Today I will continue my rundown of my likes and dislikes of the mechanics of each starter in the bigs. Last time out we looked at the NL East. Today we will look at the AL East.
Yankees
CC Sabathia - LOVE. Like Hamels, a dream.
AJ Burnett - HATE. So many things wrong.
Chien-Ming Wang - used to be a LOVE, now its a HATE. The change no doubt affects his performance. He's dragging his arm late through the zone, which puts greater stress on the shoulder and decreases his ability to effect downward sink on the ball. Thus, tired arm, no sinking fastball.
Andy Pettitte - LOVE.
Joba Chamberlain - MEH. Can't decide on ole Jobber.
Phil Hughes - used to be LOVE, now its a MEH. His arm seems late through the zone too. Scary.
Red Sox
Josh Beckett - MEH. Elevates the pitching elbow a bit too high for my liking.
Jon Lester - LOVE. He's due for a down year because of the Verducci Effect, but I like his long-term chances. And it saddens me.
Dice BB - LOVE. Looks a lot like Kuroda mechanics-wise. Very sound.
Brad Penny - HATE. Like Rich Harden, opens his body early and decreases his ability to generate torque with his lower half. This puts greater strain on the arm.
Tim Wakefield - LOVE. Whatever, honestly.
Clay Buchholz - MEH. See Phil Hughes, same concerns.
Rays
Scott Kazmir - HATE.
James Shields - LOVE
David Price - LOVE. In my top 5 of mechanics-love
Andy Sonnannstine - HATE.
Jeff Niemann - HATE. Not long for this world...
Blue Jays
Roy Halladay - LOVE
Brian Tallet - MEH
Ricky Romero - MEH
Shawn Marcum - HATE
Scott Richmond - MEH
Casey Janssen - MEH
Orioles
Jeremy Guthrie - LOVE
Everyone else will be gone next year.
Maybe a short blurb on each about what it is you like/hate about their mechanics? Obviously guys like Halladay, Wakefield, Pettite and Guthrie have good mechanics, they've been around a long time and haven't been hurt much. But with youngsters like Richmond, Price, Lester, etc, what aspects of their delivery do you like/dislike?
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm saying is, more comments like you made on Beckett, Wang, Hughes, etc. I like that stuff.
ReplyDeleteYeah...that would take a long time. If things stand out to me in particular I'll try to note them, but I don't know if I have the stamina to comment on the specific mechanical flaws I see in every pitcher.
ReplyDeleteHow about this...What would be fun is to do a writeup of individual pitchers. Like a long writeup, complete with slow-motion video and giant pitchers, so we spot what is good and what is bad. I dont care which pitchers we look at as long as I can find some good superslo video of them.
ReplyDeleteIs there a place to get slow-mo deliveries of most pitchers? I remember you had a Lincecum video awhile back that was perfect.
ReplyDeletepitchingclips.com is good when they have a clip...sometimes they have hand-shot youtube clips. the whole process isn't made any easier by MLBs draconian policy on video. it reduces the amount of material that there is for people to work with, they have to create their own rather than just take a youtubed video of live action from TV and slow it down. anyway, pitchingclips.com
ReplyDelete