More Old School

I hate soft toss, always have.  It took Clare a while to adjust to it because she was a pure fastball hitter.  But once she did, my daughter would put on a show during high school and college BP.  But to what end?  In a game, nobody threw from twenty feet behind a screen, and I think it just depressed some of Clare’s teammates that they couldn’t hit with her kind of power.

 

I feel the same about the MLB equivalent.  The “pitcher” stands a little further back throwing the same kind of slop that goes into the stands.  Again, to what end?  No major league pitcher throws like that, and nothing of importance gets addressed.  If anything, BP “slop” encourages a hitch that will cause outs come game time.  You’d think the slumps that come with winning the homerun derby at the All-Star Game would get people to change their minds.         

 

Well, maybe it has.  I read in the NYT Friday that some teams are rethinking their approach to BP.  Out with the slop, in with the hard stuff.  The story says slop-BP has been around since before the Flood, but I disagree.  If memory serves, Ferguson Jenkins of the Cubs threw BP between starts, and I’m betting a lot of other pitchers did, too, before the advent of free agency.

The days of Jenkins bearing down on the likes of Ron Santo and Billy Williams aren’t coming back, but a pitching machine set to high would do the trick.  Let’s see how long until either Chicago team changes how it handles BP.