[quote]DBCooper wrote:
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
DB - care to comment on Zito’s miraculous comeback? I know you’ve been outspoken about him in the past…[/quote]
I don’t know what to say. He’s one of the many examples of a pitcher who lost significant velocity on his fastball and made the adjustment. Of course, it took him almost the entirety of his contract to figure it out, but better late than never.
The thing with him was that he never had great control to begin with. Back when he was with the A’s he wasn’t a hard thrower by any means, but he did throw harder than he does now. His arm speed was better, so not only was his fastball more like 88-89 on a regular basis, but the better arm speed allowed him to spin the curveball out of his hand much more sharply, and the break was later and sharper as a result, even if the speed was essentially the same as it is now.
He didn’t throw much of a changeup and I don’t think he really threw anything else back then, either. So, not only did he have to learn how to command what he DID feature (which was diminished in effectiveness), he had to learn some new pitches as well. It’s one thing to learn how to survive with what you already know how to throw. It’s another thing entirely to make that adjustment on the fly while ALSO learning new pitches. Lincecum needs to make the same multi-adjustment change in his game.
Now Zito throws a little cutter, a changeup, he can sink the fastball a bit and he still has an above average curve. If you can throw that repertoire of pitches for quality strikes, you can succeed in the majors regardless of how fast the fastball is. He’s learned how to throw all of those pitches for strikes now and he’s figured out how to differentiate the speed between each of them.
The 4-seam fastball tops out at about 86 now, but he’s more like 84-85 with that. The cutter he throws is about 80-82, the changeup is about 75-76, and the curve still drops in at about 70. That’s enough of a difference in speed from pitch to pitch to be effective. It doesn’t hurt that he can change speeds pretty decently with his curve. I’ve seen him throw it anywhere from 75 to about 68 in the same start.
If he makes a mistake out over the plate, he still is going to get pounded, but now hitters are starting to miss those mistakes every once in a while because they have more pitches to respect and they don’t necessarily just sit on one speed anymore. Before, he really only had two speeds that a hitter had to respect (fastball and curve), and they were going to get one of the two at least once in an at-bat. So they just sat on one speed and since he didn’t have good control, when they got what they were looking for it was typically in a location that they could really do something with.
Also, he’s starting to pitch inside more effectively, which is key for any pitcher. He can soft ball a guy down and away with several different movements and speeds and then spot that 85mph fastball at the belt inside and it looks much quicker as a result.
So yeah, I don’t know what to say about it. [/quote]
Interesting, I don’t see him pitch much at all and figured he was toast after as many bad, horrible years as he had. I was also wondering if you still hated him with a passion, haha.
