Bradley Raises a Difficult Question About McDowell

I understand what you are saying and agree somewhat. But, I can't accept that ACE pitchers are just a crapshoot. That sounds too much like an excuse made by a scout who never drafted an ACE.

Both Glavine and Maddux (Cubs) were second round picks and neither were ever available for trade as minor leaguers by their teams so that says the teams knew they had something, maybe not future ACES and certainly not future HoF but good to very good pitchers.

Smoltz was a low round pick with excellent athleticism and a fantastic arm who grew into an ACE.

But, the argument on my part is in regards to Bradley's story is that you can't judge the ML pitching coach for not producing an ACE when the material he is given is less than ACE quality.
 
Knucksie said:
It's the simple fact that the Braves, as well as some other clubs, openly admitted that they were accommodating of young pitchers requiring TJ surgery or even wanting the pitcher to have it. The surge of young pitchers with UCL tears is a baseball-wide phenomenon and not unique to the Braves.

Think you'll find that it's more related to them not properly building arm strength. Otherwise, why did it used to take pitchers several years into the majors? They used to consistently throw more than 100 pitches/game or 6 innings, actually complete starts and 200 innings/year was no big deal.
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I think the main three issues are a lack of arm strength, as you suggest, combined with a lot of young guys who have already thrown a ton of innings from a young age, and guys maxing out effort more frequently, which I think is the main issue.

Teams have cut back with pitch counts and innings limits, and the number of injuries has only gone up, so clearly that isn't solving a problem. And some teams have tried going back to extremely long toss and more throwing between starts, which is probably not a bad idea but hasn't seemed to really curtail much, either.

But I don't think there is any coincidence that injuries have increased while average fastball velocity has similarly skyrocketed. And that increase can't totally be attributed to better strength/conditioning/mechanics. A lot of it is that because velocity is valued so much, and the average velocity is now around 92 mph, pitchers are maxing out to get there, which puts far more strain on them.

Maddux could hit mid-90s with his fastball in the minors, yet he chose to sit below 90 much of the time to add movement and to locate better. But it also had the effect of reducing his effort, allowing him to throw more pitches more often while also probably reducing his chances of injury greatly. My guess is that if he had continued to max out with his mid-90s fastball, like most guys now would probably do, he wouldn't have lasted nearly as long and would have probably had a severe injury at some point.
 
Horsehide Harry said:
I understand what you are saying and agree somewhat. But, I can't accept that ACE pitchers are just a crapshoot. That sounds too much like an excuse made by a scout who never drafted an ACE.
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That's not my contention either. It's that they're applying the same principles to the current operating philosophy. It was by having quantity that they would end up with quality. Back then, when Glavine and Smoltz were still in the minors, they had Pete Smith, Lilliquist, Mercker, Greene and Zane Smith was a bit older than the others. Later there were guys like Nied, Wade and Schmidt.

They realize that some will not make it, some will be used as trade assets and some will have decent major league careers with the Braves. Some other posters have complained about it, but they're going back to what worked before - "What do we do best?" You can be that Cox had significant input on this approach both times.
 
There is a lot of group think on pitching these days. Are we doing anything different from other teams?

Freddie abuses the pen, so I could see that for Medlen and Venters and Oflarity...

For starters we have pitch counts and inning limits on young guys.

It's happening on the college guys and the HS guys and the foreign guys....
 
sturg33 said:
I think we'd be fools to not at least question the throwing and conditioning programs McDowell has presided over. Clearly, he has gotten good results from pitchers. But the health record is frightening
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This. I’ve brought it up a time or two myself.
 
weso1 said:
Here's an interesting article with a more significant sample of data. link

TJbyTeam.png


The Braves were tied with the highest total of major league Tommy John surgeries in this time period. But their delta between MLB pitchers and Minor Leaguers is pretty similar to the other teams. This to me indicates that the problem lies more with either an organizational pitching development philosophy or a drafting philosophy. Which to me goes back to the guys running the team rather than just one coach. It could have also just been bad luck.
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For a while we really tried to moneyball it by drafting strong armed college relievers and turning them into starters. I think Medlen's and Beachy's brief success inspired it, but it really didn't work out for the rest (guys like Graham, Filak, and Moore).
 
Facts are facts here. Really can't dispute any of this. You can't pin Beachy and/or Medlen on him though. Those two were studs and had health issues which ended their careers. Maybe some of it was a result of McDowell in some way shape or form. Certain mechanics or what have you. Look what McDowell did for Harang last season. He obviously knows what he's doing. Maybe only have a staff of thirty something year old cast offs and have McDowell work with them.
 
smootness said:
I think the main three issues are a lack of arm strength, as you suggest, combined with a lot of young guys who have already thrown a ton of innings from a young age, and guys maxing out effort more frequently, which I think is the main issue.

Teams have cut back with pitch counts and innings limits, and the number of injuries has only gone up, so clearly that isn't solving a problem. And some teams have tried going back to extremely long toss and more throwing between starts, which is probably not a bad idea but hasn't seemed to really curtail much, either.

But I don't think there is any coincidence that injuries have increased while average fastball velocity has similarly skyrocketed. And that increase can't totally be attributed to better strength/conditioning/mechanics. A lot of it is that because velocity is valued so much, and the average velocity is now around 92 mph, pitchers are maxing out to get there, which puts far more strain on them.

Maddux could hit mid-90s with his fastball in the minors, yet he chose to sit below 90 much of the time to add movement and to locate better. But it also had the effect of reducing his effort, allowing him to throw more pitches more often while also probably reducing his chances of injury greatly. My guess is that if he had continued to max out with his mid-90s fastball, like most guys now would probably do, he wouldn't have lasted nearly as long and would have probably had a severe injury at some point.
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Very good point about the velocity! Lighting up the radar gun still is what gets attention. It's definitely a factor.
 
smootness said:
I think the main three issues are a lack of arm strength, as you suggest, combined with a lot of young guys who have already thrown a ton of innings from a young age, and guys maxing out effort more frequently, which I think is the main issue.

Teams have cut back with pitch counts and innings limits, and the number of injuries has only gone up, so clearly that isn't solving a problem. And some teams have tried going back to extremely long toss and more throwing between starts, which is probably not a bad idea but hasn't seemed to really curtail much, either.

But I don't think there is any coincidence that injuries have increased while average fastball velocity has similarly skyrocketed. And that increase can't totally be attributed to better strength/conditioning/mechanics. A lot of it is that because velocity is valued so much, and the average velocity is now around 92 mph, pitchers are maxing out to get there, which puts far more strain on them.

Maddux could hit mid-90s with his fastball in the minors, yet he chose to sit below 90 much of the time to add movement and to locate better. But it also had the effect of reducing his effort, allowing him to throw more pitches more often while also probably reducing his chances of injury greatly. My guess is that if he had continued to max out with his mid-90s fastball, like most guys now would probably do, he wouldn't have lasted nearly as long and would have probably had a severe injury at some point.
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You have absolutely nailed it, I think.

This goes along with Dr. Andrews' position paper on the root causes of the epidemic and how to address it.

Gosh, I threw, and threw, and threw, from about age 7 to 18. One year (I was 12, I think), I started and threw a complete game each week for fourteen weeks. Now, I threw a ton of strikes, but that was a lot of innings. I threw a fastball, sinker, change and a deluxe curveball, lots of them. But I did not throw max effort. I knew I'd be out there a while and had to pace myself. And I played from about February to July.

I never got hurt.

I'm looking at these kids playing year round travel ball, subscribing to the 90 mph Club, parents with radar gun apps on their iPhones, and I see exactly why young arms are blowing up. And you've laid it out perfectly.

I try hard to have my son follow this exact regimen. But it's hard when there some idiot assistant coach at his all star tryout yesterday with a radar gun calling out speeds, like that's how they're going to pick the team. It pissed me off, frankly. But yes, my kid did get picked despite his middling speed because the head coach has been watching him carve guys up for a couple years now. Hopefully a small college will have the same philosophy and give him a shot in a few years. But it's very frustrating.
 
Russ2dollas said:
There is a lot of group think on pitching these days. Are we doing anything different from other teams?

Freddie abuses the pen, so I could see that for Medlen and Venters and Oflarity...

For starters we have pitch counts and inning limits on young guys.

It's happening on the college guys and the HS guys and the foreign guys....
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See above on the abuse of young pitchers.

On bullpen use, and I've mentioned this a couple times, the proliferation of one inning "roles" is a big problem, as is warming guys up unnecessarily.

Sparky Lyle won a Cy Young in 1977 pitching 137 innings in 73 appearances. He was a closer, but averaged nearly two innings per appearance. So many guys now pitch 80 innings in 80 appearances. Once you're warm, you might as well go two.

If we went back to a two inning relief approach, cut guys' appearances by 30-40% and warmups accordingly, I think there would be a dramatic reduction in overuse injuries among relievers (as well as a slight reduction in "Max effort.").

Maybe Fredi (aka, "The Thinker") can be in the vanguard of new managers who try some of this stuff. 'Cause conventional baseball wisdom isn't working.
 
smootness said:
I agree with most of this.

It's fair to question what we're doing because of injury and take a look to see if we might need to make some changes. But pitchers do get hurt throughout baseball. It's a little worrisome that it happens to basically all of our guys and to an extent that they never really pitch again, but some of that could be attributed to bad luck.

But not developing a year-over-year ace? Who among that list should have developed into that? Beachy and Medlen were complete and utter non-factors until they hit AAA. The fact that they became what they did, even for a short period of time, is a huge feather in McDowell's cap, not a blemish.

Hanson was a really good prospect, but he might have had the most clearly bad mechanics I've ever seen. Everyone knew an injury was coming and that he couldn't pitch for long with that motion. Jurrjens was a good prospect who was projected as a 3-4 when we traded for him. McDowell got even more than that out of him; he was never going to be an ace. Same with Minor.

So the pretty clear track record is, develop a guy into better results than anyone thought possible, then the guy breaks down. If McDowell gets blame for the injury aspect, then he also gets credit for turning these guys into more than they should have been before the injury.

I don't really know what the answer is. I understand the concerns, and we should see if we're doing anything specific to lead to this, but McDowell also does a great job of maximizing a pitcher's talent.
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Not Zito. Hanson was fine. Beachy's inverted W was the obvious injury in waiting.

Nobody's ever been able to explain to me why the inverted W isn't just an M.
 
GovClintonTyree said:
Not Zito. Hanson was fine. Beachy's inverted W was the obvious injury in waiting.

Nobody's ever been able to explain to me why the inverted W isn't just an M.
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Never said Hanson was fine. Just said I wasn't able to find any obvious timing issues, and cautioned that weird looking mechanics don't always mean bad mechanics. Sometimes guys can do weird looking things and still hit the important parts. Lincecum is a great example of that. Now the negative to Lincecum is because of how athletic his mechanics are, as he aged he is not able to complete them with the same consistency as he used to. Which is why I believe his BB rate started rising pretty fast, not able to consistently repeat his mechanics and I think long term it will lead to health issues.

Beachy didn't have an inverted W, that was Medlen. Beachy had some of the worst hip/shoulder separation. I never even made it up to analyze if he had an inverted W or not. Hip/shoulder is enough of a killer as it is.

And if you don't know why it's called the Inverted W you've never asked or never read up on it. Here's the answer

http://www.chrisoleary.com/projects/pitchingmechanics101/Essays/DeathToTheInvertedW_FAQ.html

so basically it was originally called that and out of deference to the person who popularized it (even if he didn't figure it out) peopel stuck with it. It will be called an M at some point I believe. Probably when people get tired of saying or typing inverted W over and over again.
 
I thought the Bradley article was kind of off base. He wanted to blame Tehran's problems on mechanics and McDowell's inability to correct them but then brought up guys who had their careers derailed by injuries as support.

Personally, I'm not going to blame injury issues on McDowell. The mechanical problems that cause injuries should have been dealt with in the minors. It's not McDowell's job to overhaul a guy's delivery to take stress of his arm. That should happen early on. It's McDowell's job to get his guys to pitch at a high level and he's generally been able to do that. If you see a guy like Hanson or Beachy come up with mechanical issues so bad that they put his career in jeopardy, you send him down and let him work on that.

Also, I really don't like seeing JJ listed with the others. His problem was a bum knee. That's just bad luck.

I also doubt Teheran is healthy. I think his knee is bothering him. He tweaked his knee early this year and hasn't been the same pitcher since. I think his base isn't solid underneath him so in order to get his velocity where he wants it he's having to overthrow. That's causing things to straighten out and/or end up over the plate.
 
I don't care what your mechanics look like in slow-motion; if you're throwing with that much effort on every pitch, like Hanson did, you're not going to pitch for very long.
 
smootness said:
I don't care what your mechanics look like in slow-motion; if you're throwing with that much effort on every pitch, like Hanson did, you're not going to pitch for very long.
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Hanson had bad mechanics. People are harping on something I said many years ago. I don't have the tech or know how to really analyze mechanics, if I spot it usually it's pretty glaring. Hanson had uncommon mechanics, which doesn't mean bad necessarily. In his case he had too much going on and put too much stress on his elbow and shoulder because of a timing issue.
 
JJ was a knee. Hanson was a shoulder. tehran is a mystery. Beachy, Medlen, venters, O'Flareity were elbows.

Can you lump all of those into one box?
 
sturg33 said:
I think we'd be fools to not at least question the throwing and conditioning programs McDowell has presided over. Clearly, he has gotten good results from pitchers. But the health record is frightening
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When he was hired, it was explicitly stated that he was abandoning the Mazzone "throw a lot" program. I remember reading this at the time with a sense of foreboding, that has more than been proven justified.

I don't know that McDowell needs to go, necessarily, but the team HAS to change something. Our pitching program is a meat grinder.
 
Metaphysicist said:
When he was hired, it was explicitly stated that he was abandoning the Mazzone "throw a lot" program. I remember reading this at the time with a sense of foreboding, that has more than been proven justified.

I don't know that McDowell needs to go, necessarily, but the team HAS to change something. Our pitching program is a meat grinder.
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Well put. The attrition rate for our front end starting pitching is nuts .

We better draft and develop well, because we burn through em pretty fast.
 
Are there any teams that are actually following Leo's philosophy now though? There are clearly teams that are succeeding in their pitching development. Seems there is more than one way to skin a cat. And I should know because skinning cats is my favorite hobby, especially cute kittens. I just don't think we need to automatically blame McDowell when it appears to be a problem throughout the whole organization. I've always been under the assumption that McDowell is in charge of just the major league team. Now, I'm not going to say we should just ignore McDowell's major league program, but I also don't think you can ignore that the problems began after we changed GM's and brought in new names in the scouting and player development department.
 
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