February 22, 2012

Bob McClure Talks Pitching

Alex Speier has an excellent article on pitching coach Bob McClure and his thoughts on pitchers Daniel Bard, Andrew Miller, Fleix Doubront, and several others.

On Bard:
If Daniel's in the rotation, I think that at some point you still have to keep an eye on him. How long ago did he pitch 100 innings? You're not going to go out and let a guy like that pitch 220 innings. I think we've seen enough of the studies where, if a guy is 30, 40, 50 innings over [his innings total of the previous year], that's enough, and if they go 70, 80 innings over what they did prior to, you usually see a downside the next year, or it might be the following year.
On Miller:
I think Andrew can be a starter. But I don't believe he can be a starter stepping two feet across his body. I don't think you can repeat and command a baseball by being that off line, then having to redirect as the ball is coming out of your hand. ... I don't know anybody that's accurate that steps that far across his body. ... The reason you're not on line is you get on your toe and push yourself that way, so we're going to the exact cause first – what's causing it? He seems to understand.
On Doubront:
Most guys who bang their heel (on their landing foot) hard -- some guys will bang it soft and they're alright; Maddux did it; he hit his heel for his landing foot, but he was very soft on his landing foot -- Mark Prior, Kerry Wood, there's about 20 of them that hit [the mound hard on their heel with their landing foot], which causes [the elbow/forearm] to get underneath, every one of them has blown out. I thought Verlander was going to, but someone fixed him. Someone's changed him. ... Doubront lands this way (smacks palm against hand) a little bit, which causes [stress in his elbow] and he's going to get hurt ...
McClure impressed me more in this one article than Curt Young did all of last year.

Also: David Ortiz is in camp and talked a bit about leadership and his new contract.

6 comments:

allan said...

Pedroia, on his off-season workouts: "I was trying to straight body build man. I hit cage bombs."

FenFan said...

Ah, the old days of baseball, when men were men...

Peter Abraham

"Bobby Valentine, for all his innovative thinking, is a old-school baseball man at heart. He understands why teams protect pitchers, but he remembers when pitchers didn't need protecting...

Valentine introduced Tiant to the pitchers today before the Red Sox took the field. It was just a reminder that there was a time when throwing 14.1 innings was part of the job."

Blah, blah, blah...

allan said...

Times since 1974 that a starting pitcher has gone 14 innings: 4.

All four were by Oakland in a three-month period in 1980. back when Billy Martin was running (and ruining) the staff. ... So any manager with a brain has not allowed it to happen in almost 40 years.

And Tiant did it only once in 484 starts, so clearly, he's a pussy.

PeteAbe better hope no one recalls the old days of sportswriting when writers were expected to do their own work and not crib the scoops and reports of other writers and pass them off as their own.

allan said...

That thread also has Edes calling out Abraham when Abraham stole a small exclusive from Edes and tried to claim it came from the Red Sox. Abraham has also posted stuff from SoSH at Extra Bases without attribution.

Zenslinger said...

And imagine that Abraham is the *good* writer at Extra Bases, i.e. he's not Cafardo (although to his credit Cafardo did mention WHIP in today's piece.)

Jere said...

Beware ZimBear