RockiesJeff sez,

Jeff or anyone, here are a few pitches from Cleto earlier in the year. He is reported to have a good arm but I can't say the same for his form. At least to me, very lazy and inconsistent in the few pitches shown. I hope that a whole year at a higher level will see some maturity and tweaking.

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Don't know if RockiesJeff gives the gold star or the website does.  If today ends in a "Y" and it's the website dispensing, somebody give a dozen or two to RockiesJeff.

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=== Take Out a #2 Pencil Dept. ===

Yo momma is so fat ...

1. last time she saw 90210 was on the bathroom scale
2.  she use the fridge for her lunch box
3. she wore an X-Files T-shirt one time, and a helicopter landed on her
4. she ever buy a fur coat, a species go extinct
5.  when she steps on weights it says: To be continued
6. none of the above
7. all of the above
8. if you make your living moving your body, GET YOUR BODY RIGHT ALREADY

Ahem.

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=== James Bond "How's the Lamb?  Skewered.  One Sympathizes" Dept. ===

As an ex-defensive line (and QB wannabe) type hisself, Dr. D can sympathize. 

I can't really tell from the video whether Cleto is overweight, or if so, by how much.  But I can tell you this:  he throws a baseball exactly as if he were 100 lbs. overweight.

The problem goes beyond a slow, static drive of the CG (and therefore a warping of all the leverage).  The problem is that in order to get the backside and gut around the corner, he's got to THHHRRRRROOOOWWWW his CG around that corner.  The jerkiness of that fouls up his motion beyond repair.

Here, watch the vid again, and observe as he labors to hurrrrl his weight around the corner with a spasmodic motion...

It's easiest to see on pitches 3, 6, and 8, and is least discernible maybe on pitch 7.  But trust me; I've got experience with this.  The movement "under the skin" is much worse than you can see through the uniform.

In this video, Cleto looks exactly like me throwing ... now that I'm 47.

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=== Aiki-Doc Dept. ===

Even if a pitching coach didn't agree that Cleto were pitching as though he were William Perry, he'd still have to agree that he's not getting his weight accelerated.  He's turning it, not driving it forward.

That golden right arm is as long as a lamp-post, and has twice the electricity.  But that golden right arm spends its time compensating for all the unpredictable things occurring below it.

Get Cleto into the very middle of a long season, and that body will do relatively predictable (bad) things and Cleto's "touch" will smooth out a little.  His subconscious muscle memory will groove in some consistent bad habits.

Hey, Lee Trevino played some good golf with a terrible swing.  It only took 500,000 swings to get the bad mechanics into a consistent path.

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Part 2

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