February 27, 2015

Raising Aces

The Eyes of March

by Doug Thorburn

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Much digital ink has been spilled over the beauty behind the four words that ignite the spring for a Baseballholic: pitchers and catchers report. But it's a tease, because after pitchers and catchers report to spring training we are left with two weeks worth of recycled stories about players who are or aren't in the best shape of their lives. The spring doesn't begin in earnest until ballgames are being played in March, with the first slate on tap to begin next week.

The “spring stats are meaningless” mantra has been chanted to death at this point, but spring training is not about putting up gaudy stats (unless you're playing with a job on the line). It's about development, conditioning, and getting into physical shape for the season. This adage is particularly true with pitchers, as any spring start might be assessed for usage of a certain pitch, commanding a region of the strike zone, or honing mechanics; whether the pitcher gave up runs is often beside the point.

There are a few things that I look for on the mound once games get underway in Florida and Arizona, and the intrigue can impact prospects and veterans alike. Is a pitcher working on a particular pitch? Is he returning from injury? Is there a mechanical red flag from the previous season? How close is he to game-ready?

With that in mind, here are some of the specific pitchers that I will be watching over the next month:

Mark Appel, Houston Astros

Appel had a rather consistent delivery in college, but his year-and-a-half in pro ball has been fraught with mechanical volatility. At the center of his morphing delivery has been balance, and though his stay-back strategy includes a back-side collapse that dings him in two of the three planes, that element has been present since he was at Stanford. That said, the post-lift plunge has become more exaggerated—and more erratic—recently, and his lateral balance has taken a hit thanks to a tendency to hunch over his front side during the stride.

More troubling has been the discrepancy between Appel's windup delivery and the stretch. He was earning some rave reviews at the Arizona Fall League, but those reviews neglected to mention that his velocity was down more than three miles per hour when transferred to the stretch. He used one of the fastest slide steps that I have ever seen, clocking between 0.4 and 0.5 seconds from leg lift to foot strike, and the rushed timing sequence greatly upped the difficulty factor when coordinating his delivery and timing is trigger to achieve max torque.

What to look for: I will keep a close eye on Appel's balance this spring, in addition to whether he is still using the hyper-slide from the stretch.

Trevor Bauer, Cleveland Indians

Bauer's delivery went through a major overhaul in the off-season of 2013-14, resulting in a motion that was simplified and more balanced. As a natural part of getting back into playing shape, pitchers typically take some time to rediscover the balance and posture in their deliveries, so it is particularly notable when a young player with stability issues shows up to camp in better form (as Bauer did that season). The right-hander is notoriously cerebral with his mechanics, building the temptation to integrate the more advanced methods of pitching, but he had to take a step backwards before he could take the leap forward.

Last season was a step in the right direction, and it will be interesting to see if the oft-tinkering Bauer has made any adjustments in the off-season. My focus will be on his balance, given his drop-and-drive delivery that features a back-side collapse as part of the strategy, a variant that stands in the way of repetition.

What to look for: Well, everything, but my main focus will be on his balance and momentum to see if he can build on last season's progress.

Carlos Carrasco, Cleveland Indians

Carrasco has the stuff to dominate, with a fastball that averages more than 96 mph and a wipeout slider that finished off 43-percent of his strikeouts last season. The missing element was pitch command. His early-season stay in the rotation was saturated with crooked numbers, at which point he was bumped to the bullpen, where he ditched the windup and discovered the command-related benefits associated with just a single timing pattern. His all-stretch approach took advantage of his mechanical efficiency and eliminated the needless extra motion of his windup, and Carrasco reaped the benefits with a consistent release point.

What to look for: Is he still pitching from the stretch all the time? Fingers crossed that the answer is a resounding, “Yes.”

Nathan Eovaldi, New York Yankees

Eovaldi has one of the hardest fastballs in the game plus a sharp slider, but his lack of a third pitch has marginalized his performance and exaggerated his platoon splits. He worked on a changeup last spring, but he was unable to harness the pitch and scrapped it by Opening Day. The new hotness for Eovaldi is a split-fingered fastball that he is developing as a third option to his arsenal in the hopes of adding an off-speed characteristic to his approach. The changeup can be one of the toughest pitches to master and some hurlers never get a feel for it, but the splitter is relatively easy for a pitcher to learn and utilize due to the use of a fastball forearm-angle that doesn't require pronation or supination to execute.

What to look for: Can he locate the split down and under the zone? Does the pitch have good drop? Does he flare the glove when setting up with a splitter, effectively giving away the identity of the incoming pitch?

Jeremy Hellickson, Arizona Diamondbacks

Hellickson's motion is very slow when pitching from the windup, but he picks up the pace when throwing from the stretch. That results in a longer stride and a superior delivery overall when he retains his natural leg lift, but Helix has a varying tendency to invoke a slide step with runners in stealing position, and his mechanical efficiency is at its worst when he pitches with the slide step. He used to mix the strategy in occasionally, but the slide step has become more prevalent and was an all-the-time occurrence in the recent past. Now with the Diamondbacks, it will be interesting to see if he changes his stretch dynamics under a different coaching staff and with a different set of catchers.

What to look for: How does he approach the stretch? Is it a slide step all the time, some of the time, or none of the time? Does he alter things randomly with runners in stealing position, or does the slide step dominate?

Mat Latos, Miami Marlins

Latos had a completely different delivery last season, though he ended up with nearly the same results. He greatly minimized the power in his delivery and traded it for stability, with much-improved balance prior to foot strike (but the same amount of spine-tilt afterward). The power-drop involved a slightly-slower pace of momentum, but the more noticeable change was diminished torque that fell from a 50-grade to 40 on his mechanics report card and robbed him of two full ticks on his fastball velocity. It's possible that Latos was compensating for an injury, and it is very encouraging that he was able to sustain his performance in light of such major changes, but I am very curious to see which version of Latos shows up this season.

What to look for: The two major mechanical indicators are his lean-back toward second base and his delay of trunk rotation. His 2013 delivery involved a pronounced lean-back as well as a strong delay to his trigger after foot strike, but in 2014 the hips and shoulders fired more closely together while the lean-back had been mostly eliminated. Is he favoring power or stability?

Drew Smyly, Tampa Bay Rays

Smyly is the Leaning Tower of Pitching. The imbalance starts early as he starts to drift toward the third-base side during his stride, and he tilts heavily to the glove side on top of foot strike and veers strongly into release point. The Rays have developed a squadron of well-balanced pitchers who finish with great posture but tend to be slow into foot strike. Smyly exemplifies the opposite strategy, with an average burst that might qualify as the best on staff yet very poor stability, so one of the subplots of spring will be whether Smyly makes some mechanical adjustments or if the Rays' coaching staff stays hands off with his unstable delivery.

What to look for: Does Smyly still look like a drunken flamingo at release point? Is the persistent lean toward the third-base side still part of his delivery? Has he slowed down his pace of momentum?

Doug Thorburn is an author of Baseball Prospectus. Follow @doug_thorburn
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