The Pecan Park Eagle

“Can’t be a fastball ’cause fastballs never look this big. – Heck, you don’t even see the really good ones.”

Pat Callahan, one of my old friends and fellow ancients from the St. Thomas HS Class of 1956, sent me a hardcopy of this wonderful article from the Wall Street Journal of Friday, March 29, 2013 on “The Flamethrowers”, and how the science of developing fastball pitchers is changing the game of baseball at a record clip. I’ve since learned that the same article is available online at …

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323419104578376793663086624.html

According to former Astro Chris Holt, now a pitching coach for young prospects at Pro Bound USA, a Florida baseball academy, says that young pitchers who can’t hit 90 on the radar gun don’t get a serious look. “Ninety-two is the new 88,” Holt says. “The cutoff is 90, 91 minimum.”

Article writer Matthew Futterman hits early on these two big changes in the current MLB pitching culture:

“”In the 2003 season, there was only one pitcher who threw at least 25 pitches 100 mph or faster (Billy Wagner). In 2012, there seven according to Baseball Info Solutions.

“In 2003, there were only three pitchers who threw at least 700 pitches 95 mph or better. In 2012 there were 17. There were 20 pitchers  decade ago who threw at least 25% of their fastballs 95 mph or faster. Last year, there were 62, including Carter Capps, the Seattle Mariners’ 22-year-old right-hander, whose average fastball travels 98.3 mph, tying him with the Royals’ Kelvin Herrera for the top spot in the game.”

Strikeouts are also increasing as the average pitching speed climbs through the roof. “Nearly 20% of all plate appearances last season (2012), resulted in a strikeout.” In 1968 (the famous Bob Gibson Year of the Pitcher), only 15.8% of all plate appearances resulted in a strikeout.

The article goes into some detail on how modern digital technology is help science measure all the correct body part movements that are necessary to make faster pitching possible in a way that doe not damage the arm. And that was something we definitely did not have only a short while. As a fireballing kid pitcher, all I did was ruin my arm on the coaching advice of “throw it hard as you can for as long as you can.” We neither understood or learned anything about the importance of body movement, especially from the legs, fully behind the release of the ball.

We just pitched until our arms fell off. Today, it seems, the really effective fireballers just get to keep pitching until they mow down all those would-be hitters with the useless no-ball-contact bats in their hands.

Speaking of bombs, the Astros just lost their third shutout of the season at Seattle on Monday night. With only 8 strikeouts registered by their hitters in the 3-0 loss, they fell two K’s short of making it their third game of the season to go scoreless while registering double-digit strikeouts at the same time.

Maybe next time. The season is young.