I'm just curious if there is a precedent for pitchers drastically increasing their SO numbers after a couple of years in the league? Brett Myers went from striking out 6.5-7 guys/9 during the minors and his first three years in the majors to striking out almost a player an inning last year. This seems like a big jump to me and I'm wondering if it's a fluke or if power pitchers generally develop over time and increase their K percentage. Thanks for any help.
pitchers are made,,, heck i wasn't but about 155 lbs. in high school and I was regularly hitting 88 and 89 on the radar gun,,, but a good friend of mine was near 200 lbs and mainly all muscle and the best he could muster was around 84 or 85... my mechanics were superior to his so i got more heat on my fastball....
Well, of course if you're not born without the natural ability/potential throw pretty hard, that's not something you can really "learn." I'm sure guys have added mph to their heater as they learn to pitch, but guys like Burnett have a god-given ability to simply throw hard. I'd say power pitchers are born, but good power pitchers are made. Perfect example: Unit. He could always throw hard, but he had to learn control (and talk to Nolan Ryan) to unlock all that potential.
WharfRat wrote:Well, of course if you're not born without the natural ability/potential throw pretty hard, that's not something you can really "learn." I'm sure guys have added mph to their heater as they learn to pitch, but guys like Burnett have a god-given ability to simply throw hard. I'd say power pitchers are born, but good power pitchers are made. Perfect example: Unit. He could always throw hard, but he had to learn control (and talk to Nolan Ryan) to unlock all that potential.
I agree. You're either born with a 95+ fastball or you're not. You're not going to take someone who can't get it up over 90 on a consistent basis and turn him into the next Roger Clemens or Nolan Ryan.
Pogotheostrich wrote:The arms are born, the pitchers are made.
There is some genetics in it. I'm never going to hit 100 MPH no matter how much weight lifting I do. Even if Mazonne spent every hour with me for five years I'd never hit it. So I agree. There is some raw body that needs to be there that not everyone has.
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Pogotheostrich wrote:The arms are born, the pitchers are made.
There is some genetics in it. I'm never going to hit 100 MPH no matter how much weight lifting I do. Even if Mazonne spent every hour with me for five years I'd never hit it. So I agree. There is some raw body that needs to be there that not everyone has.
On a side spin to this topic, how much of a factor do you think strength is in throwing a baseball? Just at a glance I'd say the most important factor is kinetics and arm speed, which I don't think can necessarily be improved with "buffing up." I'd say resistance training on pulleys, etc. can help develop more torque, but the bench press and the like I don't think really do much, any the added size and mass may actually slow down the arm speed.
For the record, I'm 5'7 and about 160.. I top out at 70 MPH, and I'm not sure how to (if possible) pack some more heat. I play most sports and I've got a pretty sound pitching delivery. Of course, in (high school) games I don't often bring the 70, it's usually a few MPH lower to get the location right, or some kind of breaking pitch/change. Do you think it's possible for me to say, get up to 80 MPH?
[quote:4fef447375="Geek"]The odds of the AL MVP coming from the American League are looking pretty good.[/quote]
I don't really think body type has much to do with it at all. Look at guys like Pedro (5'11" ~175) or Oswalt (6'0" ~180) and then guys like RJ (6'10" ~230) or (6'4" ~230). All of them can (or did at one point) bring it in the upper 90s. I still believe a lot of it's genetic like Jury was saying about arm speed and stuff like that, and I'm sure you can add a few MPH through coaching and training, but you're never going to go from Tim Wakefield to AJ Burnett no matter how hard you try.
Thanks for the comments. I'm curious though have you guys seen pro pitchers jump from 7 k's/9 to 9k's/9? I'm curious if there is a fairly deep precedent for doing what Brett Myers did last year or if he will regress back to the mean. Thanks
Music2004Man wrote:Thanks for the comments. I'm curious though have you guys seen pro pitchers jump from 7 k's/9 to 9k's/9? I'm curious if there is a fairly deep precedent for doing what Brett Myers did last year or if he will regress back to the mean. Thanks
A pitcher can gain some velocity by altering his mechanics. Also, adding another pitch to your repotiore helps in K rate.
As far as Myers goes, he always had pretty dominant stuff. I'm not sure if he developed a new pitch or not but most likely he refined his exisitng pitches and located them well as well as keeping the hitters off balance.
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by Music2004Man » Mon Oct 31, 2005 8:52 am 
