PITTSBURGH — Pitching is one of those things that frequently seems to straddle the line between art and science.
If you hand someone a baseball and tell them to throw a fastball, what happens next might have any different number of different traits.
There’s the grip. Is it two-seam? Four-seam? Split-finger, maybe?
Then there’s the stance. Windup? Stretch? Some deliveries have a big, exaggerated leg kick. Some have a slide step. Some are smooth and effortless, some are herky-jerky.
Then there’s the arm angle. Over the top? Three-quarter? Side-arm or submarine?
Finally, there’s what happens when the ball is let go. It can cut, sink or even appear to rise.
Those are just some of the options for just one pitch. Most pitchers can throw three or four. Some, like new Pirates starter Joe Musgrove, can throw a half-dozen. Each has a number of different ways they can be thrown.
Much of the baseball analysis that’s out there focuses on the science of pitching — the things that can be measured empirically. For example, according to Brooks Baseball, Jameson Taillon’s average changeup velocity this season is 87.9 MPH. Last year, it was 88.2 MPH. The horizontal movement on the pitch has decreased from -5.33 inches to -2.59 inches. The vertical movement is largely unchanged. Taillon went from throwing the pitch 9.72 percent of the time in 2017 to 8.46 percent of the time in 2018. Despite the lack of obvious changes, batters are hitting .200 off Taillon’s changeup this season, down 70 points from 2017.
Those are things that we can, thanks to pitch tracking and data collection, all break down scientifically. But there is a lot more to pitching than science. The inputs — where to hold one’s fingers, how to push, press, pull, pronate and twist the wrist and the fingers — those are more of an art than a science.
Much like art, those things are taught from teacher to apprentice. On a little league field somewhere, most pitchers were taught the difference between a two-seam and a four-seam grip and how to spin a curveball. Somewhere in their development as a professionals, a pitching coach or minor-league coordinator had them come up with a changeup grip that works.
There have been books written about pitching, but it’s innately something that has to be seen in order to be replicated. It’s almost an oral tradition, handed down from one generation to the next, except that even by picking up a telephone, it would be hard to teach someone how to cut a fastball or “pull the lampshade” on a changeup.
In many ways, the way pitching has been taught has evolved at the same pace that the craft has. Pitchers in the early days of baseball didn’t have different pitches, throwing straight at top velocity (fastballs) or at something less than that (changeups). The curveball was invented sometime in the 1870s (historians don’t agree on exactly when or by whom). The knuckleball came around in the 1910s, but has always been something of a specialized offering. The slider was invented in the 1920s, but didn’t gain widespread use until the 1970s. Since then, newer innovations such as the forkball, which developed into the split-finger fastball, the cutter, and more exotic offerings have made their way around the game.
In the early days, learning the craft was more about just doing a lot of throwing and finding out what worked.
“It was a lot of experimentation,” former Pirates pitcher and current broadcaster Steve Blass said. “I went to instructional league two different years and then I went to winter ball. I went down there and would just experiment. That’s where I figured out how to throw a slider. The slider wasn’t en-vogue as much back then.”
Blass came up as a rookie in 1964, but was still working on things in the winter of 1967-68, when he went to winter ball to master the slider — and picked up some other things, as well.
“I had to do it with the curveball, too,” Blass said. “Most guys would put pressure on the middle finger. I couldn’t do that. It was better for me to do it with the first finger. So, I learned a slider, I learned a curveball grip, and then was also forced to learn a two-seamer, because I didn’t throw hard enough. So, I went to the college of pitching. It was mostly experimentation and then repetition, repetition, repetition until you trust it.”
Of course, Blass threw inning after inning after inning in those sessions, racking up the miles on his arm without gaining any meaningful experience facing hitters. There were shortcuts to that process. One of the first ones was teammates learning from one another. A player that knew a slider showed other guys how to throw it.
“That’s how I learned,” said Pirates pitching coach Ray Searage, who came up with the New York Mets in the late 1970s. “I encourage talking to each other out there. That’s how I learned. It’s not my way or the highway. It’s our way. Whatever works.”
That type of learning still goes on in Major League clubhouses today, or more likely, on the back fields at Spring Training. This spring, Pirates reliever George Kontos picked up a new changeup grip from A.J. Schugel — a pitcher four years his younger.
“I kinda cornered A.J. during Piratefest when we were at the bar at the hotel,” Kontos said. “We had a couple cocktails and at the end of the day I said, ‘You need to show me how to throw your changeup.’”
Schugel emphasized how important it is to be able to show someone, and not just tell someone, when trying to teach them a pitch.
“I think I told him a few things when we were talking at Piratefest in Pittsburgh in December,” Schugel said. “It finally kinda clicked when he started throwing bullpens and started to figure out what it was I was telling him. It was hard for me to put it into words, so he’s finally figured it out a bit.”
“It was really good,” Searage said. “It was just like ‘Oh my gosh. Now he’s in a good spot.’ That’s how you learn.”
Kontos said he didn’t want the exchange to be one-sided, so he showed Schugel one of his breaking balls. That type of trade has been common for decades. But now, there’s new ways pitchers can pick things up, without necessarily having to corner a teammate in the hotel bar.
The resolution of video highlights lets players stop another pitchers’ motion frame-by-frame and analyze their grip and wrist action far more carefully than they’d be able to, even if that player was standing right in front of them. Twitter accounts such as @PitchingNinja, run by independent pitching coach Rob Friedman, highlight grips, deliveries, and the results of pitchers from around the league with high-quality GIFs and videos.
That’s one of the places Taillon goes to try to find new tips for his game.
“There’s a lot of pitchers that are nerds about the craft,” he said. “Everyone’s always looking to get better. You’d be doing yourself a disservice if you didn’t try to take advantage of social media and everything.”
Taillon said that he recently got a tip from a video with Washington Nationals starter Stephen Strasburg on how to throw his changeup, and that’s what he attributes his 2018 changes to.
I thought oh crap when I saw that going up out of the hand. Thanks for the Strasburg change up tutorial the other day, it helped. My CH cuts sometimes more than others, it’s an accident haha, get asked once a week if Im working on a cutter.
— Jameson Taillon (@JTaillon50) April 3, 2018
“I saw something the other day that Strasburg was saying he pulls down with his middle finger and ring finger,” Taillon said. “He throws it from a little bit farther of a distance. It’s just funny, because I’ve tried everything with my changeup. I’ve tried long-tossing it. I’ve tried only throwing it off the mound. I’ve tried pronating it. I’ve tried not pronating it. I’ve tried loose wrist. I’ve tried moving my wrist before I throw it to make sure my wrist is loose. I’ve just tried so many little tricks.
“The other day, when I was messing around with it playing catch, I felt something click. We’ll see how that stays for the rest of the year, but I had a lot more confidence in it the other day than I had all year last year.”
Twitter, is of course, a fairly new tool for a pitcher. Taillon is taking advantage of it, but he feels that the next wave of pitchers, that will have grown up with that ability, will have an even bigger advantage.
“I wish that kind of stuff was available when I was in high school, to be honest. It’s pretty cool, the power of social media,” he said. “I had an instructional video that Barry Zito and his dad did when he was really young talking about his curveball. I don’t remember if I got anything from it or not, but it wasn’t as easy as it is today, for sure.”
Of course, knowing how to throw a pitch doesn’t teach a pitcher when to throw a pitch, or even how that pitch will play for them. Even with the same grip and same wrist action, differences in arm angle and release point may still make Schugel’s changeup look different to a batter than Kontos’, even if they’re throwing it the same way.
“In the 1979 World Series, the scouting report said to throw Eddie Murray a changeup,” said former Pirates pitcher and current Minnesota Twins broadcaster Bert Blyleven. “I threw him one and he hit it about 500 feet. That was the only changeup we threw him. I was the guinea pig.”
That’s the part of the art that has to be self-crafted. It’s one thing for someone to share a grip, it’s another for a player to master the craft of how to throw that pitch and use it to get outs.
“When it’s dried and done, you have your own thing,” Blass said. “There’s no problem with exploring and researching it, but when it comes down to it, you have to develop your own style. Half the battle is having it feel good. Pitching is so much about feel. The feel, the gut feel, of what to throw, where to throw it, when to throw it, that’s hard to quantify.”
With four starters aged 26 or younger, the Pirates are sure to be doing a lot of growing into their game in 2018. That can help, as the youngsters all push each other to grow together.
“We have a really good group of young guys,” manager Clint Hurdle said. “It’s been cool to see. … Hopefully, that culture translates to wins and the cohesion translates to helping each other out and growing together.”
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