Add new comment

I do agree with you thats its hard to tell much with limited video.
You can see a couple things though..
Regarding the fastball, the NPB ball doesn't tend to move as much on fastball and 4-seams in particular (less slippery than the MLB ball). Lewis has armside-run on his 4-seam though and also throws a cutter to lefties, so his fastball should play fine. A guy like Jered Weaver has FAR less movement on his heater than Lewis does.
Similar complaints were made regarding Uehara and Kuroda for example, but when they came over they ended up having above-average run. We have very limited MLB data on Lewis, but he had MLB average arm-side run on his fastball (-5.7 inches vs -6.0 inches average) for 37 IPs in '07.
Its true that its not typical for guys to throw that hard, but speed alone doesn't gaurantee success in the NPB. Kuroda threw even harder when he was younger but put up 5+ ERAs in his first few years before he learned how to pitch.
Colby just learned how to pitch. He added a cutter, tightened up his delivery, improved his deception (you can see how the ball looks like its coming out of his ear on the vid), and vastly improved his command.