SB Nation User Blog: nickmueller

Barry Zito pronated curve link dump

nickmueller — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 12:56:28 -0000

Barry Zito pronated curve link dump

Watch the 2nd little clip they show in that video, that would be a pronated curveball. The full article goes into full description of how he says he applies force with his index finger. He might be toast now but he put up 1400+ innings before that...

On Strasburg

nickmueller — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:18:21 -0000

Sooooooo if you don't know the name yet, you should, San Diego State's Stephen Strasburg is ridiculous. He's far and away the front runner to be the #1 overall pick, and the blogospheres for the worst teams in baseball have been alive with tanking wishes so they can get him to salvage something from the season. He was the only amateur on the US National team and you can watch his start against Cuba here. Though it wasn't a dominant one you can see he's got the low to high 90s fastball, the power curve, the size, the command, not to mention the stats (ridiculous 133/16 K/BB), he even has a cool name. But what would this site be if we didn't ask about the mechanics? I don't have any slo-mo GIFs for you, but my thoughts inside the break:

Like I said no video so this is going to be short, but hopefully with the Cuba game you can follow along. From an injury perspective I can sum it up with "Uh Oh". He has a long arm action that he brings into a "whip" movement with borderline hyperabduction, I'd need video from the side to really tell. Stand alone I'm not nearly as negative towards "whippyness" as Kyle is so long as you keep the elbow below shoulder line and **avoid the timing flaws** but here he is at footplant:

Clearly not at the high cocked yet when his shoulders are rotating---the arrow points to his GS elbow peeking to a very off center camera. For a guy who throws as hard as he does that's a major red flag to both the elbow and shoulder. On top of that he actively breaks his arm without an aggressive finish nor does he really turn the shoulder line very far towards homeplate. This isn't to say he doesn't do other things well, obviously he does to be able to throw 98, but looking at this leads me to believe that he's a risky proposition long term.

That said I don't necessarily hate him as a draft prospect. I probably wouldn't drop the 10 million he's probably going to seek being the consensus NUMBER ONE guy instead of drafting someone with cleaner mechanics like say Kyle Gibson, but you do have to keep it in perspective. For example, A.J. Burnett is a trainwreck and the Marlins still wrangled ~650 innings innings (minors and majors) out of him before his elbow popped and another 330 after that. If you say Strasburg has 500 innings left before blowing something out he's still a fine guy to use money on because he's going to rocket to the majors in less than 100 innings if you believe in the stuff (which you should). If Tim Lincecum or Cole Hamels or [rookie pitcher] were a free agent pitcher 2 years ago and you knew you couldn't resign him, would anyone turn down 2yrs/8 million??? Although entirely oversimplified and ignoring other factors, same principle and Strasburg's stuff is that good. Don't expect him to be a franchise saviour, but it beats blowing money on Carlos Silva...or has Silva made another mechanical adjustment to get more sink recently?

Draft Quick Hit: Tanner Scheppers

nickmueller — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:30:29 -0000

I looked at a late round sign in Tim Melville, today a quick look at Pirates 2nd rounder Tanner Scheppers who failed to come to terms. Long story short, he was rated as a surefire Top-10 pick up with Aaron Crow as the the #1 college righty, but before the draft he had some significant shoulder problems. First it was diagnosed as a stress fracture, which would be completely ridiculous without some sort of trauma, but it turned out to be some rotator cuff and labrum problems after visiting with some of the best in the biz of sports medicine.

As someone new to pitching (according to the MiLB draft report---and he threw 15 innings freshman year) throwing 91-95 is going to put a lot of stress in new places it's not terribly surprising there's some hurting going on, but lets see if there's some mechanical background as well after the break.

From an shoulder injury perspective there isn't a whole lot that I can see that's wrong with the back of his arm action. Low elbow, up at footplant, front side looks fine, honestly he looks nearly identical to Carlos Zambrano. The one problem I see is in the active breaking of the arm on the follow through, just focus on what happens after release. That's a ~94 mph of arm speed coming to a stop fairly quickly. Technically Zambrano even does a similar thing, but he's also one of the biggest human beings I've ever seen at 6'5 255+ and finishes off his shoulder rotation much more---even then he's also been losing fastball velo for 4 years running so who knows. (For any of you who want to watch the full draft video, here's your link)

From the reverse angle:

To quote the Disabled List Informer:

The decelerator muscles at this phase are actually in the posterior aspect of the shoulder, i.e. the rotator cuff - particularly the Infraspinatus, Teres Minor, and Supraspinatus - as well as the Triceps (preventing the elbow from flexing), Lower Trapezius/Rhomboids (decelerating the Scapula), the Latissimus Dorsi, which decelerates the trunk as well as the assists in preventing the upper arm from crossing the body), and the Supinator and Wrist Extensors, which decelerate the forearm from continuing into forearm pronation and wrist flexion.

Normally I'm in favor of signing basically every draft pick, especially for a team like the Pirates, but when a new-to-pitching guy has rotator/labrum problems with a flaw that matches the symptoms AND he isn't 100% healthy, it's hard to justify spending the dollars to get it done. Had he come back this summer throwing at full velocity (I'm operating under the assumption that "he's not throwing his bullpen [sessions] at 100 percent velocity" means he's not remotely at 100% velocity) it'd be a different story, in this case velo=health. Can't really blame the Pirates here, shoulder injuries are death to pitchers.

As for Scheppers, if he is healthy I hope he makes a couple of changes---dude just let your arm go, don't stop it---comes back fine and gets the money he would've gotten had this cropped up 3 months later. Tough gig to go from likely getting 3+ million to what happened.

(Note: tomorrow....or maybe the next day the way I procrastinate....I'll have a tidbit on super draft prospect for '09 Stephen Strasburg)

Draftee Analysis: Tim Melville (Royals, 4th Round)

nickmueller — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 20:10:12 -0000

Finally I'm getting to some writing here, sorry for all the delays, but for my first significant article here at Driveline Mechanics I went with Royals' draft/signee Tim Melville.

Background: Melville entered the year vying to go #1 overall, but fell off some when his velo was down early in the year. He still rebounded late in the year and was rated by Baseball America as the top high school pitching prospect in the country but fell all the way to the Royals in the 4th round (115th overall) due to the 6th tool of a player, "signability". Well the Royals ended up piling on to their draft haul and signing him for a 1.25 million bonus which is roughly the "slot" bonus for the 28th overall pick.

There is some injury history here as his sophomore year of high school he pitched just 5 innings during the high school season due to a shoulder injury that was at least diagnosed as a torn labrum. I can find nearly anything else written about the subject in anyone's pre-drafts and his stuff did come back so maybe it was an initial mis-diagnosis?, but it's clear he's faced at least some shoulder problems in the past.

Stuff: When he's right---as he was leading up to the draft---he sits 91-94 with an inconsistent-but-occasionally-plus knuckle curve and a high school pitcher's changeup. The early year inconsistent velo is a red flag but it picked back up as the season went along, and Missouri's cold early spring weather probably played a role there. Although his draft video only shows a handful of pitches, it has him throwing 87-91, but I saw him in the AFLAC All American game the summer of '07 and his stuff is legit. Given a prototype 6'5 205 frame with wide shoulders and still more room to fill out (dude is going to be built like a tank if he gets on the right lifting programs), he has the current stuff and raw projection to make for a pretty good high school prospect on the surface.

Video/mechanics breakdown inside the break:

Mechanics:

Well he's been given the prized "effortless" tag by media reports but from this video there really isn't a whole lot to like. For the good: he does throw to a near perfect front side, doesn't appear to actively break his arm, albeit with a little extra "recoil", or overly reverse rotate, and I do like the little glove side leg "kick out" before plant. The ball does come out free and easy but that's mostly just a cosmetic thing (see Prior, Mark).

Unfortunately, he's very much a tall-and-fall delivery at 23-24 frames from maximal leg lift to release and there just isn't that lower half aggression I like to see. His torso rotation finish gets cut short as he doesn't end up with his arm-side shoulder pointing to the plate post-release. Plus notice how completely closed his foot is when he lands, thus keeping his hips from fully rotating.

It gets worse from the side:

While from the front view I somewhat underrated his lower half aggression, you can see the big old M in his arm action, Ick. While his timing isn't as bad as is possible, his glove side foot still plants definitively before he reaches the high cocked. It's not too terribly surprising he had shoulder issues... (note: I actually did judge the mechanics before I even found the labrum article, I swear!)

There's the M on the left and the timing at footplant on the right in a couple different pitches. Like Garza he's at least past the horizontal, but that's still another cause for concern. You can also see how closed he lands here especially on the pitch on the right. How ridiculous is it that he lands like that and still manages to throw 90? Seriously, try to throw a pitch off a mound doing that, that's remarkable.

The total package from a projection standpoint: That M-arm action scares the crap out of me, that's the first thing I'd do if I was a Royals coach. He's been taught the "whippy" arm action which isn't going to change at this point, but keeping the elbow below the shoulder line isn't that dramatic of a tweak and might fix the timing issue by shortening the distance to get up to the high cocked in time. Changing that up might make him lose velo as well, but the risk of injury is too high for that to matter right now IMO with just that going a long way to curb that.

Buuuut in an ass-backwards way, the fact that he does have so much to gain from tweaking his lower half makes him all the more intriguing. Like I said, it's ridiculous that with his lower half push/landing that he's able to throw 90+, imagine what would happen to his fastball if he Lincecum-ized himself? Well maybe I wouldn't have him go that extreme---that takes a ridiculous amount of body control, Lincecum's command his first 2 years at Washington was bad---but the point stands. 93-96 is well within Melville's range of possibilities as he has years of minor league baseball to do such a thing, not to mention just addding pure strength. All in all, this is a kid with a ton of talent and a ton of arm strength. For a team like the Royals that has no hope of competing unless they develop a Rays amount of homeground talent, 1.25 million for that talent is more than worth it, they just need to manage it properly. Hopefully with the relatively new management we'll see just that.