Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 555: Doug Thorburn on Postseason Pitchers with Problems

Episode Date: October 14, 2014

Ben and Sam talk to BP pitching mechanics expert Doug Thorburn about Adam Wainwright, Danny Duffy, and other postseason pitchers.

These are the melancholy mechanics of my mind. These are the melancholy mechanics of my mind. Good morning and welcome to episode 555 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg of Grantland. Hi, Ben. Hello. How are you? Great. You know what it means to hit 555, right?

No, what does it mean? It means you get a hit five out of ten times. Or are you, according to an email we received about that comment, it means that you hit the ball five out of ten times. I don't know if that guy's email was true. If it was true, I would say that it erred on the side of being a bit more pedantic than I need in my life at this point. But I'll be listening out. aired on the side of being a bit more pedantic than I need in my life at this point. But

I'll be listening out. There's an allegation that I might have misconstrued or somehow misconstrued, but in a way that makes the lawyer make worse. Yes, you underrated how bad that ad is. Feel no sympathy for the lawyer. We're joined today by Doug Thorburn. Hi, Doug. Hi, how are you guys doing? Good. So we have Doug on here because, well, there was no baseball today, which felt odd.

Single tier, yeah. And so we had some kind of outstanding questions about this postseason that are suited to Doug's specialty, which Doug is one of the we know, Ben and I know a lot of smart people. I don't know if any of them are smarter than

Doug especially within a field of research that is very valuable to us which is pitching mechanics. Doug is a pitching mechanics expert and he's been on the show a bunch. People know him but in case you're new. Hi Doug. Hi how are you? Again hello.

Oh I should note by the way the 5d5 is clearly 5 of 9 not 5 of 10. I know that was the joke. Oh, I should note, by the way, the 5d5 is clearly 5 of 9, not 5 of 10. I know. That was the joke. Oh, okay. It's very easy math. Right. Because it's like the easiest math in the world.

It's like the easiest math you could have with the number 9 involved. All right. So, Doug, the first one that we want to talk about, maybe the most important one we want to talk about, is Adam Wainwright. We talked a lot about Adam Wainwright yesterday. Ben and I both are pessimists. We think that there's got to be some sort of injury there or something like that. Well, there's obviously some sort of injury there, but we think there's a serious injury there. But Adam Wainwright himself has just sort of said, hey, my mechanics are off.

My elbow's not nearly as bad as it's being made out to be. And in the last two starts, I just had mechanical issues. So I have a sort of small question and a sort of bigger question for you regarding that. The smaller one is, you've watched these games. Well, you've been recapping. Let's see. You are recapping the series, but you didn't recap that game. I assume you've gone back and looked. So I wanted to know if you see anything in Wainwright's mechanics that explains his particular brand of being off. But the larger question I have is,

is there anything that Wainwright has been getting wrong as a pitcher in the last couple starts that couldn't be both injury or mechanics? And that's very poorly phrased. double starts that couldn't be both injury or mechanics. And that's very poorly phrased. But I guess what I'm saying is, to all the clues that Ben and I think we've picked up in the way he's pitching, could all of them be just as easily explained by mechanics? In other words, is there often a near-perfect overlap between the sort of things that you might see a pitcher who's losing as mechanics do

to a baseball in manipulating that baseball and locating that baseball and the things that you might see a pitcher who's dealing with injury do with a baseball those things are really interconnected because you have a lot of guys who once they do get injured it's the it's a will carroll you know injury cascade all over again but they start you know using compensatory mechanics to try to overcome whatever thing is is messing with them now wayne knight said specifically that uh he was he hit the quote from him was that he was dramatically late getting the ball out of his glove um it was something that aj brzezinski noticed and um it's something that i i noticed a little bit of i

wouldn't call it dramatic but as far as what he's feeling, especially for a pitcher who's used to being able to repeat that release point and find his ideal release point really efficiently, for him that might feel like a dramatic change. And sure enough, if he's bringing his hand out of the glove late, that's going to cause him, it's basically the whole rotational sequence is now behind schedule. And so his arm's going to be late. He's going to end up elevating pitches.

Now, to be perfectly honest, he's had some pitches hit that were like, you know, he's had a couple of curveballs that were actually below the zone that were hit hard. So to me, it's not as simple as just saying, oh, yeah, clearly the mechanics are off or clearly he's hurt. It's amazing. It's kind of human nature, right, that we try to find some kind of a causal explanation for everything. And so I think that, you know, he's trying to calm people down, you know, calm them off the ledge when it comes to potential injury risk with him. But for him, this might actually feel like a pretty stark difference.

Now, the difference for him is when he breaks his hands, it really is subtle. It's, it used to be, he would bring the hand out of the glove right before the left leg would start coming down. Now he's doing it right after the left leg comes down. It's such a minor type of thing, but because it's on either side of that, that sort of checkpoint, I could see it as feeling like it was a big issue. That said, I'm not necessarily saying that he's going to come back and be the Adam Wainwright of old. So there's a couple of things there. The mechanics could definitely be tied to it.

And if it's a timing issue, that isn't necessarily related to injury. How does that happen to a pitcher of Wainwright's experience? I mean, that seems like such a simple thing. He's gone through this motion you know hundreds of thousands of times is that true let's say thousands of times tens of thousands maybe tens of thousands yeah yeah uh and it feels like that's not the thing that you would expect to go wrong in his mechanics like you could see if he were just like i don't know like lost his center of gravity or something, but that feels like such a, to use the phrase mechanical, it just seems so, so, uh, so easy to repeat and so obvious if you're

not repeating it. So like, how does this happen with a picture of, of such experience? Uh, and, and like, I don't know, is it, is it, is it conceivable that it's totally random and has nothing to do with anything else? I wouldn't call it random, but when it comes to timing, it is so sensitive that guys can lose it. Even guys who are used to being able to repeat their deliveries like crazy, someone like a Wainwright, they can't lose it at any given time. Timing is just that fickle. And when it comes to the rotational elements especially, you've got some guys where,

especially when it comes to that handbrake, it really does kick off the whole rotational sequence. So if the upper body rotational sequence is delayed and the lower body is preparing him to throw the baseball and the throwing arm ends up being late, then yeah, he is going to end up with elevated pitches. He is going to end up missing targets. And someone of his experience certainly can lose it that quickly and they can also get it back that quickly so when it comes to timing it it it's the type of thing that could plague them for months or they can fix it in game um the fact that he thinks he has a trigger now that that it was the timing of the handbrake it's kind of weird that someone of his experience didn't realize that himself that it took not even the guy who regularly catches him,

it took a backup catcher to notice that stuff. So someone who's pretty new with the team. So I find that to be really interesting, but especially a pitcher of his caliber, though. And so when I was playing Detective this week and trying to look at his pitches and the location and his release point and all these things, was I just fooling myself?

Do I not have the experience or the kind of insight to find that narrow space that might exist between injury and mechanics? If he says it's mechanics, do I have anything better to do than just sort of take him at his word or whatever? I think so. When it comes to injury, there's certain indicators. And command, unfortunately, is not one of them. Even though command has been linked to elbow soreness and everything else, for me, that's more about

guys coming back from an elbow injury. For someone who might be injured, there's a million reasons why their command could be off a little bit. And it's just going to be exaggerated for someone like Wainwright, who relies on elite level command to have the level of success that he's used to. I'm wondering about a couple other Cardinals pitchers. I don't know how closely you have studied them this year, but Shelby Miller was sort of the story of last postseason in that he was not pitching and everyone spent October wondering why he was not pitching. And then he started out this season as, you know, pitching like someone who should not have been pitching last playoffs. But then he finished really strong and has reestablished himself. And I'm wondering if you've looked at either Miller or Waka since he returned and kind of became something like Miller in that he is not really being used this postseason, too, though possibly for different reasons.

Yeah, I haven't watched Waka as much. But with Miller, with him, fastball command is everything because he is he's basically a two pitch guy and the curveball hasn't even been that effective this year. So the fastball is everything with him. And so if he's lost even a little bit of velocity, but especially if he's lost command, and that's been the biggest thing that I've noticed. And he's starting to clean it up a little bit. He's starting to find better repetition. But overall, his inability to repeat his delivery, his inconsistent momentum,

is causing him to have an erratic release point. And for him, that's a killer. I mean, the guy throws, I don't have it right in front of me right now, but I'm guessing it's something like 75% fastballs. I mean, the guy's a fastball machine and if his curve ball isn't working, it's basically he's, he's left with just his fastball. And so, uh, for me, that's a big issue with him. Uh, when it comes to being able to repeat that delivery, it was kind of like we were talking about with Wainwright, except that Wainwright has established that he can have an elite level of repetition, whereas Miller, as far as what he's shown,

he's excellent when his fastball command is on and when his curveball is, he's able to bury it well. But when he can't, I mean, he's completely vulnerable. From what I can tell, Wainwright has thrown about 40,000 pitches as a professional. So we can comfortably say that I guess he has probably not thrown 100,000 times. Oh, of course he has. Well, high school. He was drafted out of high school. You have high school, you have college. Okay, well, if you're counting bullpens. Are we counting bullpens? Spring training. Okay, all right, sure.

All right. How many pitches, what percentage of Wainwright's pitches in a given year do you think are thrown in a game? I don't know. What do you think? He throws 30? I have a better idea than I do. I mean, you think he throws maybe 35 in the bullpen before a game?

Well, and it's so different. I mean, a guy's bullpen delivery and his in-game delivery, we like to think they're the same, but there are plenty of guys who are great in the bullpen or even with their warmup pitches. And then once they ramp it up to full bore, it's pretty rough. The glove, the glove hand, the hand glove separation though, you would think would be the same. It's impressive that AJ Pruszynski noticed it because AJ Pruszynski just met the guy. Yeah, no, that's what's shocking to me. Absolutely. So I want to ask you about Danny Duffy, because this is one of the great mysteries of this postseason. Duffy was in many ways the Royals' best pitcher this year.

You would have thought he would be starting game one or two in these series. Instead, he has disappeared completely, and everybody insists that he's not hurt. Annie McCullough of the Kansas City Star writes, tweets, Danny Duffy is healthy. All involved parties continue to maintain. The Royals remain wary after his mechanical breakdown in late September. Duffy has basically been unable to throw strikes out of the windup during his last two starts. That's why the Royals are keeping him in relief.

And not just keeping him in relief, incidentally, but kind of burying him in relief. He hasn't been used in the same way that, like, for instance, the Tigers used Anibal Sanchez or the Nationals used Tanner Roark, although maybe the need hasn't been there. So have you looked at Danny Duffy's mechanics in September and is it as striking and shocking and obvious as these tweets would kind of have us believe? It is pretty, it's pretty striking. I mean, overall, it's a, it's a lack of balance is his main issue. Um, now he's doing a lot of it. He's doing from both the windup and the stretch in the sense that he has a lot more spine tilt. Um, he's ending up out in front a lot. So he's, you, we call it the kill of the boat where the the back foot ends up popping up the girl off the ground

a little bit too early because the front half is Basically the leaning too far out in front. So I noticed that with that. Why is that called kill the boat? keel of the boat so it's kind of like If you imagine that the top of the sail moving forward the keel of the boat the bottom of the boat is gonna end up Basically following that same pathway. So it's hard to explain without having a visual there. Um, but that's something that I've definitely noticed with them, whether it's wind up or stretch. Now, the big thing that I've noticed, uh, overall, that is just a windup thing, um, has been his drop and drive. Um, usually he's pretty good at maintaining his vertical stability. So maintain the same head height and not crouching too much after maximum

leg lift. Um, but this season, but especially his last start against the white socks, um, he was really exaggerating that drop. He was increasing his momentum, which is kind of nice,

but the bigger thing was that he was really lowering his center of gravity acts after maximum leg lift, um, which was, you combine that with all the other imbalances and was definitely wreaking havoc on his release point. Now for him, I think it could be fatigue as much as anything. When you see a guy who's got a balance issue like that, especially one where all of a sudden the drop and drive is being exaggerated, that's usually a fatigue issue for a young pitcher that, you know, he hasn't had this many innings. I'm trying to look, let's see, last year he had 69 in the minors and 24 in the majors.

Yeah, he's thrown 149 in the majors already, not counting the inning he threw in the DS or whatever. So overall, to me, this looks to be more of a fatigue issue, and the Royals would be the first ones that would be on top of that, that would know that, okay, this is an indicator to us that he's not someone that we can trust, especially in a starting role in a playoff game. Would you expect him to still be fatigued after, what, more than two weeks off at this point? Yeah, because to me it's a full season fatigue.

It's not just a, oh, we'll give him eight days rest and he'll be all right. Now, it might work that way, but players are individuals, and how he reacts to it is really up to him. And from what I saw, if he's continuing to have that problem, and the Royals would know, if he's doing that even in the bullpen, that's one of those aspects that a lot of players look great in the bullpen and then they go a hundred percent and all of a sudden the balance goes, the posture goes. Um, if he's doing that even in the bullpen, then the Royals know not to trust him at this point. What, uh, what part of the body is fatigued that would cause this? Is this like his shoulder is fatigued or would it be like his core is fatigued or his

legs are fatigued or, or what? I would say more middle, lower half. So it could be legs. It could be core. But overall, he's not able to sustain the same foundation that he's used to being able to do. So that does speak to either lower half or midsection. And Andy's tweets specifically said the windup. Did you see him out of the stretch? Oh, yeah.

From the stretch, he actually looks better from the stretch. He still has some extra posture issues, so it's more of a lateral imbalance from the stretch when you compare to when he was really going well, like say in July and August. But the one specific stuff, that's the drop and drive. And so to me, that's the big indicator of fatigue. So that tells me that the other balance issues he's having are probably fatigue-oriented or fatigue-related. Sticking with Kansas City, I want to ask you a question about your Dono Ventura.

You wrote about him a bit at the end of September when you looked at starters with the best stuff, and Ventura, of course, does throw harder than any other starter according to the radar gun or according to the PitchFX cameras. But I was watching some of the new StatCast videos that have been coming out in the last few days, and I noticed that while those videos have, I guess they call it effective velocity or perceived velocity, which is tied to the stride length, how close to the plate the pitcher actually releases the ball.

So Ventura, when he's throwing 98-something, according to that video, his perceived velocity is only about 96, whereas if you watch, say, Trevor Rosenthal in another one of those StatCast videos, when he's throwing 98-something, his perceived velocity is close to 100 so i want to ask you about ventura is this just a product of his size because you you look at his numbers and he throws harder than any other starter but the results don't really reflect that his his strikeout rate is about average for a starting pitcher and i've wondered why that is. And is it something to do with him not getting the same extension? And how does he generate so much velocity and yet not have quite the same perceived velocity that someone else might?

Well, absolutely. This has to do with extension. I mean, for someone like Giordano, I mean, in the 2014 starting pitcher guide, I gave him like a 45 for release distance. He has days where it's 40. He has days where it's closer to 50. For him, part of his size-related, because that is definitely impacting him as far as what kind of a stride he can generate, part of that as well, I'm curious, the stats cast stuff you were looking at, how much of that was from the stretch and how much of that was from the windup?

I'm not sure. It was just one pitch. I'll have to look it up. But, yeah, I would expect, I mean, his stride length is definitely longer from the windup was from the stretch and how much that was from the windup? I'm not sure. It was just one pitch. I'll have to look it up. But yeah, I would expect, I mean, his stride length is definitely longer from the windup from the stretch. He, you know, he lowers his height a little bit. He gets a little bit, he quickens his delivery. So he has a lesser stride from the stretch. And that, that perceived velocity, or they're calling it effective velocity, even though it's not quite the parent,

the Perry husband version, but as far as the perceived velocity stuff, it's based on the average major league pitcher's release point. So if he's two miles an hour short, that means he's almost a foot short of the major league average release point. So that is definitely having an impact. And it's based on the idea that the hitter has a longer time to see the ball on its way to the plate. So it would make sense that his true velocity, he's not having the same results based on what we would expect by looking just purely at his raw velocity. So is there something

that you can do if you're a pitcher who's whatever his height is? I mean, can you compensate for that somehow, either by hiding the ball or by increasing the length of your stride, even though your legs might not be as long as in other pitchers? Increasing the stride is one thing, and that's tied to momentum. The other thing is being able to have proper posture. We used to say that for every one inch of spine tilt, essentially, it costs you two inches of distance at release point. And he has been getting better at that. That's why he's really improved this season. His balance overall, his posture at release point looks a lot better.

But he still has some work to do. So to me, he's giving up a little bit on that end. But when you've got that much power surging through the system, it's really difficult for him to repeat that release point and to keep it stable. So I expect that to take a little bit of time before he really hones it, but the fact that he's making those kind of improvements already by leaps and bounds just this season, that really bodes well for his future. So Trevor Rosenthal's wild pitch on Sunday,

afterward he spent a while cleaning his spikes, but he said that the spikes had nothing to do with the fact that he threw a pitch 50 feet straight into the ground. Did you see anything in his mechanics that would explain why he threw that pitch? Rosenthal's got a lot of things in his mechanics overall, and a lot of it is really tied to barriers to repetition. He has so many things that he does that make it difficult for him to find that same timing, especially to generate the same big torque that he's used to. So he's a guy that, to me, is always volatile just because of his delivery.

So it's very possible that it had nothing to do with his cleats and had everything to do with just how he ended up lining up his delivery on that pitch. And he had a very different season this year than he did last year. Last year, he basically never walked anybody. This year, his walk rate more than doubled. Based on what you just said about how volatile he can be, is it conceivable that Mike Matheny should be thinking about replacing his closer in the middle of the NLCS? That's such a tough thing to do.

It's not only a small sample to deal with, but you don't want to mess with, I mean, here comes the team chemistry argument, right? But you don't necessarily want to mess with what's been working. Although this is the ultimate time where things end up, everything is underneath the microscope at this point. To be honest, it's something I think they should have been looking at more mid-season. But the fact that they've stuck with him this long, I think they have to stick with him going forward. It does seem like they will, although I will note that last year, Rosenthal became the closer like 40 minutes before the postseason started.

So if any manager is willing to change his ninth inning in a pennant race or what have you, it might be Matheny. Is there anything else that we should be keeping an eye out or that seems significant or that's not getting enough play about this postseason or that should give us full confidence in our playoff predicting abilities? Nothing can give us full confidence. I mean, predicting playoffs is a fool's errand.

I mean, you just look at that Nats-Giants series where I think every single game, the team that had the better starting pitcher ended up losing. And that's usually kind of my default. If the team has the better starting pitcher three times out of four, I'm going to say that team is probably going to win in four. Not that it's going to perfectly work out that way, but there's a good chance that that is going to play a bigger role than anything else.

Well, that hasn't been the case so far. So, you know, for the Cardinals to lose Wainwright, for him to, even if he says he's figured it out or he says, you know, that's something that he's identified, that doesn't mean he's ironed out yet. And so when you combine the Wainwright issues with Molina going out, that was such a huge loss for the Cardinals overall. To me, that's a big worry overall. I mean, very few guys have actually been pitching like studs other than, say, Baumgartner for this postseason.

So I just looked at those two videos, and the Ventura video, its base is empty, and he throws a pitch that is 98.1 miles per hour with a perceived velocity of 96.2 miles per hour and the extension is five feet even and then the other the other video on the the trevor rosenthal wild pitch and he's you know he falls down so i don't know if this is a representative extension for him or not but he throws the ball 98.9 the perceived velocity is.6, and his extension is six feet five inches, which is, I mean, that's a full foot and a half closer to the plate, and yet Rosenthal's listed height is only two inches more than Ventura. So that's, I mean, that's a pretty extraordinary

difference that can't just be accounted for by their height. I don't know whether one has, you know, a higher leg to rest of body ratio or something, but I guess there's something that Rosenthal is doing to release the ball much closer to the plate than Ventura is according to those numbers. Well, and he also glides the front foot over the dirt of the mound and he ends with a flexed front knee, which allows him to track. After the foot's hit the ground, it allows him to track the body a little bit closer to the plate. So, I mean, there's your answer right there. The 1.5, 1.4 feet or whatever of extra distance that he's getting makes up that perceived velocity difference.

Absolutely. And one more question since you wrote about him in an article for this week, Wade Davis, I'm curious what your thoughts are on pitchers going to and from the bullpen, which is, I think, something Sam is working on an article also about. And what do you think makes a particularly successful starter to reliever transition or what qualities do you look for in a pitcher when you're trying to project how much better he might be in a relief role and why has that worked so well for Davis seemingly? Well, a lot of it for me is how their stuff translates. You've got plenty of guys who just don't have the stuff to start. They don't have that third pitch

is the common way of looking at it. But also not everybody has that huge velocity jump once they move over into the bullpen. Davis saw a bit of that velocity jump, but for him, he was able to eliminate a couple of pitches and really focus in on that fastball. And it's something where I also look at mechanics. If this is a guy who mechanically, he's unable to repeat that release point, he's a bit erratic, then overall he's a candidate for the bullpen for me. That was kind of my take on Henry Mejia from the beginning, actually. Just to throw another example out there. But someone like

Wade Davis, to me, he's a perfect candidate for the bullpen because of his stuff. Mechanically, he worked as a starter. He was fine. But now he can really ramp it up and he can really harness the power parts of his delivery, get that momentum going, generate a whole lot of torque without having to worry about saving himself for three, four, five, six, seven innings. To me, that's the huge difference for him to be able to really just air it out. Mejia has to stay in the bullpen because of the work he's doing with save celebrations. He's doing things that no

one else is doing. He's really innovating in the form of save celebrations. It's over though. I think it's over. I think he's been shut down. We'll see. Once he racks up some saves and gets a higher status, maybe he'll be able to return to tinkering with his save celebration.

Okay, well, thank you for walking us through this stuff, Doug. And everyone can find Doug's work at BP, where he usually has pretty pictures and GIFs that help to illustrate this stuff. It's pretty hard to do it on a podcast uh but i think he did an excellent job and of course you can find him on twitter at doug underscore thorburn where you can ask him about any particular pictures you're interested in so thank you doug hey doug got it thanks a lot doug doug when you're when you're telling us a thing that a pitcher is doing are you uh alone in the room are you miming? Are you alone in the room? Are you miming it? I am alone in the room, and yes, I am miming it.

I thought so. I don't know how you couldn't. It's practically impossible not to. My hands are going crazy. I'm actually displaying the delivery to my Huskies. All right. They're unimpressed. We will take questions maybe at some point this week keep sending them at podcasts at baseball perspectives.com please join the facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild where you can watch playoff games

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