Month: August 2020

Why No One Is Talking About One of Baseball’s Biggest Stories This Season

The other day I sat down and went back through some baseball from earlier in the day that featured a doubleheader between the Mariners and Padres. I was particularly interested in this series because Manny Machado – one of the anchors on my fantasy team – had left the yard on three different occasions between both games. Knowing I missed out on this, I decided to go back and watch game two so I could catch Machado’s third blast of the day and get some cool angles from one of the hottest hitters in baseball.

What I didn’t expect was that I’d stumble on to one of baseball’s hidden games so far in 2020.

In the second half of the doubleheader, the Padres sent out ex-Angels pitcher Garrett Richards to square off against Yusei Kikuchi – the second year left hander out of Japan who joined Seattle last year after eight seasons in the Nippon Professional Baseball league. If you were a Padres fan, you probably didn’t watch much of the game after what happened early on. Richards failed to get out of the first, surrendered six, and left with San Diego facing a 6-0 deficit before they even had a chance to touch a bat. It never really got much closer from here.

Part of the reason is because the Kikuchi the Padres saw this year was a lot different than the guy they saw last year.

Now I didn’t really care to watch Kikuchi – or the rest of the game considering the top half of the first – but I was really interested in checking out Machado’s third homer of the day. It just so happened the hitter that bats before him in the lineup is a guy named Fernando Tatis Jr. – arguably baseball’s most electric hitter in 2020. When someone like Tatis steps into the box, you just stop what you’re doing and watch. You never really know what kind of a show he’s about to put on.

However, the must watch entertainment didn’t come from the box during that at-bat. It came from 60 feet six inches away. Kikuchi made quick work of the standout Padres shortstop sending Tatis back to the dugout in just four pitches. They looked like this:

  • SL: 82.4 mph, K (foul ball)
  • FF: 97.6 mph, ball
  • FF: 96.8 mph, K (foul ball)
  • CH: 89.8 mph, K (swinging)

Let me tell you, I’ve never pulled up Baseball Savant quicker before in my life.

After glancing through some numbers and making sure my eyes weren’t playing a trick on me, I figured out what the Padres unfortunately figured out that evening: This was not the same guy that sputtered to a 6-11 record in ’19 and accumulated a disappointing 5.46 ERA in 161.2 IP. 

This Kikuchi was different, and he sure had my attention.

The Japanese native had been known to run it up into the mid 90s during his time in the Nipppon Professional Baseball league, but we didn’t really see 97.6 or 96.8 last year. In his first year in a big league uniform, Kikuchi’s four seam fastball averaged just 92.5 mph – a tick below the league average of 93.4. Hitters slugged .622 on it, accumulated a .410 wOBA against it, and whiffed at it just 19% of the time. In other words, it just wasn’t a really good pitch.  

Now let’s look at the data so far from 2020. Through five starts, Kikuchi’s four seamer is averaging a blistering 95.2 mph – up 2.7 mph from his average heater in ‘19. As you could probably guess, it’s performed better in games as hitters are slugging .438 and have accumulated a wOBA of .357 against it – both improvements from ’19. It’s also getting whiffs at a career-high 26.4% of the time – a 10.4% increase from last year. If that doesn’t impress you, I think it’s worth noting that so far this season Gerrit Cole – the guy who set a MLB record for K/9 last season – is getting whiffs on his fastball just 25.7% of the time.

Let that sink in for a second: Yusei Kikuchi is missing more bats this year with his heater than Gerrit Cole is. Imagine predicting that one a few months ago.

 

 

 

Considering the left hander’s disappointing first season in the states, the increased fastball velocity and improved game performance is an encouraging sign that there’s a lot more in the tank than what we originally thought. However, here’s the funny part: Kikuchi is using his new and improved heater less this season.

In 2019, Kikuchi threw his four seamer roughly half the time at a 49% clip. This year, he’s throwing it just 39.9% of the time. Throwing heaters less is something that’s become a trend across Major League Baseball considering what teams know about how hitters perform against pitches that aren’t straight. However, the whole goal is to throw pitches that perform the best most often. If Kikuchi’s heater is performing much better this season, why wouldn’t he subsequently be using it more?

Well, a big reason why he hasn’t is because he’s started throwing something that’s performed even better: His new cut fastball.

 

Through five starts, Kikuchi’s new cutter has become his primary weapon throwing it at a 41.5% clip. It’s averaging 92.3 mph (just 0.3 mph slower than his four seamer from last year lol), generating whiffs 32.9% of the time, hitters are slugging just .283, and have accumulated a .277 wOBA against it. Kikuchi’s fastball has been good, but his new cutter has been really good. Just check out how is measures up against three of the best cutters in the game from Kenley Jansen, Aaron Civale, and Yu Darvish:

  • Jansen: 91.2 mph, SLG .207, wOBA .180, 26.9% Whiff%
  • Civale: 87.1 mph, SLG .459, wOBA .291, 30.9 Whiff%
  • Darvish: 87.1 mph, SLG .359, wOBA .273, 36.8 Whiff%

Not bad at all for a pitch he didn’t throw last year. So let’s start to make sense of some of this data. How did Kikuchi go from a pitcher who struggled to touch 96 last year and evolve into someone who’s getting more fastball whiffs than Gerrit Cole currently is? To figure this one out, let’s take a closer look at the film. New data isn’t just created out of thin air – it’s created by new movement patterns.

“I consider saying “balance,” but instead I mumble something about making more natural motions. Latta says he doesn’t want me to reduce what we did to a number; better numbers are the by-products of better body movement.” – from The MVP Machine by Ben Lindbergh & Travis Sawchik

If we look at the film of Kikuchi from this season, it’s no mistake he’s blowing cheese and missing bats – his movement patterns have gotten way better. He’s getting to better positions, moving more efficiently through them, and it’s giving him the ability to do things like throw 98 and decelerate like an absolute menace:

Kikuchi from 2019 (left – 91.4 mph) vs. 2020 (right – 98 mph)

Now the decel was there last year – don’t get me wrong – but the velocity wasn’t and the decel wasn’t showing up nearly as much as it is this year. This is directly related to the positions he was getting to and moving through from a year ago.

A couple of years ago, 108 Performance ran a study where they tested a group of arms from their facility to see what kind of an impact teaching the arm recoil would have on their delivery. Out of all the guys tested, they found the pitches thrown with the arm recoil produced the greatest amount of average ground reaction forces on the front leg, back leg, total power, and total ground reaction forces. They also produced better sequences, created more effective hip to shoulder separation, increased ball velocities, and on top of this elbow valgus stress decreased by an average of 37 percent. These findings challenged conventional theory in baseball which claimed the recoil was a detriment to performance and made guys more susceptible to injury. Turns out, the study actually proved the opposite: Pitchers were able to maximize the amount of force they produced while subsequently placing less stress on the elbow.

So let’s think about why this would happen. The reason why the arm recoils or gets peeled back after the throw is because it has no other choice – there is so much tension present in the system at that point in time from the upper half and lower half working reciprocally against one another. In other words, the rubber band has been stretched as far as it can go in either direction. As a result, the arm has no where else to go and is peeled back due to a golgi tendon reflex – the same exact reflex that causes your leg to kick out when doctors tap your knee. Dr. Ferree talked about this in their 2018 Palooza presentation saying how this reflex is actually a built in protective mechanism your body uses to prevent muscles from becoming overstretched which would make them more susceptible to tears and other similar injuries. In Eugene’s words: “It’s the ultimate sign of decelerator strength and efficiency with direction.”

 

Just remember this: Don’t get married to the recoil by itself – get married to things that need to happen so the recoil can happen.

Kikuchi isn’t pimping the finish this year for the hell of it – he’s doing it because he’s getting into stronger positions which allow him to slam on the brakes and transfer energy up the chain more quickly and efficiently.

Kikuchi flashing 97 this year (from Baseball Savant)

If we dive into these positions, we notice right off the bat that Kikuchi is able to stay closed longer into landing which prevents his pelvis from opening up too soon and getting in the way. This gives him the ability to line everything up down low so it can grab and stabilize when he needs it to (front foot strike). The quicker things stabilize down low, the quicker the pelvis can stop and slingshot the torso around it so energy can get transferred up the chain. This is where the decel is coming from – Kikuchi is bracing and stopping so well which creates an insane amount of tension that has no where to go after ball release. He’s able to pull this off because he’s doing a much better job closing off into landing:

Kikuchi at landing 2019 (92.3) vs 2020 (98)

Notice the position of Kikuchi’s arm on the right, the wrinkles in his rear glute, the direction of his stride, and the amount jersey and belt buckle we can see from behind. This tells us that Kikuchi is staying closed much longer which keeps his torso connected to his pelvis and gives his arm the space and freedom it needs to get up on time, catch the trunk earlier, and throw his punch from deeper:

Kikuchi’s uptick in velocity is no mistake – guys who catch the trunk early and decel like beasts tend to throw fuzz.

While this explains a ton about the increased velocity, Kikuchi has also made an interesting adjustment to his delivery when there’s no pressure to control the running game (he goes out of the stretch all the time). He ends up picking his leg up a little higher and actually takes his back heel out of the ground when he gets to peak leg lift:

Kikuchi’s heel is coming off the ground at leg lift in 2020

This mechanism is pretty interesting and I have to imagine it was a conscious change by either Kikuchi or one of his coaches. Either way, as weird as it might seem, I think it could have helped him start to get a better feel for the positions we talked about above. We see a lot of big league arms who “release” their back foot and let it slip into more of an externally rotated position as they get into leg lift. This creates a more advantageous position for guys who don’t have a lot of internal rotation in their back hip as they move down the mound:

Watch Scherzer’s back foot slip into ER as he picks up his lead leg
Watch Verlander’s back foot and how it “slips” into a more favorable position for him

We also see it from hitters too:

Remember this guy from above? Watch the back foot – very similar to the move Verlander & Scherzer make

In Kikuchi’s case, he’s creating a similar mechanism where he’s releasing his back foot and getting rid of early tension that can put the pelvis in a compromised position where it gets stuck and has to push out of the ground. Eugene likes to think about this move as a “release” of the back foot followed by a “float” of the pelvis which then creates a “late anchor.” We know the feet need to grab and anchor into the ground at foot strike so the pelvis can stabilize, but we also don’t want that anchor to happen too soon. We want to anchor in when it’s time to throw our punch – not well before it when we’re not ready. If the anchor happens too early, we get put into a position where we can’t hold on to tension any longer and the sequence falls apart. This is why the release is so important in the beginning – by letting go of tension early, we’re able to create tension later when it matters.  

Watch Kikuchi’s back heel release as he gets into leg lift

From here, the pelvis is able to float down the mound and bring the extremities along for the ride. The legs and arms shouldn’t work independently from the middle – they should be slaves to it. The more proximal we can get, the more efficient things tend to become. This creates the late anchor – we’re able to grab on to the ground and create tension when we need it because we are proximally to distally in the best position possible to throw our punch. As a result, Kikuchi is able to stay closed longer, use his backside better, and optimize his ability to put force into the ground. If you want to get force out of the ground, you have to learn how to put some into it. 

As for what created all of this, it’s tough to tell from the outside. It could have been as simple as trying to pimp the finish as hard as he could or he might have had a big time unlock using the back heel release. One day he could have just showed up to the field, felt like a million bucks, and started popping out 98s. Who knows. However, it doesn’t really matter what happened because whatever he did is working and he looks really, really good. 

So now for the most interesting part: Why aren’t people talking about Kikuchi this season?

The changes we just went over aren’t small changes – they have career-changing implications. Adding 1 mph to your average fastball is a big deal, let along 2.7 mph. Kikuchi’s getting into much better positions more consistently, he’s added a new weapon that’s become his primary pitch, and he’s striking out hitters at a career-high rate. Considering what we know and the strides Kikuchi has made so far in 2020, why aren’t more people talking about him?

That’s the thing: On the outside, it doesn’t look like Kikuchi has improved much at all. In five starts this season, the Japanese native is 1-2 and owns a whopping 6.12 ERA – even worse than the 5.46 he churned out a year ago.

When I first found out Kikuchi’s ERA stood at north of 6.0, I had already seen the film, looked into his pitch metrics, and saw the improvements he had made from a year ago. To say I was shocked would be an understatement. Everything I had looked up to that point suggested that Kikuchi should be doing a much better job of keeping runs off the scoreboard this season. Instead, he was actually doing worse.

Now I understand that his walk rate is higher this season (3.6 BB/9 vs. 2.8 BB/9 in ’19), but that’s just about the only thing that hasn’t improved besides ERA. He’s done a much better job keeping the ball in the yard (0.4 HR/9 vs. 2.0 HR/9 in ’19), he’s surrendering less base hits (9.0 H/9 vs. 10.9 H/9 in ’19), and his xSLUG (.357) and barrel % (2.9%) both rank top 7 percent among all pitchers. The film and data sure tell us Kikuchi has been a much better pitcher this season, but his 6.12 ERA seems to be telling us otherwise.

So now the question becomes this: How sure can we be that Kikuchi is having a better season when his ERA seems to be telling us otherwise? Better yet – how much value should we be putting into ERA in the first place?

Turns out, probably not a whole lot.

 

Fielding Independent Pitching (FIP), according to Fan Graphs, is a statistic that measures how well a pitcher is able to prevent runs by eliminating all batted ball outcomes that are influenced by defensive play. The only outcomes that are taken into account for the stat are ones that pitchers have complete control over: Strikeouts, walks, hit batsmen, and home runs. Below is the formula for it and an explanation behind it from Fan Graphs:

The idea behind measuring FIP is it gives us a better way to evaluate pitchers by stripping the influence of defense, luck, and sequencing. By focusing only on the outcomes pitchers can complete control over, FIP gives us a more stable metric that is not negatively influenced by things like bloop hits, shift beaters, and marginal defensive play. In other words, it gives us a better representation of a pitcher’s value because it only takes into account the outcomes pitchers are completely responsible for.

It also just might give us a better indication of the kind of season that Yusei Kikuchi is currently having.

As covered above, we know Kikuchi’s ERA so far this season is an abysmal 6.12 which ranks outside the top 50 pitchers in the MLB. His FIP, however, is only 2.71 which is good for 14th in all of Major League Baseball (minimum 20 IP). Just last season, Kikuchi sported a FIP of 5.71 – much closer to his ERA of 5.46. While Kikuchi over performed last season by 0.25 runs relative to his FIP, this year he’s underperforming by a league-high 3.48 runs. People might get turned off looking at the 6.12 ERA, but if they looked at his 2.71 FIP – and saw the 3 point improvement from last season – they might start to see what we’ve been explaining throughout the course of this article: Kikuchi is a much better pitcher this year and the data does validate it.

His 6.12 ERA is not a great indicator for the kind of pitcher he’s been.

In fact, you could argue Kikuchi has been one of the best pitchers in baseball so far this year. Before you write this statement off, let’s check out some of the guys he ranks ahead of in terms of FIP across the league (minimum 20 IP, statistics updated as of August 28):

  • Trevor Bauer (15th – 2.76 FIP)
  • Lance Lynn (30th – 3.37 FIP)
  • Clayton Kershaw (34th – 3.46 FIP)

It just so happens that all three of these pitchers rank top 10 in ERA in the MLB:

  • Bauer – 1.65 ERA (5th)
  • Lynn – 1.59 ERA (4th)
  • Kershaw – 1.80 ERA (9th)

Isn’t that pretty interesting. We’d all agree that Bauer, Lynn, and Kershaw are having pretty good seasons considering they’re sporting an ERA south of 2, but we also know that Kikuchi is outperforming all three in a statistic which we’ve just explained is a better representation of a pitcher’s true value. Kikuchi might not be on the pace of Shane Bieber or Jacob deGrom, but he has been performing at the level of a top 20 pitcher this season and it’s time we start giving him credit for it. Writing him off as a bad pitcher because of his 6.12 ERA just doesn’t make sense because we’re evaluating him based off a statistic he has very little control over in the first place.

If you wouldn’t want to be evaluated at your job based on things you had no influence over, why should we evaluate pitchers the same way?

We’ve come to the assumption that ERA is an accurate representation of a pitcher’s performance because we take out unearned runs, but there are plenty of “earned” runs that come across which really shouldn’t be credited to the pitcher. If you don’t believe me, just check out this inside the park “homerun” that Christian Yelich hit earlier this August.

Imagine being responsible for a four-way trip around the bases because your left fielder took a tumble into the netting after misjudging a can of corn. I understand that this situation would also impact a pitcher’s FIP because it’s technically a homer, but this is just one example of how defenses can impact games without it necessarily showing up in the scorebooks. 

On top of this, there are plenty of subtle ways defenses can negatively impact run prevention that aren’t as glaring as this and unintentionally inflate ERA. Poor routes, bad positioning, slow transfers, average to below average defenders, and mental errors can all cost pitchers key “earned” runs which makes it seem as if they’re performing a lot worse than what they really are. ERA may take out all the runs that reach base via error, but it doesn’t account for a plethora of outcomes that pitchers have no control over. As a result, ERA provides an incomplete understanding of a pitcher’s true value because there are too many variables that lie outside the pitcher’s locus of control that can create a false illusion of how they’re really performing.   

“If our goal is to determine how well a pitcher prevents runs, you want to compare them to each other in a manner that strips out all of the factors that lead to run scoring that have nothing to do with them. You want to know how well Kershaw and Lester would perform if they had the same defenders behind them. And you’d like it if their luck was even too.” – Neil Weinberg, from Fan Graphs article

It’s tough to pinpoint exactly why Kikuchi has underperformed at such a steep rate in reference to his FIP, but it’s never really one thing in the first place. It’s likely a bunch of different things that seemed insignificant in the moment that ended up accumulating into bigger things over time. Without meticulously looking into every single batted ball outcome off Kikuchi this season, we just have to understand that there are instances where luck favors some and works against others. It all evens out over time, but so far this season it’s not unreasonable to say that Kikuchi’s 6.12 ERA is probably an indication that he’s gotten a little unlucky at some critical moments throughout his first five starts.

After all, Kikuchi has only logged 25 innings so far this season. If you were to shave just one earned run off each of his five starts, his ERA would drop nearly two points to a more respectable 4.32. That one run could be a bloop hit with the infield in, a backside ground ball that beats a shift, a “swunt” that keeps a two out rally going, or a bad route in the outfield that gets chalked up as a hit. 

So before you completely throw ERA out the window, I think it’s important to understand ERA is not a horrible stat that anti-correlates to success. Instead, it’s just an incomplete stat. Earned run average can give you valuable information just the way it has so far for us, but it can also be misleading if we don’t understand the context behind it. Just like anything, it’s not wise to put all of your eggs into one basket. If you’re solely evaluating pitchers based on their win-loss record and ERA, there’s a good chance you might be undervaluing someone inside your organization or missing on someone outside your organization. That’s a problem. 

Yusei Kikuchi might have an ugly looking ERA right now, but it’s not an accurate representation of the kind of season that he’s had so far. If he continues at this pace, his luck will even out over time and his ERA will start to fall – but are we really that concerned with his ERA in the first place? If we want to normalize things across the board and evaluate pitchers based on what we know gives us the best representation of their value, it’s time to throw away ERA and start using FIP. Kikuchi is a great example of what we can miss if we value a player based on their ERA and fail to take into account their FIP.

It’s also time we start giving credit to Kikuchi. There is no reason we shouldn’t be talking about his transformation and the changes he’s made which are paying off for him in a big way. Coming off a disappointing first season, Kikuchi doubled down on his development and has turned himself into someone that will help the Mariners win games and hopefully compete for championships. His movement patterns are sound, the stuff is there, and the upside is tremendous for a young man who’s only in the middle of year two going toe to toe with the best hitters in the world.

You’re not going to want to miss what he does the rest of this season. 

What a Cajun and a Dream Can Teach Us About the Power of Belief

It’s February of 2017 and it’s been about a month since the conclusion of the 2016 college football season. Ed Orgeron has returned to his hometown of Larose, LA – a small town deep in the Louisiana bayou about an hour south of New Orleans – to speak at a local banquet. It’s just under a two hour drive from his new work office at Tiger Stadium in Baton Rouge – home of the LSU Tigers football team.

Three months ago, Orgeron had the interim tag removed from his job title after he lead the Tigers to a 5-2 finish coming off the firing of Les Miles four games into the season. Earning the head coaching position at the school he grew up watching on Saturday nights wasn’t just a dream come true for the Cajun native – it was a chance to prove USC had their guy and let him slip away just a few years back. 

In 2010, Orgeron was brought on to the USC football coaching staff to coach the defensive line when his long time friend and colleague Lane Kiffin took the head coaching position. Five games into the 2013 season, Kiffin was relieved of his responsibilities as head coach and Orgeron was asked to temporarily fill the vacant position. It was his first chance to show the college football world what he had learned since his disappointing stint with Ole Miss back in ’05-’07 where the Rebels finished 10-25 and just 3-21 in SEC play.

This time around, he did not disappoint.

In their final eight fames, the Larose native guided the Trojans to a 6-2 record – including an upset over #5 Stanford – and felt very strongly he had done enough to earn the full time head coaching position. Many others did too – but USC  didn’t think  it was worth giving the Cajun native a second chance. Instead, they decided to hire Washington head coach Steve Sarkisian and Orgeron was left without a job in football for the first time since 1993. It was, in his words, one of the worst days of his life.     

Fast forward three seasons – Orgeron found himself in the same situation fighting for a head coaching job with the school he walked away from three decades ago as a homesick freshman football player. His 5-2 finish and impressive interview – along with Tom Herman’s decision to take the Texas job after extensive discussions with LSU – was enough to convince then Athletic Director Joe Alleva to take a chance on the hometown Cajun.

Orgeron understood there would be skeptics and people who thought he wasn’t capable of leading a multimillion dollar program like LSU considering his previous failures with Ole Miss. However, Orgeron wasn’t too concerned about his past. He knew he was a different coach this time around and all he needed was a chance to finally prove it. 

Talk about a storybook second chance. 

When Orgeron took the podium in front of the hometown crowd at Larose, he had already thought through what he was going to say a long time ago. It was, after all, a big part of the reason why he got the LSU head job in the first place. He wasn’t satisfied with eight and nine win seasons anymore and analysts constantly bagging LSU’s lackluster offense – which did not lack on talent, either. He knew just how bad it hurt to watch Alabama dominate the SEC and how badly the program longed to get to the big game so they could avenge their embarrassing championship loss from 2012. He didn’t just understand the pressure of playing in one of the best conferences in college football and the expectations to compete for a national championship every single season; he embraced it. 

To show just how serious he was, he decided to make a promise to the Tiger faithful that evening:

“I am honored to be the head coach of the LSU Tigers. I am proud to be a Cajun from the Bayou and I will never run away from my heritage. That part stays with me forever, and I know you folks here got my back. I’m going to get some negative comments. I’m not everyone’s first, second, or third choice, but I got the job and I’m going to work day and night to get this program back to the top. Some of the naysayers will laugh about this, but in a very short period of time we will beat Alabama, we will be back in the SEC Championship Game, and in the Final Four series for the National Championship. I promise you that.”

Orgeron was a man of his word.

Two years and eleven months after his promise to LSU, this is what he looked like in January of 2020: Head coach of the 2019 National Champion LSU Tigers, one of the greatest teams in college football history.

LSU head coach Ed Orgeron, left, and quarterback Joe Burrow, center, hold the trophy beside safety Grant Delpit after their 2020 National Championship victory over Clemson (source)

Now don’t get it twisted – the journey to get to this point wasn’t as easy as delivering a couple of sentences and all of a sudden the Tigers doubled their win record. It required some pain, adversity, heartbreak, and even paying a non-conference team $900,000 to come beat them on their own turf! Orgeron’s group had to go straight through the home of one of the greatest dynasties in college football history and go toe to toe with the 2018 defending national champions and their school-record 29 game win streak. Just this past season, they had to play seven top 10 ranked teams, go on the road against the man who was allegedly Alleva’s #1 guy, and finish their season against three of the top four ranked teams in the country (they played the fourth back in November). They beat all four – becoming the first team to ever do so – and did it by an average of 19.6 points per game.

There were people who doubted Orgeron, didn’t think he was capable of being the guy LSU needed, and even called him one of the worst hires in college football history. People mocked his thick Cajun accent and thought it was laughable he could start giving orders to people he once used to work underneath. 

Turns out, Orgeron out-smarted than them all.

The heavy native accent he acquired deep in the bayou – which turned away USC in ’13 – ended up being the perfect smokescreen as he built one of the greatest teams in college football history. The rest is history.

 

So now for the moment of truth: What was Orgeron’s secret? What was he really putting in the gumbo down south that took a team lost to Troy in 2017 – not too long after he made his promise in Larose – and turned it into a national champion just a few short years later? Well, there wasn’t really one secret –and he sure got some help from a kid named Joe Burrow – but there was one thing Orgeron did that set the tone for what was to come:

He created an attitude of belief.

From the day he took the interim job, Orgeron had a strong vision for the kind of program he wanted to build at LSU. Growing up watching the Tigers every Saturday in the fall, Orgeron understood just how much LSU football meant to the state of Louisiana. It wasn’t just a game down in the bayou – it was a way of life; people live, breathe, eat, and sleep LSU (and New Orleans Saints) football. Anything less than a championship just wouldn’t cut it for the purple and gold faithful. Orgeron felt the same exact way. 

It didn’t matter how distant a championship might have seemed back in 2017 – let alone, simply beating their long-time division rival Alabama. It also didn’t help the Crimson Tide were lead out of the tunnel by the same man who brought LSU its first championship since 1958 back in ’03. Yeah, watching Nick Saban guide one of the greatest dynasties in college football wasn’t just unfortunate for Tiger fans – it was unbearably painful.

Ever since the 2012 championship debacle (to guess who – Alabama), LSU had failed to play in a BCS bowl game, hadn’t made a single College Football Playoff appearance, and hadn’t even beat Alabama once. Every year and every loss was eating away at the little amount of hope Tigers fans had left that their program would return back to the top. A change of scenery up top seemed to be the right move when Les Miles started off ’16 with two dreadful losses to Wisconsin and Auburn. However, Joe Alleva could not afford to whiff on his next hire.

While bringing in a hometown hire made for a great story headline, there were some glaring questions about giving Orgeron full reign of the Tiger football team. If the Cajun native hadn’t learned from his time at Ole Miss and put his mistakes in the past, LSU wasn’t going to be competing for a championship anytime soon. Alleva believed Ed was his guy and knew just how much this program meant to him, but he also knew Orgeron couldn’t afford to churn out eight win seasons like the one they had in 2016. Ed’s promise from 2017 couldn’t just be verbiage – he had to deliver on it. 

It sure wasn’t smooth sailing early on, but Orgeron never batted an eye; his belief was too strong. He didn’t cave when they lost to Troy or abandon hope when they failed to get it done against Alabama for the eighth consecutive season in ’18. When Orgeron’s group dropped a seven-OT heartbreaker to Texas A&M back in ’18, they didn’t sit around and complain about how they got screwed by officiating on multiple occasions (in my completely unbiased opinion, of course). They got right back up and ended UCF’s 25 game win streak in the Fiesta Bowl. They haven’t lost a game since.

As devastating as those losses might have been, the belief Orgeron’s group had in his vision was too great to let one game throw them off course. Everyone in that locker room knew what they were going to build and where it was going to take them. There were only bumps in the road – no dead ends. Orgeron’s energy, enthusiasm, and ability to inspire gave him the ability to take a sinking ship and get it back on course when the program needed it most. The same qualities that made him such a good interim head coach would end up being the same qualities he relied on to build a national championship program.

“I love Coach O. I pray that he’s the head coach for LSU. I think he did a tremendous job.” – Jamal Adams, New York Jets defensive back, on Orgeron’s stint as interim head coach with LSU

Orgeron’s 2017 promise wasn’t a PR move to try and make some new friends – it was his DNA as a leader. Their 2019 national championship run was no coincidence; it was the byproduct of a group inspired beyond measure and fueled by belief.

If there’s anyone who knew a thing or two about belief, it was the head ball coach that stood on the opposite sideline of Orgeron in that championship game.

 

“To be an over achiever you have to be an over believer.” – Dabo Swinney, head coach Clemson football

Dabo Swinney – like Orgeron – got his foot in the door as interim head coach when Tommy Bowden – son of the legendary Bobby Bowden – resigned six games into the 2008 season. After finishing 4-2 over the final six games of the year – which included impressive victories over Boston College and South Carolina – Clemson decided to remove the interim tag and promote Swinney to his first-ever head coaching position.

When Swinney first took the job, he recalled an early morning meeting with the Board of Trustees where one of the board members shared how they wanted a program that was like some of the other great programs in the country. They wanted to be like the Alabamas, Ohio States, and Oklahomas of the country – but Dabo wasn’t really concerned with how he measured up against any of those schools. He said, “Sir, I appreciate your vision, but my vision is much bigger than that. My vision is to create a program where they all want to be like us.”

Since that meeting, Clemson has gone on to win six ACC Championships, make five College Football Playoff appearances, and win two national championships. Swinney, indeed, has created the model for what a championship caliber program should look like. It all started with a couple of signs.

Dabo Swinney hoisting the College Football Playoff championship trophy after defeating Alabama in 2019 (source)

When Swinney started at Clemson back in 2008, he created two signs that he brings to every single meeting with his team. For his players, they’ve become as important as the meeting itself – if they’re not present, they’ll remind Swinney to go grab them. These signs read: 

  • Believe
  • I Can’t – with the ‘t crossed out

Swinney talked about the signs in a Sports Illustrated article saying:

“From day one, I made a big point of those signs. I brought them in, set them down, and said this is where it starts. The number one thing that needed to change was we needed to create this attitude of belief. Not you know, I felt like we hoped to win. There is no hope to win. Like, we expect to win. We believe we’re going to win.

“I don’t think we had this rock solid, core belief that we were going to win no matter what. And that’s what it takes. If I could say from just one thing that has changed from 2009 to now in Clemson football, it’s this attitude of belief.”

It’s the same exact message Orgeron shared with his Tigers back in February of 2017. Both men were not concerned with what people thought was realistic for their programs and whether or not they were capable of competing for national championships. Instead, they created their own reality and laid out a vision that exceeded what everyone else thought was possible for them. They didn’t just set the bar high because they could – they set the bar high because they believed they could get there. They saw it before anyone else did, set a high standard when no one else would, and believed it so everyone else could. Their vision illuminated the path in which they would follow; their belief helped keep them on course.

This believe to achieve attitude isn’t the exception, either – it’s the expectation when it comes to high performing individuals. In fact, you could argue that it’s even more important in a sport where a 30 percent success rate means you’re one of the best in the business. One of these guys – Milwauke Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich – knows a thing or two about the power of belief when he’s facing the best arms in the game that can spin it, slide it, and run it up to triple digits. In fact, he doesn’t even entertain the idea that he might not get a hit. He’s had too many at-bats to understand what happens when your approach begins with doubt. 

“To have any shot at all,” said Yelich in a Player’s Tribune article, “you can’t be intimidated. Ever.”

Christian Yelich batting in the 9th inning against the Reds in 2018 (source)

The 2018 NL MVP doesn’t care if he’s facing Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole, or if he’s 0 for his last 20 – he knows it’s bad news for the guy on the mound when he steps in the box. He doesn’t simply hope he’s going to get a hit – he knows he’s going to find some green. He believes it:

“Let’s be honest here: If you’re going up to the plate lacking confidence, having a quality at bat becomes impossible. So you have to convince yourself that you’re going to win every battle. You almost have to trick yourself into believing that success is always on the horizon, no matter how many times you’ve gone up there and gotten it absolutely handed to you.

“And you think that way even when you’re 0 for your last 20. Sometimes you’ll go up to the plate and you’ll feel so bad about your swing, so out of whack, that there’s no chance that you’re getting a hit. But somehow you have to convince yourself otherwise. Like, it’s going to happen for me right now.”

It also doesn’t just apply to baseball or football, either. When six-time NBA Finals champion Michael Jordan looks at players across the league that can’t get it done in the crunch time, he sees the opposite of what Yelich is talking about: He sees players who don’t believe in their abilities. When belief is absent, fear fills the void and causes even the best in the game to break down when the lights seem to shine a little brighter. He talked about this in an ESPN article saying:

“Some guys in the league right now, their regular seasons are different than the playoffs. Why is that? Because it’s a different kind of pressure. Those guys, when it gets stripped down, don’t believe in themselves. They aren’t sure they can hit the big shot, so they can’t. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

This self-fulfilling prophecy is exactly why Orgeron and Swinney invested so much into the cultures of their teams early on. The belief they crafted, preached, and reinforced on a daily basis was designed to create an infectious environment that would propel their teams to achieve things they never thought would have been possible. When players don’t have a strong belief in their abilities and the vision of the team, they don’t over perform – they underperform. Jordan knew this as much as anyone.

When the former Bull missed a critical shot towards the end of the 1991 NBA Finals – his first-ever Finals appearance – Jordan didn’t even entertain the idea that he wasn’t cut out for the big stage. He knew how good of a player he was and he understood how important it was to believe in his abilities on the court – win or loss.

“Now, if you thought about it, that was a pretty big miss,” said Jordan. “It was my first-ever game in the Finals. I could have folded. But I had no trouble bouncing back because I knew it was a good shot. I believed every time out I was the best. And the more shots I hit, the more it reinforced that.”

Michael Jordan with head coach Phil Jackson after defeating the Utah Jazz to win his 6th and final NBA championship in 1998 (source)

This is exactly what William James – American philosopher and psychologist – meant when he said: “People tend to become what they think of themselves.” This is the power of belief – those who believe they can and those who believe they can’t both end up both being right. Jordan and Yelich knew just how important this statement was. It didn’t matter who was in the other jersey or what the situation of the game was – there was no doubt in their mind they were going to get it done and deliver for their team. If they didn’t get it done, they’d get right back up and be ready for their next opportunity. Their belief was too strong to let one bad swing or one bad shot ruin everything they had ever worked for.

For Orgeron and Swinney, this attitude of belief became the driving force behind their championship runs. It empowered their players to realize how much more they were capable of and drove them to perform at a level they wouldn’t have accessed if they didn’t first change what they expected of themselves. When things went wrong, they didn’t panic – they knew and believed they would overcome any obstacle in their path. Belief is the glue that saved LSU’s sinking ship back in ’16 and it’s the bandages that healed Clemson’s wounds after their championship loss in ’15. Setbacks were inevitable, but also necessary for both programs – there’s no better way to find out how strong your belief is when you’re faced with something that challenges just how much you believe.

“All winners and losers in life are completely self-determined.” – Dr. Bob Rotella, from How Champions Think in Sports and in Life

It doesn’t matter if you’re a coach, competitor, or CEO – high achievers are high believers. They see things before anyone else does and expect more when everyone else would settle for less. When faced with obstacles that would make others crumble, they find a way to endure because their belief is too strong. Christian Yelich could be 0-20 or 10-20 – his mindset is the same every single time he steps to the plate. Michael Jordan might have missed a big shot with the game on the line last night – it’s not going to stop him from taking another one tonight.

“Coaching at the highest level is about getting athletes to believe in things that the experts think are unrealistic.” – Dr. Bob Rotella

Swinney wasn’t concerned with how his group stacked up against Ohio State or Alabama – he was going to build a program that exceeded anything Alabama or Ohio State had ever done. Orgeron didn’t care people thought he was crazy when he said his Tigers were going to make the College Football Playoff back in 2017 – he knew it was only a matter of time before his Tigers brought a championship back home to Louisiana.

Legendary golfer Jack Nicklaus said it best: “You have to be a legend in your own mind before you can be a legend in your time.” These four men from above were indeed legends in their own mind well before they were legends in their own time. As a result, they’ve now become living proof for what you can achieve when you start with an attitude of belief. 

 

So now a question for you – What could you become if you put the excuses aside and started to believe in yourself?  

Robbie Ray’s Changes and Why Getting “Shorter” is NOT Always Better

Last year, Lucas Giolito had a dream season for the Chicago White Sox. After sputtering to a 10-13 record in 2018 and posting a 6.13 ERA in 173.1 IP, Giolito exploded in ’19 en route to his first All-Star appearance. He punched out 228 batters in 176.2 IP for a 11.62 K/9 – 5th in the MLB (and nearly double the 6.5 K/9 he posted in 2018).

He solidified himself as a staple in the White Sox rotation winning 14 games, limiting his free passes to just 2.9 BB/9, and finishing with a career-best 3.41 ERA – almost cutting his ERA in half from a season ago. He finished sixth in the Cy Young award voting and his 5.1 WAR (according to Fangraphs) was good for 10th in the MLB. To put that into perspective, he totalled -0.2 WAR in his first three seasons in the bigs.

While Giolito’s resurgence and impressive stat line definitely caught the attention of the baseball world, what was most interesting about his 2019 season was how he did it. A lot of people expected Giolito to eventually ascend into one of the league’s premier starters ever since he graced the MLB top prospects list, but they weren’t exactly expecting him to look like this when he did:

Giolito throwing a pitch in Spring Training 2019

For reference, this is what he looked like in 2018:

Giolito throwing a pitch in 2018

Let’s look at them side by side:

If you couldn’t tell, Giolito made some pretty significant changes prior to the 2019 season. After struggling in 2018, Giolito connected with his old high school pitching coach and came up with a plan to overhaul his delivery. Among the things they incorporated included a weighted baseball program to on ramp into throwing and work with the Core Velocity Belt. The combination of the two helped Giolito simplify his delivery by learning how to hinge better, use his glutes to control his move down the mound, stay closed longer, and tighten up his arm action so he could get into better positions more consistently.  

These changes had a significant impact on Giolito’s data. In 2018, Giolito’s four seam fastball averaged a mere 92.4 mph, spun at 2099 RPM, got whiffs just 14.3% of the time, and hitters generated a wOBA of .412 against it. In 2019, Giolito’s four-seamer averaged a career-high 94.4 mph, spun at 2333 RPM, generated whiffs 26% of the time, and hitters accumulated just a .278 wOBA against the pitch – a .134 improvement from just one season ago. To put that into perspective, hitters accumulated a .250 wOBA against Jacob deGrom in 2019 – good for 22nd in the MLB. If you added .134 to his wOBA against, he would have finished tied for 351st.  

Giolito’s four-seamer wasn’t the only thing that improved, either. His new delivery helped kill about 100 RPM (1651 to 1563) off his change up and turned it into his main put away pitch as he increased his whiff% on it from 34.8% to 41.3%. He also added 0.7 mph to his slider, shaved off 4.6 inches of vertical movement, and increased his whiff% on the pitch from 36.3% to 42.0%.

In a matter of one offseason, Giolito ended up transforming himself from a fringe big-leaguer into one of baseball’s most electric young arms. His new delivery unlocked a completely improved arsenal which propelled him to the best season of his career. It’s a great example of the power of player development and how moving to and through better positions can have a significant impact on the data produced which can have career-changing implications.

He might have also caught the attention of Robbie Ray.

Over the past five reasons, Robbie Ray has played an integral role in the Arizona Diamondbacks starting rotation. However, he hasn’t quite been the most consistent part about it. It’s no secret why, either – Ray struggles filling up the zone consistently. In 2019, the Marlins were the worst team in baseball when it came to handing out free passes averaging 3.83 BB/9. Robbie Ray handed out 4.34. The best part?

It was an improvement from the 5.09 he handed out in 2018.

Ray’s notorious command issues have been something that has really held back the left-hander throughout the course of his career. In fact, you could probably make the argument that Ray should be one of the top pitchers in the league. The last three seasons, Ray has posted a K/9 mark north of 12 and has surrendered 7.7 H/9 or less. Below is a list of all of the pitchers in Major League Baseball who did that in just last year:

  • Justin Verlander (12.1 K/9, 5.5 H/9)
  • Max Scherzer (12.7 K/9, 7.5 H/9)
  • Gerrit Cole (13.8 K/9, 6.0 H/9)

That’s it. Oh, and Ray’s 12.13 K/9 was also good for the 14th highest mark in MLB history. His 12.11 K/9 from 2017 ranks 16th all-time.

Robbie Ray has the makings to be one of the best pitchers in Major League Baseball, but he’ll only be a shell of what he could be if he continues to hand out four free passes every nine innings. The stuff is there, the whiffs are there, and we saw in 2017 what he’s capable of when he puts it all together. He just hasn’t found it since. 

This past offseason, Ray decided he needed to make some changes if he wanted to put his walk problems behind him and return to All-Star form. One of those was a dairy-free diet. Ray showed up to camp this year 15 pounds lighter and in much better physical condition than the previous few seasons. This could play a significant role in his ability to go deeper into games and execute pitches later in his outings when under greater amounts of fatigue. In 2019, Ray went 7 innings in just one of his 33 starts. While the walks certainly played a role in this, a cleaned up diet could have a pretty big impact on his ability to be effective later in his outings.

The other thing he did was change up his delivery. Below is a side-by-side comparison that was featured on the MLB Network of his windup from 2019 and what he looks like now in 2020:

For Ray, inspiration for his new delivery started back when he was teammates with Zack Greinke in Arizona. He said:

“It seems like (Greinke’s) dancing on the mound, the way he’s deliberate with everything, and so I just wanted to have a little bit of that feel of a dancing move… I didn’t ask him why he did it. I was just kind of telling him that I liked his delivery because it just seemed so fluid.”

Fluid is a word Ray has used in the past as a goal for what he likes to feel in his delivery. Below is an excerpt from 2018 where he talked about some of the mechanical changes he was trying to make coming off an oblique injury in April (more on this later):

“During my leg-lift, my hands weren’t coming to where I could separate and have a nice round delivery where my arm is coming through really fluid. So that was the biggest thing is my hands were kind of stuck low and I was stabbing more than having a nice fluid motion.”

Ray from Opening Day 2018 (left) vs. first start back from oblique injury (right)

When Ray started to experiment with taking his hands over his head this past offseason, he felt the fluidity he was looking for. He said, “For me, going over the head, it allows me to have that feeling of not getting stuck in my delivery like I used to, but also have some fluidity to it.”

The change in arm action was a conscious change inspired by Ray in an effort to try and solve his notorious command issues. In an interview on MLB.com, Ray explained how he thought his arm used to be too long and it was preventing him from getting into good positions consistently. After observing some guys around the league who have had success shortening up their arm action – Giolito being one of these guys – he decided to try it out for himself.

Going into this season, Ray liked the changes – but he didn’t really talk about the arm. He said, “I’m not losing stuff arm side because my direction is more towards the plate. I’m not pulling so much with my front side, which is allowing me to stay in the zone and not pull and leave stuff arm side.”

So now here’s where things get interesting. Despite Ray’s conscious attempt to overhaul his delivery and solve his problem with handing out free passes, it hasn’t really seemed to help. In fact, you could make the argument that based on what we’ve seen from his first two starts, his command has gotten significantly worse. Let me make this clear: I get it. It’s only been two starts and we’re going through one of the most unique seasons in MLB history. It’s possible that Ray just might need some more time to get used to the changes so he can feel more comfortable with them. However, let’s take a look at the numbers and see if you still feel the same way.

So far in 2020, Ray has relied heavily on his four-seamer throwing it 52.4% of the time (like Giolito, he also scrapped his sinker this past offseason). On paper, it’s a much better pitch. It’s averaging 94.0 mph – a 1.6 mph increase from last season and his hardest since 2017 – it’s spinning at a career-high 2469 RPM, it has 3 more inches of horizontal movement, and it’s getting whiffs 28.1% of the time – on pace for a career-high.

It’s also landing in the zone just 40% of the time – a 12.7% decrease from 2019. When it is landing in the zone, it’s typically in a hitter’s count and it’s getting tattooed for a .474 slugging mark. This is a significant increase from his .313 xSLUG for the pitch (his four-seam xSLUG last year was .408). Like I said, on paper it is better – it just doesn’t play particularly well when you’re more likely to flip heads on a coin than you are to throw a strike with it.  

If we look at his arsenal as a whole, Ray is throwing strikes at just a 52.9% clip – a significant decrease from his career-low of 61.7% in 2018. He’s throwing first pitch strikes just 41.9% of the time (59.3% last year), he’s getting to 0-2 just 14% of the time (29.6% last year), one out of every ten batters is getting to a 3-0 count, and three of those hitters have reached base via four pitch walk. Ray handed out 11 of those in 751 plate appearances in 2019. He’s only faced 43 batters so far this year.

In Ray’s last outing, he handed out six free passes in 4.1 IP – something he didn’t do all of last season. I understand that the sample size is small, but it just isn’t plausible to write off numbers like these as an issue of not having enough innings under your belt. Whatever Robbie Ray changed this past offseason so far is not working. If he continues at this pace, it’s not only going to be a long season for Ray – it’s going to be a really long offseason (speaking of guys who might have a long offseason).

So where exactly did things go wrong?

 

Let’s start by looking at Ray from 2017 – his best statistical season to date. In 28 starts, Ray went 15-5 striking out 218 in 162 IP. He set career marks in ERA (2.89), FIP (3.72), WHIP (1.154), H/9 (6.4), and was selected to his first and only All-Star team. This is what he looked like:

We’ve got some pretty good stuff going on here. Out of leg lift, Ray is able to hinge and use the big muscles that surround his pelvis (i.e. glutes, hamstrings) to control his move down the mound. His pelvis and trunk stay closed, his arm gets up at foot strike (where his front hip starts to accept force – not just when the front foot touches), it catches and unwinds around the trunk pretty nicely, and he’s able to stop, get joint centration in his lead hip, and get across with pretty good direction towards home.

Pelvis and trunk closed, arm up
Ray getting to max cross-body tension with good direction to home
Arm catches the trunk, unwinds around the plane of rotation

The one thing Ray didn’t really go a great job of in 2017 is hold on to the ground with his back foot. In fact, he comes out of the ground so early and so much that his back foot is nearly airborne before his front foot even gets a chance to land:

This is something we don’t really see when we look at some of the best arms in the game – especially guys who have had a ton of success filling up the strike zone. Curt Schilling, Dan Quisenberry, and Bob Tewksbury (left to right) all pitched 12+ seasons in the big leagues and finished with a career BB/9 under 2.0. Their back foot looks a little different than Ray’s just before they get into landing:

(Left to right) Curt Schilling, Dan Quisenberry, Bob Tewksbury

We’ll get into this more later, but for now we know that guys who lose the ground early tend to have issues creating stability for the pelvis which can cause it to fly open too soon, drag the torso into early trunk rotation (ETR), and leave the arm behind to play catch up. 

If we look at Ray prior to his injury stint in April of 2018, this is exactly what we see:

Ray from Opening Day 2018: Trunk flies open and leaves the arm behind

If we compare him side by side at landing to what he looked like a season ago, we notice a huge difference – especially with his trunk and arm:

Instead of staying closed, Ray flies open in ’18 which forces him into ETR and puts him in a really bad position to throw his punch. This took a pretty significant toll on his obliques because he wasn’t able to land in a position of stability where he could align his joints optimally so they could accept and disperse force evenly throughout the system (i.e. joint centration). When one part of the chain can’t do its job, another part has to pick up the extra slack. Because Ray was no longer able to get to a good landing position, he ended up doing a lot of yanking as opposed to rotating and his obliques had to pay the price for it.

While Ray definitely felt the added stress in his trunk, he also probably felt it in his arm. Flying open gave his arm less time, space, and freedom to get up on time and into a good position at landing. Instead of getting up on time, Ray’s arm was showing up late to the party which was probably creating the “stabbing” sensations he talked about above. He knew he wanted to try and create something that felt more fluid so he decided to play around with his hand positioning and rhythm during his IL stint.

Let’s go back to what Ray looked like from his first start back from injury in ’18:

Here’s where we can start putting together some theories on the changes from this past offseason. Ray was absolutely right that something was off in his delivery that was impacting how his arm felt, but his interventions to try and fix it were not effective because they weren’t addressing the source of his problems. He was still losing the ground early, flying open, and now he probably made things worse because he added more movement with his arm that needed to sync up with the rest of his body. He knew he needed to feel fluid, but he didn’t know what he needed to do in order to create that feel consistently and effectively.

As a result, his delivery didn’t improve, the results didn’t improve, and his arm ended up getting worse. His elbow was scooping up, carrying too far, and everything was getting yanked towards the third base dugout. It’s no surprise 2018 was his worst statistical year for handing out free passes; when the arm gets worse, everything else gets worse.

In 2019, Ray probably realized he added too much to the equation in ’18 and make a conscious decision to simplify things to get back to All-Star form. It was definitely an improvement, but it wasn’t quite consistent across the board. He still didn’t hold the ground very well with his back leg and his direction started to shift towards the third base dugout because he couldn’t stabilize and create joint-centration as well on the front side:

Ray running it up to 95 on this pitch in one of his better starts of the year, but the arm isn’t great and his direction isn’t optimal
Ray’s direction is no longer towards home and is shifted towards the third base dugout (from the MLB Network visual)

This showed up in the data as the majority of the misses with his four-seamer and slider were pulled wide to his gloveside:

Ray’s 2019 pitch distribution (from Baseball Savant)

It’s quite the contrast from what his pitch distribution looked like in his best season in 2017 – not nearly as many glove side misses:

Ray’s pitch distribution from 2017, from Baseball Savant

Now let’s go back to Ray’s thoughts from above. Something he talked about coming off his delivery overhaul this past offseason was how he wasn’t missing arm side with his stuff anymore. He thought his direction was a lot better and made a point to mention how he wasn’t yanking off pitches nearly as much.

Ray running one up to 97 in his first start of the year

Let’s see if the data validates this:

Ray’s pitch distribution from this year, from Baseball Savant

He’s definitely not yanking stuff the way he was last season, but he’s missing quite a bit high and arm side. If anything, he’s probably missing high and arm side more than he ever has in his career. Just look at the video from above – the pitch is in the zone, but the glove was set up on the outside part of the plate. While this pitch missed its spot and still landed in the zone, a lot of Ray’s stuff this year hasn’t been so fortunate.

Before we dive into why this is happening, let’s start with what we know. This season, Ray has shifted where he starts on the rubber to the middle as opposed to the first base side, he’s using a smaller rocker step, taking his hands over his head, and he’s getting to a position at leg lift where he has more counter rotation of the pelvis, trunk, and he has more tilt with his shoulders:

Ray at leg lift from 2019 vs. 2020

When Ray gets into landing, we notice how he lands with much less posture this season despite starting with more at leg lift. He also lands much more open this year as opposed to last year:

Ray lands more open this year than he did last year and lands with less posture

At release, we notice how Ray is using a much lower slot this year due to the postural changes we’ve talked about above. Where the trunk goes, the arm is going to follow – well hopefully, at least: 

Ray synced up at release

When we get Ray to his max point of tension post release, we start to see some of the directional stuff he was talking about. This season, Ray looks a lot closer to what he looked like in 2017 and it’s definitely an improvement from what he was doing last year. His cross-body is more towards home as opposed to towards the third base dugout:

Now let’s circle back to the buzz about the changes with the arm. When I first watched the MLB segment where Al Leiter broke down Ray’s arm action changes this season, I had a couple of different thoughts. For one, I didn’t think the arm was the biggest change about Ray in the first place. I thought the differences in posture, landing position, and cross-body tension were all more significant changes than how he simply the took the ball out of his glove. We place a lot of emphasis on the arm – as we should – but we have to remember without inside information it can be tough to tell if the arm was a conscious change or a subconscious byproduct of a different movement pattern down the chain or an adaptation to a specific constraint. Lucas Giolito wasn’t necessarily trying to create a shorter arm action; he just kind of picked it up through a better lower half and a weighted baseball program.

When I figured out the arm action changes were a deliberate change and I saw what happened in his first two starts, I came to a second thought: Tinkering with the arm probably wasn’t necessary.  

Going to a shorter arm action has definitely started to become a trend in baseball just the way we’ve seen more guys scrap their sinkers and go to high heater/breaking ball combos. However, trends are cyclical and they don’t optimize for the individual. Getting shorter might be the attractive thing to do as of late, but making positive arm action changes isn’t as simple as just getting shorter. There’s a lot more to it.

The issues Ray was having with command weren’t probably due to a “long” arm action, but there might have been some other things going on that could have made it feel long to him. In order to get to the bottom of this, let’s dive into arm action a little bit deeper so we can have a better understanding of what is and isn’t optimal.

 

At 108 Performance, we look at a couple of big rocks when determining if someone has an efficient arm action or not:

  • Arm is up at foot strike

There are a couple of things to keep in mind when looking at whether the arm is up or not at foot strike. For one, we don’t just view foot strike as when the front foot lands. Foot strike is when the lead hip starts to accept force. There are some guys who may have a flat arm when their front foot first hits, but it eventually gets up once their front hip starts to accept force. This isn’t optimal, but it is a way for certain athletes to buy time so they can get their arm up when it’s time to rotate. It’s something we actually see with Ray, as well. In some of his better clips, his arm isn’t up when his front foot hits but it gets up by the time he’s ready to throw his punch. 

As for positioning of the arm, we want to see the humerus at a 90 degree relationship to the torso where the elbow is in line with the throwing shoulder. When the elbow climbs above 90, the humerus migrates superiorly in the socket and creates an impingement where the cuff can’t stabilize and keep the ball flush in the socket. When the elbow lands below 90 degrees, it has to scoop up to get into the plane of rotation and ends up creating a similar impingement in the shoulder.

When we look at the angle of the forearm to humerus, we want to see something around a 90 degree relationship. Notice the key word around – the forearm does not need to be exactly at 90 or inside 90 degrees to throw a baseball healthy, hard, and with precision. This is the part Al Leiter didn’t quite get right in his analysis of Ray and it’s something a lot of people probably don’t realize. Some guys like Giolito need to get tighter in order for their arm to work efficiently, but there are guys out there who either can’t or don’t need to get inside 90 to have success. In fact, below is an example of a two-time MLB All-Star who doesn’t quite get inside 90 with his forearm:

Josh Hader has had plenty of success without getting his forearm inside 90 degrees (source)

Instead of getting to a certain angle with the forearm, it’s a lot more important that the arm catches and matches plane of rotation – our next big rock:

  • Arm catches trunk and matches plane of rotation

When we look at hitters, we want to see the middle and the barrel rotate together in order to make efficient moves to the ball. This concept is very similar to the arm catching the trunk. When we’re ready to rotate and our lead leg starts to accept force, we want our arm to be up so it can “catch” the trunk and rotate together with it. For this to happen, we need to have all of the slack in our arm pulled out at foot strike so when we start to rotate our arm is ready to come with it. If the arm isn’t up and slack hasn’t been pulled out, it’s going to have to get pulled out pretty quickly so it can catch up to the trunk. If we know it’s not a great idea to punch the gas on a boat with a raft tied to it where the rope hasn’t been pulled taught, it probably isn’t a great idea to do the same thing with your arm.

As the arm catches the trunk, we want to see it rotate around the shoulders and through the plane of rotation. This gives us the ability to transfer the most amount of force with the least amount of stress by using the most efficient path (i.e. geodesic). While some throwers utilize different postures and angles with their trunk, all of the best ones work around this same plane with the arm to deliver the baseball. In essence, everyone throws from a low slot – some just do it with trunk tilt. 

Max Scherzer unwinding his arm around the plane of rotation (the red line)
Felipe Vasquez catching the trunk with his arm and throwing his punch from deep

Now let’s think about why Ray might not be having so much success with his newer and shorter arm action. When Ray’s hands break, he takes the ball back towards his ear almost as if he’s trying to pull back an arrow. This action ends up pulling out all of the slack in his arm before he gets into foot strike. This is not ideal – when we create tension is just as important as actually creating any tension at all. As a result, his arm gets stuck in an inverted-W type of position where it has no freedom or space to capture the trunk.

Ray has pulled out all of the slack in his arm at this point in his delivery – well before foot plant

This is why we’re seeing a ton of high and arm side misses – there’s a mismatch between the translation of energy and the rotation to deliver it. The chain is pulled tight before Ray has a chance to throw his punch from deep. Throwing requires a constant balance between understanding when to turn things on and when to turn things off – also known as surround inhibition. In Ray’s case, he’s creating too much tension in his arm too soon which prevents him from catching the trunk deep and causes his elbow to scoop up, carry forward, and leave the plane of rotation. This is what’s creating misses like these:

Ray walking Justin Turner on four pitches (something he’s already done three times this year)

Here’s what it looks like slowed down:

Notice how the arm doesn’t catch the trunk deep like Scherzer of Vasquez from above. The elbow scoops up, carries too far beyond his trunk, and turns into more of a pushing motion than a punch. For reference, this is what Ray looked like in 2017:

His arm action might be “longer” in this clip, but it’s a lot better than what he’s doing today. Instead of getting it tight and creating a ton of tension early, Ray is able to stay loose longer which allows his arm to catch his trunk, get up in time, and work around the plane of rotation in tangent with his middle. His arm has the freedom, time, and space to pull this off because he’s able to stay closed longer into landing. Remember how we mentioned how he’s landing more open this year? This becomes a pretty important detail because it’s a lot tougher for your arm to move to and through good positions when either 1) the pelvis is opening up and limiting the amount of space you have down below or 2) the trunk is getting peeled to the glove side before you have a chance to throw your punch. The arm was never the source of the problem; rather, it was a source of feedback telling Ray that there was a problem.

I get that Ray didn’t just change his arm action this past offseason and some of the changes he made were potentially beneficial, but he probably didn’t need to change his arm at all. He just needed to learn how to create more stability down low so he could stay closed longer and give his arm space to work to and through better positions.

In other words, he needed to learn how to hold the ground better. To explain this, check out this visual below:

You can’t shoot a cannon out of a canoe – unless it’s anchored down from both sides

The feet play a critical role in the pitching delivery because they serve as the anchor points for our pelvis so it can stabilize and allow the upper half to mobilize around it. If we go back to Ray, he’s losing his anchor point with the back foot before he even has a chance to throw his punch. If we can’t anchor with the back leg as the center of mass moves down the mound, it becomes really difficult for our pelvis to create a stable and repeatable platform for rotation. This would explain a lot of the inconsistencies we’ve seen with Ray over the years. While we’ve seen him dominate and have a lot of success in the past, he hasn’t been able to recreate it as much as he’d like because he’s constantly fighting for stability. When the pattern lacks stability, it becomes really difficult to repeat it and produce force with precision – i.e. where the command issues are potentially coming from.

I think Ray has figured some things out about his delivery and his body that could absolutely be positive changes for him going forward, but I don’t think shortening up his arm was what he needed to start filling up the zone more consistently. It’s ultimately going to be up to him to figure out what is best for him and his career, but I think what we’ve seen so far in two starts is not a great sign that things are trending upward. Giolito might be an example of how shortening up the arm can lead to an increase in performance, but Ray is currently an example of how shortening the arm doesn’t always yield the best results – especially when the arm probably wasn’t the problem in the first place.

Command artists come in all sorts of sizes, shapes, deliveries, and arm actions. Short is one of them, but it is not all of them:

12 seasons, lifetime 3.24 FIP, 1.3974 BB/9 (20th all-time in MLB History)
13 seasons, lifetime FIP 3.65, 1.4543 BB/9 (22nd all-time in MLB history)
20 seasons, lifetime 3.23 FIP, 1.9623 BB/9 (84th all-time MLB history)

On a final thought, something Eugene and Will talk about a lot at 108 is how not everyone needs to get long, but everyone needs to get short. We’ve already established that getting to or inside 90 at foot strike is not necessary, but the allowable bandwidth for this position is not monstrous. There is a moment in time where all throwers need to get “short” with their arm so it can catch and match the plane of rotation, but just getting to that position isn’t as important as how we move to and through it. Ray’s thought of needing to get shorter may not have been wrong, but his interpretation of how he needed to get there wasn’t optimal. Arm action isn’t about getting long or getting short – it’s about getting to positions of leverage so you can throw your best punch.

If Ray wants to become the pitcher he knows he’s capable of becoming, he’s got to learn how to stop punching himself, first.