MLB teams take action in attempt to clean up game before Opening Day
The most dangerous situation a pitcher can find himself in is when the hitter knows exactly what the next pitch will be.
Indeed, one of the staples of any baseball movie looking to show a rift between a pitcher and a catcher is for the catcher to tell the hitter that very piece of information.
But what if it’s not the catcher who’s giving away the pitch? What if the pitcher himself is doing it?
As spring training winds down and Opening Day looms, pitching coaches from Boston to San Diego and Seattle to Miami are on the lookout for pitch tipping, that bane of a pitcher’s existence where the way he holds his glove or the way he holds the ball that’s just barely different from, say, the four-seam fastball, tells hitters exactly which of those other pitches in the hurler’s arsenal he’s planning to throw.
And once one hitter cracks the code, he starts leaking his knowledge to anyone and everyone like a disgruntled politician. Soon, that little three-degree tilt in a pitcher’s glove that heralds the splitter is common knowledge even to the peanut vendor, and the home runs start flying like it’s 1998 all over again.
Cleveland Indians manager Terry Francona, a two-time World Series champion at Boston’s helm, said, “We try to keep a hand on that a lot, like are our guys giving away pitches? For sure, we always keep track of that.”
Yu Darvish got a reputation as a big-game choker in last year’s World Series because of pitch tipping.
The then-Los Angeles Dodger, now a member of the Chicago Cubs, throws seven different pitches, and with that many different grips, deliveries and timings, it’s proven impossible to maintain his poker face.
Darvish, by his own admission, hurries his delivery of the curveball when compared with his fastball, an ironic twist of sorts considering the relative speed of those pitches.
But Houston Astros 19-year veteran Carlos Beltran caught on to Darvish’s foibles and used his knowledge like a road map; once his teammates had the same information, they lit up Darvish to the tune of chasing him from both of his starts in just a total of 3.1 innings.
In the course of getting those 10 outs, Darvish gave up nine runs (eight of them earned) on nine hits and two walks. Two of those hits were homers; another five were doubles. Houston’s total OPS against Darvish? A brain-exploding 1.576.
For perspective? Barry Bonds holds the major league record for OPS in a season with 1.422 in 2004.
Even Clayton Kershaw, the last guy you’d expect to struggle on the mound, had issues of his own with pitch tipping early in his career.
Said the Dodgers’ ace: “I think guys are really good at picking that stuff up, so really you just need to have good teammates or good coaches that can pick that stuff up that can help you fix it if you need it.”
The Cubs coaching staff plans to do exactly that with Darvish; manager Joe Maddon, pitching coach Jim Hickey and even batting coach Chili Davis plan to watch Darvish for any signs that he’s letting the other team in on his secrets.
Then again, there’s a certain amount of pitcher skill involved; if Randy Johnson in his prime told you the heater was coming, you’d still hear it hit the catcher’s mitt and hear the umpire call a strike before you got the bat off your shoulder.
Francona spoke to that reality when talking about the need to avoid overcoaching and getting a pitcher to second-guess himself.
“There’s times where we’ll see it, but we’re not too sure the opponent does,” Francona said. “Then you kind of are like, is it worth it, guy’s out there throwing a shutout. It’s a balance, but we try to keep track of it because some of these teams are really good at it and if they know what’s coming they’re going to be much better hitters.”
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