Pitching 3D: No Walks in the Park

Carlos Rodon

The walks have been mostly replaced by base hits on his stat sheet, resulting in a WHIP of 1.39 that still needs improvement and an ERA of 3.90 that's a shade higher than last season's mark of 3.75. Balls in play are only marginally within his control, so let's focus on a walk rate that is less than two-thirds of what it was last year. What's changed?

What's interesting here is that Rodon appears to be much faster in the clip from 2015, with a more rapid leg kick and more intent apparent in the delivery, whereas the clip from 2016 appears to be more relaxed with slower movement overall. However, his timing sequence for the lower-half is the exact same in both clips: in the video from 2015 and the one from 2016, it takes an identical 28 frames to get through the lift and stride portions of the delivery, measured from the moment that the front foot leaves the ground through the point of foot strike. Given that the clips were shot at 24 frames/second, that means that his stride timing was approximately 1.17 seconds (+/- .03 seconds) for both deliveries.

At first glance this would seem to defy convention, as a pitcher's lift-and-stride sequence kicks off the timing portion of the delivery, and any alterations made to the timing from lift through foot strike can have a large impact (positively or negatively) on release point consistency and pitch command. This is a big part of the rationale behind my personal disdain for the slide step, a maneuver that requires a pitcher to alter his lower-body timing with runners on base.

The fact that Rodon appears to be slower but still has the same timing sequence with his lower half suggests that the improvements have to do with his trigger timing, or when to initiate the upper-body rotation portion of the delivery. Rodon's slower movements while preserving the timing of his lower half suggest that it was the upper-half that was moving too quickly, often triggering trunk rotation too early with what scouts like to call his "front shoulder flying open" (this is how it looks from the batter/catcher/umpire POV). Pitchers who fly open too often tend to miss their targets low and to the glove side, because the upper-body triggers premature rotation and the arm travels past ideal release point by the time the pitcher lets go of the baseball (pictures courtesy of Brooks Baseball).

Sure enough, Rodon was consistently missing targets low and to the glove side last season (charts are catcher POV, so down and to the left), throwing 24.3 percent of his pitches to the three blocks that form an "L" shape around the low-outside corner of the strike zone. Contrast those figures to this season, in which Rodon has thrown 19.7 percent of his pitches to the same "L" locations.

The quieter pace has helped Rodon to align the gears of his upper- and lower-body rotation without altering his stride timing, which is an ideal way to ensure rapid improvements with a pitcher's control (his walk rate) and command (hitting targets).

Mike Leake

Leake has poor balance, with his head displaced from his center-of-mass in all three planes during the delivery. He has a lean back toward first base as he reaches max lift followed by a hunch over the front side, disrupting his X-plane, he invokes a significant drop-and-drive pattern after max lift to disrupt his Y-plane balance, and a rock-n-roll pattern causes the head to lean back toward second base just before foot strike, harming his balance in the Z-plane. Given the established connection between balance and control, it is quite surprising that Leake has been able to maintain such a low rate of walks throughout his career.

The drop-n-drive and rock-n-roll techniques are still present this season, but he has really quieted his side-to-side imbalance in the X-plane. Take a look at his head position as it compares to the center of his body, and pay attention to how his head moves throughout the delivery - in 2015, the sideways lean is more exaggerated into max lift, the front-side hunch is more egregious during his stride and he finishes with a good dose of spine tilt, resulting in a posture grade in the 55-60 range on the 20-80 scouting scale for mechanics. The back-side lean is less exaggerated during the lift phase this year, the hunch has been muted, and most importantly, his motion culminates in excellent posture with minimal spine-tilt, earning a 65 grade or better on the mechanics report card.

It might seem like a small distinction, but making it easier for a skilled pitcher to hit his spots will only result in even better performance.

Danny Duffy

A pitcher with such immense gains in both walks and strikeouts must be doing something differently, right? In my closing statement on Duffy last week, I alluded to the fact that pitch command had been at the root of his increased strikeout rate, with a newfound ability to locate all of his pitches. Such an across-the-board improvement points toward the possibility of a mechanical change, so the pitching coach in me can't help but to study Duffy's delivery.

Wow. What we have is a classic case of ramping up momentum, quickening the pace of his lift-and-stride to line up the gears of rotation. It's similar to what we saw with Rodon, but rather than emphasizing the trigger timing by changing upper-body mechanics, Duffy has adjusted his lower-half mechanics to have a much faster pace to the plate. In the clip from 2015, Duffy takes 40 frames (~1.65-1.70 seconds) to execute the lift and stride portions of his delivery, but in the clip from 2016 he needs just 31 frames (~1.25-1.30 seconds) to execute the same task, despite the fact that he is using virtually the same height of leg lift (knee to letters).

This is the more common method for adjusting a pitcher's timing pattern, and all of the statistical evidence points to this being a good move. I am certainly in favor, as there are several reasons why I prefer a pitcher with a bigger burst of momentum, and in the specific case of Duffy, he had much more impressive momentum as an amateur than what we saw last season and his new pace to the plate might actually be a reversion to his old style.

There are at least three reasons why I prefer this extra burst: 1) it gives the pitcher a longer stride and thus extends his release point; 2) it is often easier for pitcher's to adjust to a quicker pace after years of being told to slow down by various coaches; and 3) the timing disparity between stretch and windup is lessened, making it easier on the pitcher to repeat his release point with runners on base. As if to drive that last point home, Duffy has even been known to invoke a slide step - despite being left-handed - with absolutely nobody on base, as the sole purpose is to disrupt the batter's timing; a pitcher needs to master the timing of his own delivery before he can start to mess with that of a hitter, but Duffy has evolved to that next level of pitching.