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Q. What is the state of Taijuan's mechanics? Is his basketball career helping him?
A. It is, yes. Or something is. Thanks to Baseball Travels, we have a nice video of Taijuan pitching last August, which is to say the last time he pitched.
Go check out the vid and two things will jump out at you right away: (1) He's unusually quiet and compact, few moving parts, very graceful and balanced down the CL. (2) He doesn't get a very dynamic drive down the CL.
Think Greg Maddux. As you watch the vid over and over again, you'll see that Taijuan is pitching "from the stretch" with the tiniest rock step and absolutely no backwards load at all. This keeps his motion exceptionally clean, but denies him leverage -- as with Maddux. Taijuan is relying on his arm, as Maddux did.
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Q. How do you throw 95 mph without leverage?
A. I'm not sure. Compare this 1984 video of Doc Gooden, especially the slo-mo at 0:40. Watch Doc turn his back, sink his weight, drive his numbers at the batter and only then engage his arm. You can "feel" the connection of the baseball to his CG as he loads up.
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Then watch Doc lean over perpendicular, nose-to-leather, as he follows through. Taijuan leans over well enough that there are no problems with clearing his arm, but it's hardly a dynamic finish as far as his belly button is concerned.
We've been talking about Bob Gibson. How much did he engage his body to accelerate the ball?
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Q. Is this something that indicates he's not ready for the big leagues?
A. The kid has pitched one year of high school, and POW the next year, less than 24 months after he first toes a rubber,* he's decimating high-A baseball. So here he is, 24 months in, and his motion is:
24 months in, his motion is a shining tribute to his natural grace and athleticism. But he doesn't have the electricity that lights up the Frankenstein of his motion; he is firing his arm without real leverage behind it. Look up the word "LEVER." A little guy with a lever can lift 4, or 100, or 1 Billion, times more weight than can a big guy without a lever.
You would assume that months 24-36 would be used in order to learn to engage his CG with the ball, get some leverage, and not just arm-throw in Maddux fashion.
But! If you're an ML scout or coach, and the kid is hitting 95-98 on the radar gun, are you going to ask him to improve his acceleration down the centerline?
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Q. What is the Dr's Prognosis if he continues to throw 96 with an un-leveraged motion?
A. Well, I'm not saying his motion is a catastrophe. You'll notice that he gets out in front onto a bent front knee, and that as he comes forward, he glides over it with "okay" forward momentum. He's not as dynamic as I would like, not as dynamic as a Gooden or Felix, but ...
Randy Johnson arm-threw the ball. He had a super quiet motion and it allowed him control at 97 mph. The Unit had a freakish arm and he relied on it for 20+ years. Maybe Taijuan's arm is so freakish, that he just needs to avoid mistakes with the rest of his body. That's exactly what the Unit did.
Also, it's probable that Taijuan will naturally groove into using his front hip and shoulder a bit more as he pitches more. The body tends to find its own level.
Bottom line, I'd like to see the kid take some pressure off his arm, engage his front hip, but he's probably okay now and I guess you can gingerly assume that the situation, the "leverage" situation, will take care of itself.
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Q. Is there upside to this no-leverage tradeoff?
A. No surprise that Taijuan's got command and control right now. His motion certainly allows for maximum precision. The wonder is that he gets the velo out of thin air, despite a Moyer/Maddux type of motion.
There have been all kinds of starting pitchers in the big leagues at age 19, including Felix Hernandez. The fact that it has been ruled out for Taijuan, is nothing more than dogmatism. I'm sure he's one of the M's five best starters now. Wouldn't surprise me if he's #2.
John Olerud was without precedent in 1990, when he went from college (like A+ baseball) directly to the majors. His OPS+ was 117 as a rookie. Baseball is steeped in cover-your-backside procedures. To a certain point we sympathize. Lot of pressure in that game.
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If Taijuan had mechanical problems, or if he couldn't throw strikes, or if he only had one pitch, that would be one thing. But the checkpoints, if not the aiki dynamics, are all clean. His mechanics were major league in August 2011, end of story.
Okay, he goes to AA and mulches that for six or eight starts, and goes to AAA and mulches that, and now you're satisfied he's ready. Good on you, babe. Let's run the playbook.
The lifeless delivery - the absence of drop and drive, means that he will not have durability long term...not like Gibson...not throwing 95 at max effort. A max effort pitcher like Walker (listen to him grunt when he throws!) with an all-arm motion is destined to blow up his arm. That is...if he doesn't explode a little better and learn to rely less on his arm.
And hopefully Taijuan will naturally get into sinking and driving his weight more.
But ya, that's the spirit of the issue -- it's very unusual to see 96 mph out of a Greg Maddux throwing motion. You'd fret a bit about how well his arm would hold up.
There are some closers who throw like that, I'm sure.
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Stephen Strasburg had very little backwards load. The mechanics are quite comparable to Taijuan's, if you watch the video, except Stras gets a little better forward extension, and he's not as smooth throughout.
The "sample size" of one, isn't meant to guarantee injury for TJ, of course :- )
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Remember the #1 safety factor in pitching is, how hard do you throw? The harder you throw the safer you are.
Doc,
What I see is an entirely natural move that hasn't been tweaked/coached/frame-by-framed. I love it. This is what the great RHers of our generation looked like. It is more than a bit of a throw-back motion: Rock a bit, turn your cheeks (or left cheek) toward the plate, push off, explode the hips. Simple. Simple. I'm not quite so sure it's as "arm-y" as you think (I defer to you, however). If you stop and go at the 54-55 second mark of the link, you'll see just how explosive he is with his hips. It (seems to me) is a hip fly/shoulders fly/arm follows process, with almost no "effort" or strain.
This is Roy Hobbs on the mound.
Compare a young-ish Seaver:
http://metspolice.com/2012/02/20/tom-seaver-pitches-an-inning-in-1973-wo...
Seaver doesn't stand quite so tall, and drives a bit lower (his right knee nearly on the ground),but his turn, leg lift, and explosion are quite similar.
Compare an old-ish Clemens:
http://www.myspace.com/video/vid/3570436
Left cheek squares to the batter, leg comes up naturally, stands tall like Walker, hips go boom.
I know: Probably all RH power pitchers share many similarities...but Walker shares some very comforting ones.
If he can locate the 95 MPH heat (both on and off the plate) and throw a curve ball somewhere around the plate, then he's a formidable MLB force right now. The change will come.
8 starts of AA dominance and he may move directly to Seattle, the heck with Tacoma.
Man, what a motion.
Wouldn't a Pudge Rodriguez catching Walker and Paxton and Hultzen next season (or this!!!???) be WAY cool.
Catching Walker, I imagine he would hold down one finger a whole bunch of the time, two fingers a fifth of the time, and would wiggle his fingers a few times.
Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.
moe
Went over to the Seaver link hoping to agree with you :- ) although I'd remembered Tom Terrific as a drop-and-drive guy ...
Aside from the big rock step ... notice how Seaver leans aggressively back to load his weight ...
In the vid you can sense him "gathering" the ball to his belt buckle; you can see he almost looks like he's "protecting" the ball with his entire body and that reflects the fact that the force is organized around, derived from, his CG.
You also have the long stride forward, the perpendicular torso at release, and notice the knee-dragging lunge forward...
Actually would use Seaver as an example of how to get momentum off the back leg...
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Obviously at 97 mph, Taijuan's leverage is not NONEXISTENT :- ) ... just mediocre, 4-out-of-10 .... and he was, after all, 18 years old ...
Much more important than the lack of lower-body leverage, is the fact that his mechanics are so clean and his arm so live...
Go to BASEBALL, eighth inning, at 1:17:20, in the chapter Yaz, and you'll get video and commentary on Gibson. The controlled, athletic fury/violence of his delivery was something to behold. What is not shown in the program is the pace he maintained. In another thread I discussed a game with Gibson vs. Spahn that took 2:24. What I remember in particular was that Spahn was his usual methodical self (I saw him pitch dozens of times as a kid), playing with the rosin bag, varying his pace, trying to break the batter's concentration. (It was, of course, he who said "hitting is timing, pitching is disrupting that timing") In the bottom half, Gibson was simply relentless, at one point yelling at a hitter to "get in there and let's go" and my grandfather saying to me, "and if he doesn't he's getting decked". I don't believe there was 15 seconds between pitches. If there was a way to get a tape of that game (it was the first year Braves games were televised, but I believe it was only road games - maybe StL TV has a tape) I would guess that the game split 2/3-1/3 as far as time at bat. The thing I remember to this day, almost 50 years later, was the pace he set. Amazing.
But I wonder how many non-athletes realize what "Tempo" says about the pitcher's mindset...
Gibby's furious pace being the ultimate example...
Well put Jeff. Everyone is going to have a differen tempo from an Oswalt to a Felix. Each has to find their own as too slow is as bad as too fast. Tempo and balance are key to start. Taijuan is a stud.
It will be interesting as he ages to see if he will drive a bit more with his hip on the leg lift as Seaver above. Watch how "they" (being studs through MLB history start driving the hips right away versus the traditional "stand tall and fall." As you said, throw hard but that is best accomplished with the use of the whole body working as a unit and the legs are key.
I am looking forward to Taijuan and the lefties making it to Seattle.
Hope all is well!!
What intrigues me is that Taijuan knew basically nothing about pitching. He didn't have 10,000 innings of habits to undo. He was a really raw kid who could throw a ball, and the Mariners got a hold of him and said, "Throw it like this - repetitively. This is called pitching."
These are the mechanics the Ms wanted him to have.
If the Rangers reworked the wonder arm on Beavan to get him to be cleaner and injury free - and in the process took a teenage arm that threw 96 and reduced it to a 20s arm that throws 90 - then how much more interesting is it to see the Mariners take an inconsistent and brutally raw rocket armer and keep the speed while cleaning up the mechanics to the point they already are?
Taijuan has a motion that allows for identical changeup and FB releases, early mastery of a hard-breaking curve, and control. Will it keep his arm safe to throw this way? I dunno.
Are the Ms done with teaching the wunderkind how to pitch? I kinda doubt it. The next couple of years could be a LOT of fun, I'm tellin' ya...
~G
'cause for Taijuan to go from one year of high school, to THAT motion, somebody did something verrrrrrry right. Good on them.
I would guess, and would hope, that it won't be too hard for them to talk to him about gathering his weight a little more, getting his weight accelerating down the line. And he's got real good scaffolding set up already to do that.