Mechanics

White Sox pitching prospect Lucas Giolito says he’s working on his mechanics, and I want to pull my hair out.  Ballplayers aren’t machines.  They’re a human variety of snowflake, every one of them different, which is what makes them so hard to coach.

A few weeks ago, I told Clare to look up John Wockenfuss and Tony Batista on YouTube.  Wockenfuss was a right-handed hitter who stood with his back foot on the back line of the batter’s box and his front foot not parallel but angled forward eight or nine inches away, toward the plate.  Batista, also right-handed, had such an extreme open stance he looked to be holding an axe instead of a bat.  Yet Wockenfuss managed 86 homeruns in a 12-year career as a part-time player while Batista hit 221 homers in 11 years.  Trust me, no hitting coach could figure out the “mechanics” of those stances.

It was really a case of “see ball, hit ball” for Wockefuss and Batista, as it is for every hitter.  This is what I preached to Clare—if you see it, hit it; if you don’t, lay off it. When I watch the likes of Avisail Garcia and Brett Lawrie, I see players swinging without seeing, with eyes closed or head turned away from the ball.  They’re “guess” hitters, bound for early retirement.

Now, back to Giolito.  Mechanics do matter more with pitchers than hitters because of the increased likelihood of injury to the arm, shoulder or knee.  That said, look at the front-toe tapper vs. the side-armer vs. the big leg kick vs. whatever in the world Luis Tiant did on the mound.  All different sorts of deliveries can work, as long as the pitcher is intent on throwing strikes.  There you have it in a nutshell, have the courage to throw strikes consistently.  The only reason to tinker with delivery or grip is to increase the percentage of strikes thrown.

As a pitching coach or organizational pitching coordinator, I’d want my pitchers throwing at least 90 percent strikes with their best pitch, and at least that with their secondary pitches; how they got there by way of a hop, skip or a jump would be up to them.  Once they’ve reached that level of proficiency, then we could experiment with taking something off a pitch or locating it a little up, down, in or out.  But the default should always be a strike down the middle of the plate.  As Robin Roberts and Fergie Jenkins knew, better to give up a whole bunch of solo shots in a season than a whole bunch of walks and base hits because you’ve fallen behind in the count.

Lucas, call me when you get a chance.