Fixing Jose Berrios

Seeing the struggles of top prospects like May, Meyer, and Barrios makes one leery about what else is in the cupboards.

Yeah, the larger point to me is not that pushing off the rubber harder does not create extra velocity (although I'm sure you are correct about that and Blyleven wrong), it is that VELOCITY is not remotely Berrios' problem, so why try to fix the part of his game that's not broken? 

I agree with Thrylos, seems like Berrios is (understandably given the instruction he is being given) overthinking things and needs to relax and just pitch.

I can't seem to find the article on BP from earlier this year, but one of their writers pointed out two things (if I recall correctly...)

1) Berrios's command, relative to past seasons, has been off all year - spring training, majors, minors; he has struggled to one degree or another at every level.

2) In his opinion, Berrios has slowed down his delivery relative to past years, and he thinks this is the problem. Berrios was able to generate such good stuff due, in part, to a fast delivery. But now the delivery doesn't quite match the arm speed, so his arm ends up lagging a little bit and he missed to the glove side.

I was able to dig up the article.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=29065

The most telling part of the Blyleven conversation was when he said “sadly, they should have had him working on this in the minor leagues”.

We cannot get this FO, development, and coaching staff out of here soon enough.

Let's just summarize all the (known) advice Jose Berrios has been given:

 

1. Ervin Santana told him he was "opening up his front hip too fast, spinning away from the target". http://www.twincities.com/2016/08/15/twins-using-village-to-help-struggling-jose-berrios/

 

2. Neil Allen told him he needs to pick up the tempo. http://www.startribune.com/twins-ask-jose-berrios-to-pick-up-the-pace-on-the-mound/390656141/

 

3. In the same article, Allen also told Berrios that wrapping the ball behind his back was hurting his command.

 

4. Bert Blyleven had told him to work on his release point.

 

5. And, finally, Blyleven said that they were working on pushing off that pitching rubber.

 

That's a lot of things for a pitcher to take with him into a start.

Now add all the things the AAA staff has told him.

I can't seem to find the article on BP from earlier this year, but one of their writers pointed out two things (if I recall correctly...)

 

1) Berrios's command, relative to past seasons, has been off all year - spring training, majors, minors; he has struggled to one degree or another at every level.

2) In his opinion, Berrios has slowed down his delivery relative to past years, and he thinks this is the problem. Berrios was able to generate such good stuff due, in part, to a fast delivery. But now the delivery doesn't quite match the arm speed, so his arm ends up lagging a little bit and he missed to the glove side.

 

I was able to dig up the article.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=29065

Don't have a subscription but looking at the fastball chart in Parker's article, if that image is from the pitcher perspective as it appears, there's a cluster to Berrios' arm side. A more rapid delivery would exacerbate that tendency.

I have to side with the "mind" side of his current pitching problems.  He is a hard worker and takes coaching like the best of him.  That can get many out of whack by implementing all the tweaks.  I happen to agree with thrylos: relax and let things fly and have fun playing the game.

I'm not too concerned that he's getting different advice from multiple sources.  Anyone who's been an athlete at any level knows that you're always getting advice from coaches, friends, family, etc.  Some of it may be good advice, hopefully from one's coaching staff, and some of it may be completely off base.  The key is that someone says something that "clicks" with the player, and he can use it to his benefit.  I'm sure that pitchers are fine-tuning their delivery all the time.  Hopefully, Berrios finds something that works and he gets back on track soon.

Yeah, when it comes to pitching, less is more.  Let's just start with the fastball.  If you are going to miss with your fastball, you want to miss low.  Missing high (like thigh high) tends to make the ball disappear over the fence.  Speeding up tempo is different than speeding up delivery.  Tempo is just the time between pitches - get the sign, throw the ball, don't think about it.  My guess is that is what Neil Allen was trying to tell him.

"You just got lesson number one: don't think; it can only hurt the ball club." - Crash Davis

When you speed up delivery, the tendency is to leave the arm behind which screws up the release point and causes the ball to go higher than intended.  So, if I were coaching him, just start with the fastball and let's work on getting that down in the zone where a mistake won't hurt you.

Parker, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being Fernando Abad high-elbow pitch tipping, and 10 being Rick Ankiel cca 2001, how broken do you think Berrios' delivery really is?

Don't have a subscription but looking at the fastball chart in Parker's article, if that image is from the pitcher perspective as it appears, there's a cluster to Berrios' arm side. A more rapid delivery would exacerbate that tendency.

I can see why you might think that, but the argument that this writer put forth was a little more nuanced. Basically, shortish pitchers like Berrios need to create a fair amount of momentum and burst from their lower half in order to (in his opinion) safely generate arm speed. If the top-half (arms, shoulders) are moving too slow, it ends up lagging behind the lower half. That lack of sync causes the release point to be behind and pitches to drift armside. 

I wish you could see the article. He added a couple of nice gifs that contrasted two pitches against different lefties. They may have been cherry-picked, but even to my untrained eye I could see a subtle difference between them. Basically, if you look at where Berrios's arm is when his left foot hits the ground, you can see that his arm is just a little bit behind on a arm-side miss than when he throws a good strike. 

I can see why you might think that, but the argument that this writer put forth was a little more nuanced. Basically, shortish pitchers like Berrios need to create a fair amount of momentum and burst from their lower half in order to (in his opinion) safely generate arm speed. If the top-half (arms, shoulders) are moving too slow, it ends up lagging behind the lower half. That lack of sync causes the release point to be behind and pitches to drift armside. 

 

I wish you could see the article. He added a couple of nice gifs that contrasted two pitches against different lefties. They may have been cherry-picked, but even to my untrained eye I could see a subtle difference between them. Basically, if you look at where Berrios's arm is when his left foot hits the ground, you can see that his arm is just a little bit behind on a arm-side miss than when he throws a good strike. 

OK, I thought you were describing a problem where his arm was in front of his body and he was missing glove side. This makes more sense.

I'm not smart enough to know the answer to this, but I've always wondered about the generation of speed based upon the relative weight transfer in contrast to leg drive off the rubber. It would seem to me that higher rear leg drive would actually kill the natural downward plane of the pitch vs. the general action created by weight transfer down hill.