Nationals Farm Authority

SP63: If it is so easy, then what’s the answer? Let’s play 2; #1 & #10!

Brian Stammen is looking good today in the third. didn’t you like this kid. He kicked butt in AA but didn’t in AAA correct. He’s the little engine that could today…

jNat-Poythress and Kipnis are putting up numbers so far that rival Beckham and some of the others last year. I plan to try to keep this up to date at least every other week.

Dick - thanks so much for pulling this together - I try to keep up with this stuff in my spare time and this is perfect - thanks again for taking the time to pull it together.

And as always, thanks to Brian for the work he does as well.

PS - great summary, Dick! sorry to nitpick!

By the way, just to finish on the mechanics discussion in the last thread - I don’t mean to say that I think O’leary or those guys are full of bunk - there may well be something about the dreaded “inverted W*” that is inherently more damaging to arms and shoulders, but I haven’t seen real proof of that other than “Well, look at Prior!” kinds of analysis-by-implication.

Verducci’s written pretty extensively about his phenomenon, and if you look at his previous lists, they do seem to bear out. He wrote about Hamels in ‘06, when his innings jumped from a previous career high of 100 to 180. Then in ‘07 he was around 180 again, and last year jumped up 44 more to 220+ and now has arm trouble. He wrote about Bonderman in ‘06 who added 45 IP, saw his performance drop in ‘07 and get hurt in ‘08. He wrote about Rich Hill in ‘06 who added 40+ IP and was hurt after that. He wrote about Jared Weaver, who was on the DL in ‘07 and saw a 1.45 ERA increase. So anyway, I’ll take the guy who has a track record of anecdotally calling these things right as opposed to people who look at super-slo-mo tapes of pitchers and say “Oh, no, the inverted W!! The horror!”

Beating a (dead?) horse department? Have just been at http://www.pitchingclips.com/players/ross_detwiler.htm and checked the deliveries of Bob Feller, Bob Gibson and Tom Seaver. They all seem to my eyes to have some inverted W issues. If you think not compare with Strasburg and Johan Santana (all on the site.) O’Leary predicted a year ago that Santana would get hurt because of the inverted W which he does much less than Gibson who had a pretty good career. Also if you contrast with Prior he picks up his elbow much more than the others. Perhaps Dick would like to check, I must confess I’m not good at seeing this. Anyway, I think most pitchers who throw from a low 3/4 slot tend to bring the elbow up before the forearm at some point before they deliver the ball. If you choose the right slow motion frame it’s gonna look bad. As for Mr. Hill, extreme arm contortions are probably bad no matter what they are.

e-6: Dick doesn’t care to check because he can’t always see it either. I noticed Shawn Hill in a still picture. I can only occaisionally notice a pitcher bring his elbow above his shoulder (and if they do one elbow, they tend to do both hence the W) which is deemed to be bad.

My feeling is that I see lots of ballgames every year, both in person and on TV. In these games, it seems like no two pitchers throw the same way. Some, like Chad Bradford, scrape the ground. Others reach to the sky and there are others that pitch from everywhere in between. They don’t all break down nor are they all healthy throughout their career.

Makes me wonder if any of this matters. Also makes me wonder if you can look at ANY young pitcher and predict they will have arm troubles and find out that your prediction ALWAYS comes true at some point in their career!