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For those who are able to see the embedded Twitter post, you can watch and listen to the entire conversation here:
Berrios, of course, came unglued shortly thereafter. He issued four walks and allowed four runs to score during his four innings of work. He either stopped exploding towards home plate or that wasn’t the pitching tip that was going to remedy what ails him.
Now, regular Twins broadcast viewers will recall this pitching advice. This, along with a “good downward plane”, have become common pitching jargon slung around for years. Scott Baker never figured out how to get a good downward plane. It has come to the point where if any Twins pitcher is struggling, the inevitable cure from the broadcast booth would likely be one of those two remedies.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that Bert Blyleven doesn’t know pitching. Bert Blyleven has forgotten more about pitching in the time it took you to get to this point in the sentence than most people hope to learn in a lifetime. However, when it comes to utilizing the rubber by pushing off, as Blyleven suggests, science might not agree with the Dutchman’s assessment. According to Kyle Boddy and his Driveline Baseball think tank in Seattle, Washington has studied the “push off” phenomenon and his preliminary research shows that the back leg push off is not the velocity-inducing catalyst that people think it is.
Boddy offered the Mariners’ Arquimedes Caminero as a good example of how velocity isn’t generated off the back leg. When he gets to his balance point and goes forward, his foot disengages the rubber area but doesn’t push off.
http://i.imgur.com/cxLJzHG.gif
When it comes this particular pitching cue, Blyleven is incorrect. By Boddy’s account, coming from someone who has dedicated his career to understanding the science behind it, pushing from the back leg has little influence on velocity or command. What we hear from players, former players and coaches is a disconnect between what they FELT and what is actually happening during the process. To Blyleven, the act of driving off the back leg may have felt like pushing off the pitching rubber but that is not what actually transpires in the kinetic chain.
Berrios’ problem does not stem from not utilizing the pitching rubber enough.
In the case of Berrios’ development, as Mike Berardino of the St Paul Pioneer Press recently phrased it, the Twins are using a “village” approach. In addition to Blyleven, Berrios has been receiving advice from Neil Allen, Eddie Guardado and teammate Ervin Santana. While the guidance from multiple experienced baseball men can be beneficial, there is also the danger that a young prospect has too many messages being communicated -- especially when some of the advice, in spite of the well-meaning nature, is wrong.
There is no denying that Berrios needs refinement. When it comes to his fastball command, he has found the zone just 46% of the time -- compared to the 53.5% major league average. In fact, of those who have thrown 350 or more fastballs, Berrios’ in-zone rate is the fifth lowest. Beyond that, Berrios also struggles to command his fastball in the zone, missing the glove by a wide margin and winding up in a hitter’s whump-em zone.
That being said, in spite of the poor command, Berrios’ movement and velocity on his fastball has also incited plenty of swing-and-misses making it a very good potential weapon. Right now his fastball gets a swinging strike 9.3% of the time it’s thrown -- well above the league average of 7.5%. By comparison, the hard-throwing Noah Syndergaard gets a swinging strike 9.5% of the time. That would be good over the course of an entire season. That would be really good.
Guardado told me something in spring training that resonated about his instructional approach and the psyche of pitchers in general. “I don’t like to go in there and fix a damn engine when you only need to change a spark plug,” he said. “That’s what I try to do. Keep it simple, keep it easy. Not too much to think about because it is already tough to go out there and the pressure out there trying to compete.”
There is a lot of pressure. Especially for someone who has been deemed the team’s top pitching prospect and one -- through various social media channels -- who has also set a lofty expectation for himself as well. Berrios has talent, skill and dedication like few others have ever had or ever wish to have and he has carved up hitters in the minor leagues. It is only a matter of time before it all clicks.
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