Radar Love?
First, everyone should be reading Joe Posnanski of the Kansas City Star on a daily basis. He’s easily the best baseball writer (and blogger) working today.
His latest column looks at baseball’s growing emphasis on fastball speed (I hate the word “veloicity”), and reliance on radar guns. Poz rattles off several hard-throwing flops who cycled through the Royals system since the ‘94 strike - most of them also passed through Cincinnati.
It’s an interesting read, with all the talk about the Reds “needing hard throwers for the bullpen.” (That talk always struck me as a little funny, since David Weathers has been the only effective guy down there).
One other interesting point: In a hope to decrease reliance on pure speed and reduce distractions/temptations to young pitchers, the Royals have “banned” radar guns at their rookie leauge clubs this summer. No radar readings until after the season.
July 19th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
Here here. That’s why peripherals are so important. Any knucklehead can read a gun. Let’s face it, baseball is just as guilty of groupthink as any other sport (hellooo NFL). You don’t have to look any further than the constant recycling of managers and GMs to know this. Part of it is self preservation. It’s easy draft a hard throwing kid. That’s quantifiable. A ‘pitcher’ is a little more problematic.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
Wow. A great read! Did you see his post on his blog about the Cincinnati Post. Very nice. I miss the food in Cincy too.
July 19th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Chad, Can we get get Posnanski added over to the blogroll?
July 19th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
I always thought ball movement was the most important aspect.
July 20th, 2007 at 10:26 am
But “velocity” and “speed” don’t mean the samething. Velocity is a vector that measures both speed and direction whereas speed is a scalar that is a pure distance-per-time measurement with no thought for direction. So which is more accurate or meaningful for pitching? I honestly don’t know. But don’t hate on “velocity” just because the talking heads say it too much.
July 20th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
That article is great. This speed (or velocity, or distance over time) rut is why Kyle Lohse makes a lot of money and Bobby Livingston can’t seem to stay in the majors, even though he has better results. It also seems to be the only reason that Homer is touted as a savior. I hsven’t seen a great pitcher in HB, just a hard thrower. There are a lot of good to great pitchers who don’t throw hard: Greg Maddux comes to mind. There are a lot of bad pitchers who throw quite hard: How did Matt Belisle do last night?