UTK Special 3/30/20
Linkfest on Ethics, Predictability, and Prospects
I’ve been working on a piece that I thought would run today, but it’s about weighted balls. If you know of a more controversial topic right now in baseball training, I don’t want to know what it is. The piece is just not ready yet; something like this has to be watertight or as close as I can make it. Instead, let’s do a linkfest!
The Ethics of Tommy John in Time of Pandemic
There’s that whole trope about the answer to any question in a headline being “no.” It holds here, but Emma Baccellieri dug in pretty hard on this. There’s a lot to be said for why elite athletes are getting special treatment, so its a worthwhile question. I’m really curious who the other person getting Tommy John at HSS alongside Noah Syndergaard might be. My guess is it’s a lower level player who has enough prospects or a good advisor that got him there.
The Inevitability of Chris Sale’s Injury
When the mainstream media does injury stories, they tend to be pretty superficial. That’s ok usually, but Jason Mastrodonato absolutely nailed this one by talking to the right people. I’m more surprised most of them spoke on the record, but good for Jason. The fact is that injuries are almost completely unpredictable in the broader sense. Was Sale risky? Yes. Did he get riskier over the last twelve months? Yes. I just don’t get why some chucklehead calling in to sports radio in Boston thinks he understands elbows more than Jim Andrews, who said Sale was fine last fall and again this spring. The elbow is fine, until it isn’t.
I’m saving details of this for a later date, but I had a really interesting conversation with Justin Rippy today about the success he’s having with his training program. There’s a lot of promises out there that come off like hyperbole, but Rippy’s unique program is getting results. Every time a pitching coach comes to me with some claims about finding something big, I ask them who their successes are. “Show me your pros!” Rippy’s got results, including one of the top prospects in this year’s so-called Draft.
Like I said, I’ll have more on this soon, but Justin Rippy is going to be a name to know. Justin Lange too.
Michael Wacha and “Technology”
This article is a nice idea, but … Michael Wacha goes the whole article without mentioning a single thing he actually used. Not a website, not a piece of tech, not even a result. Maybe he was dodging questions, but there’s not even a hint of what he’s doing, what it did, or how he’s seeing any benefit from it. I went back and looked at what I could find of Wacha from Spring Training and I don’t see any major mechanical changes. He had mixed results in his three spring outings, certainly not enough to get any real judgement from, so we’re left wondering. So, Mets fans, what do you think Wacha did and did it work?
Look at this chart from the amazing Baseball Savant.* There’s a question about whether there’s a “breaking point” for pitchers. Over 100 mph, we’ve seen a rapid expansion of pitchers on the list in something of a four-minute-mile pattern. Once someone did it, more quickly followed after it stopped being impossible. What they haven’t done, save Aroldis Chapman, is stay healthy. Is there a breaking point and if so, why?
By the way, what’s up with Aroldis Chapman?!
* When I was at FanDuel, one of the first people I went after was Darren Wilman. I didn’t get him and I’m glad in retrospect, but man, I always wonder.
More soon. Thanks for reading and I hope you’re all staying safe.