The Issue about Throwing a Football then Throwing 101. Daily Newsletter 8/100

It's all fun and games till its not all fun and games.

Throwing a Football then throwing 101: The Issues

A few days ago, I wrote a post about a pitcher throwing 101 for 4 innings after playing catch with a football until 10 minutes pregame. Let it be known, I enjoyed watching this warm-up routine as much as anybody. But, anything like this generally comes with downsides. While this pitcher was pretty electric all around, there are a few things that likely need improvement as he makes his way towards the big leagues.

If you missed that article, there's a link to it here. If you just want a quick excerpt of the warm up, here it is:

“I showed up probably 30 minutes before the game, watching pitchers warm up can tell you a lot about who they are as a pitcher/person. Minutes went by, I was looking all over for who appeared to be the most locked in (generally it is very easy to tell who the starting pitcher is), and I couldn't pick anyone out. I looked for his jersey number and couldn't find anyone, and there was no one playing catch with a catcher.

20 minutes before first pitch, still no one. Another minute or two go by and the starter appears from the dugout with a football in hand. He proceeds to walk down the line and flip the football around. It is now about 14 minutes before the start of the game and he's playing catch with a football at about 90 feet, at this point I assumed the game started later than I thought. With 10 minutes left before the game, he finally puts the football down and starts flicking a baseball to his catcher from about 60 feet away, when he gives the thumbs up and walks to the bullpen mound. He then gets on the mound, flips 10 pitches at medium effort and then rips 2-3 heaters at the end. His 8th pitch of the game was 101.”

This was incredible, and as my last article describes it was a great example about what really matters in high performance. However, there are some downsides to throwing the football that were evident in his outing on friday.

The situation:

The pitcher didn't really “struggle” but his outing was plagued by a couple of at bats. He went 3.1 innings, struck out eight and walked one. if you saw this line you would assume it was a very dominating outing, especially from somebody throwing 101 you don't expect much damage if they throw strikes. Unfortunately this pitcher fell victim to the longball. Giving up 2 home runs over his outing, and another double.

The similarity of all these hits? Every single one was on a fastball. He threw probably a 50/50 split of fastballs and sliders and not one hit was given up on the slider all night.

What do we take from this? A couple of things, the first one being that the opposing team was likely sitting on the fastball the entire night and waiting for it. This makes it hard as a pitcher, because you want to mix your pitches but you also want to pitch away from what the other team is doing. I will give credit where credit is due, the opposing team stuck to their approach of hunting the fastball all night and it was evident by their success against such an electric arm.

Given that this pitcher throws 101, he should be able to get away with 101 against a mid major college lineup correct? Yes, probably. That leads us to the possible downside of his warm up. It is always easy to criticize from the cheap seats, and having never worked with this pitcher individually this is a guess, but it's something that I have seen plague a lot of pitchers.

Why Does it Matter?

Oftentimes, when pitchers throw a football it doesn't always translate directly to their throwing a baseball. Why is this? Simply, because throwing a football requires a completely different motion than throwing a baseball. Not just in the arm action, but rather in the release. In order to spiral a football it requires more supination than it requires to throw a baseball. Oftentimes this leads to pitchers throwing a fastball with lower efficiency because the repetition of throwing a football is so freshly ingrained in their mind that it naturally translates over into their pitching.

A lower efficiency fastball can lead to it being more “deadzone”, aka “flat”. This is not where you want to be. Given that he throws so hard, it will be commonplace for opposing teams to sit on the fastball for the majority of the season. This lack of efficiency can cause a loss of 15-20% of vertical movement on the fastball, which can easily take it from elite to very mediocre in terms of movement profile.

This small change could be huge for an already dominant pitcher, who seemingly doesn't have much low hanging fruit other than this. As he continues on with the college season, he will likely run into many teams that deploy the same strategy against him, and having an answer for it will help him a long way in terms of draft stock.

How to fix it?

This is where it gets dicey, because taking away a routine from a player can have negative impact on its own, but there is certainly some juice to be squeezed in terms of improving the fastball shape. In my opinion, simply making more time to throw baseballs before the game starts is step #1 in fixing this.

Taking the football warmup away entirely isn't necessarily the move right off the bat, but simply making the football catch play 5-7 minutes earlier would give him more time to actually play catch with a baseball.

Given that he didn't throw a baseball further than 60 feet before the game, it could be incredibly beneficial to play catch to 90-120 ft before the game, giving him an opportunity to see ballflight. This would in turn offer him the chance to see his spin, and his movement and make changes autonomously.

The Downside?

Sometimes, when you ask pitchers to do something different with their fastball they will naturally compensate mechanically. Oftentimes when pitchers chase vertical movement on a fastball, they work themselves into a pushy arm action that can hurt velocity. First and foremost with this pitcher specifically I would never do anything to possibly negatively impact pitching velocity as that is his best tool and his ticket to the big leagues.

I do however think that it is worth a try, monitor it closely and definitely make sure he doesn't wear himself out pregame with too much throwing. Player development is a balancing act, and it must be given proper attention if you really want to make things happen.

John