," but don't tinker with it if it's not broken whatsover, and please pitchers, don't throw with your jacket on! Get to the fundamentals and find out how pitchers that have had long and great careers did it, if they didn't write about it and learn from it! LOL If you have ever played catch in brutally cold weather and noticed how long it took to get warmed up too, to feel good in the bullpen before you went into a game, and then you did the same thing on a nice 70 or 80 or 90 degree day and you got warmed up faster, it's because warmer muscles stretch better than cold muscles and bigger muscles take longer to stretch out than skinnier muscles, LOL. It's part of kinesiology class that a professor taught me years ago and by self-observation as a former pitcher/player. Also, don't start throwing a curveball until you have basically physically developed, if the arm works fine, you will learn how to throw some type of breaking ball down the road! One other thing I remember from years past, even during basic training, minor league training, spring training and playing/coaching in college, how many teams today at the amateur level do jumping jacks or deep knee thrusts or sit on your rump and touch your toes, or stand up and try and touch your toes to loosen up and stretch your muscles? I see almost absolutely none of this being done, perhaps this is a contributor to injuries today, by not having a pre-game exercise regimen?

Ok, I've rambled enough, but again, if anyone could point out a former LL pitcher who threw a cb in LL and is pitching today in the ML, please let me know who that is in this thread.

Take care!

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