Slow down: The Yankees are leading a change in baseball by abandoning a principle of pitching
Tom Verducci
Sports Illustrated
July 19, 2017
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@EasyAce
@Machiavelli I've been saying for years that it was past time to quit judging pitchers by the radar gun alone and start
judging them by their abilities to think while they're on the mound. And there have been pitchers in the
past who were known for off-the-chart fastballs but had other things going for them that were often
superior to those fastballs. Without the most voluptuous curve ball of his time, Sandy Koufax doesn't
pitch his way into being a peak value Hall of Famer, and he was no slouch when it came to pitching
with his brain. Warren Spahn was a thinking pitcher who developed a screwball when he suspected his
fastball and his standard curve were beginning to betray him, and probably bought himself an extra
decade with it. Juan Marichal used about fourteen different windups and an array of breaking pitches
to keep hitters off balance. Whitey Ford was a near-classic junkballer whose brains got him into
Cooperstown. Bert Blyleven lived long on a curve ball described most politely as monstrous. Jim
Bunning was a classic attack tank on the mound but his real money pitch was a slider.
The flip side to leaning so heavily on breaking pitches: they take more of a physical toll on pitchers
than people realise because of the way they're thrown. (Koufax's elbow arthritis couldn't have been
helped by that straight overhand curve ball he threw, the same curve that helped wreck Dodger
predecessor Carl Erskine's shoulder when his early manager Burt Shotton told him, foolishly, that
the way to get over an arm or shoulder injury was to pitch through it.) And a lot of pitchers who
lived on breaking balls ended up with shortened careers because a) they didn't know (and their
handlers weren't smart enough to know) how to strengthen their arms and shoulders to throw
those pitchers; or, b) they didn't know how to use their fastballs to set those murderous breaking
balls up. Classic examples:
* Steve Stone: Came along slowly but surely in the 1970s, then decided to go for broke and use
that murderous curve ball he had as much as possible despite already having a history of shoulder
trouble. Threw over 55 percent curve balls in 1980. Won himself a Cy Young Award and almost
won the Orioles a pennant. Gone a year and a half later; his arm basically told him where to
shove it and how far.
* Mike Boddicker: Another Oriole lost. Slop tosser whose pitches were bigger than his body. Brief
revival with the Red Sox, then brief journeyman and gone.
* Randy Jones: Another slop tosser. Went from 20+ game loser to back-to-back 20-game winner
and Cy Young Award winner. Injured a nerve in his arm as he ended that Cy Young season.
Never even close to the same again. Gone before he had ten seasons on his resume. Has the
dubious distinction of being the only Cy Young Award winner ever to end up retiring with a losing
record.
* Sammy Ellis: Had a to-die-for fastball and effective off-speed stuff. Came into his own
down the 1964 stretch when the Reds, observing the Phillies' fold, thought they might yet
win one more for cancer-stricken manager Fred Hutchinson. 1965, age 24: Wins 22 games
(he and Jim Maloney will be the Reds' last 20-game winners until . . . Johnny Cueto), makes
the National League All-Star team, and pitches more than twice the innings he threw in
1964. 1966: Arm and shoulder dying prematurely, his ERA triples, he loses 19 games, he
throws out what's left of his fastball and his curve, develops an array of junk that can't
help. Finished by 1970, though he later became a respected coach. (And, the man who
converted Dave Righetti into a shutdown relief pitcher.) Those who were there swear the
beginning of Ellis's end might have been back-to-back starts in 1965 in which he pitched
back-to-back complete games of 11 and 14 innings with three days' rest between them.
thrown in all 1964
On the other hand, there was Robin Roberts. Lived on a fastball and (after Roy Campanella
showed him that he was throwing one he didn't know he had*, thinking it was another
fastball that happened to break a little) a slider. The workhorse of the Phillies staff in the
first half of the 1950s as their pitching collapsed around him and they found no viable
successors, Roberts ended up with a dead arm after owning the league for six years. He
reinvented himself as a junkballer and added about ten years to his career, but all those
years throwing all those pitches (for six straight seasons Roberts threw 300+ innings)
somehow strengthened his arm and shoulder to the point where throwing breaking balls
and junk balls wouldn't injure him.
(* Campanella told Roger Kahn the story for
The Boys of Summer: at an All-Star
game for which Roberts got the start and Campanella would start behind the plate,
the two hooked up before the game to discuss pitching to the AL hitters and Campanella
wanted to go over signs: "I'll give you a sign for a slider." Roberts replied, "I don't have
a slider, Roy." "Wait a minute," Campanella retorted, "don't get cute with me. I
hitagainst you, buddy, and you
throw it to me, and if you're going to throw it I'd
better expect it." "Roy, that's my fastball!" Roberts protested. "Robin, they're
allfast," Campanella came back, "but you throw one that comes up straight and another
that goes this way and that." Campanella had spotted that Roberts tended to use
a wrist break he wasn't aware of when he threw some of what he only thought were
fastballs.)
