gehringer_2

Cody says organization is more important than the coach, but I think he has it at least a bit backwards. If the parent club's hitting coach is not driving the organization on this kind of thing, who can/will? Isn't it his job to be the expert in hitting development tech? And again, why does Hinch get a pass on this? Coolbaugh works for him and is manifestly not performing. The Tigers supposedly already have sophisticated video mechanics analysis equip - do they stow it all away under the bleachers at Joker Marchant for the season when ST ends?

Tigers sending Norris to the Pen. I will go out on a very short limb and predict it will be a pointless move as he will fail there again.

you can look at it as just coming out of Spring Training for him again. Jim Leyland held Max Scherzer to roughly 6 inning starts early in his career, though Max often got to 100 pitches or more to get in 6. He held JV to 6 IP per start in his first season as well. I guess I'd be more bothered by him missing a regular start the rest of the way than whether he goes 80 or 100 pitches per start this soon on his return. Not to mention the Tigers have nothing but time for him to build his pitch count.

LOL - maybe the next big competitive advantage will be finding pitchers who can get get batters out with LOW spin breaking balls.

P.S. Jobe should be a good test case. How long can his elbow survive spinning a slider 3000 rpm? If his elbow survives what he is doing, then all you can say is that human physiology is just too variable on what effects it to make any rules. If his fries his UCL do we call it predictable?

Good question. So the coach looks at the rapsodo output and says, "when you put your fingers here you get 150 more rpm. Does anyone then model what that just did to arm stress? Does anyone even have tech good enough to do that reliably? There are no free lunches in physics. From Newton on down it's still 'every action has an equal and opposite reaction.' If you are teaching guys to put more torque on the ball, you are teaching them to put more stress on their arm. To my mind that is the big difference with the fast ball. The spin on a fastball is not induced by any secondary torques on the arm, it is the natural result of the primary throwing motion. But as soon as you start putting cross rotation on the ball, you have to do that by inducing a secondary rotation at the elbow or to some degree the wrist.

I noted before that one possible input from the coaching staff is what kind of sliders guys are throwing, what kind of % they are throwing it and now early in the game (before they are completely loose) they are throwing them. I don't think anyone knows very much about what kind of impact these things have in any reliable way, but they are all things I can believe we might one day realize were making a difference. They have also starting doing bio-mechanics, and you never know - if a computer model is faulty or flawed they may be advising guys into potentially destructive mechanics. It's has to be harder to validate computer models against human physiology than against mechanical systems, as absolute accuracy is much harder to come by for the functional dimensions of a human joint than a manufactured bearing.

so you're saying Hinch is being wagged the dog again, but this time by the suits?

Precisely.

Isn't that still the manager's domain? He is the final filter in front of everything the team presents to his players in terms of data and tactics. If they suck, he needed to tell the back office guys to stuff it by now.

Just thinking out loud, with all the other reasons around out there - the live ball, the maple bats, the better hitters 1-9 putting more stress on pitchers, changes in the K zone; I also wonder if the trend to cutting down deliveries has had an overall effect. Back in the day a lot of guys had big windups - and I wonder if somehow on average, cutting all that down may have increased stress on arms. The big thing today is 'no wasted motion' but maybe there were reasons that motion wasn't a waste?

That is where I believe Gibson has it wrong. Pitching is not like running. For most guys pitching is destructive, so pitching more may make their bodies stronger but it's going to run the clock on their arm. There may have been a pitching style 30 yrs ago where that wasn't true, but it seem to be the inescapable conclusion the way guys throw today. If there was a way to get back to a mode of pitching that didn't destroy arms, I can't think of anything I'd rather see, but if there is any org where it's not the case today, it's ours.

That's good night's work for Manning by any measure. Rodriguez Sunday? So maybe we are back up to two. If we can finish this season with 3 names as sure things for next year's rotation that may be the best we can hope for....

I've heard one - some talk in the booth about Coolbaugh and Candelario a couple of weeks ago. But apparently to little avail.

Riley battled there, but Sandoval never made a mistake, even with no help from the ump.

yeah - you love to see pop flies on fast balls.

The hitting this year is the one reason I won't be all that upset if a new GM were to broom Hinch - not that I would expect Ilitch to eat his contract anyway. But I just don't see any signs that Hinch is bringing anything to the table in terms of getting this team out of its hitting funk. Maybe their going at it hammer and tongs and we don't see, or maybe they are but they are doing it all wrong. Whatever, for me right now it's as easy to believe Hinch is part of the problem as that he is part of a solution.

Gives up a hit to Suzuki -- after he has him struck out.

Manning doing fine, no run support. Rinse. Repeat.

As I remember it, Sparky did a lot of things as well or better than anyone, but his weakness was managing pitching - esp his bullpen. He really didn't have a feel for giving guys consistent work and then it was compounded by the FO giving him progressively less to work with year by year. But there was real shift when Roger Craig went off to manage his own team. Sparky had had two strong pitching coaches - assistant manager types really, in Larry Shepard in Cincy and Craig in Det, but he never brought in another strong pitching coach in the rest of his years in Det. You can't separate that from the general decay in the talent he had available, which clearly was the more important factor by far, but I never got the impression in his later years that Sparky had much idea what he was doing with his pitching.

LOLOL - if ever there was a pot calling a kettle.....

and the thing is, at this point there is no reason it's still the way it is and not the way it was. It's just inertia.

interesting point. The originals remain the property of the USGOV don't they? So that would put them under the jurisdiction of the new Admin. I don't think it is unprecedented for material that was once unclassified to be reclassified.

one of my favorites was at Sault Ste Marie. We had come up to take the Algoma scenic tour train and were staying on the US side but were going to the Canadian side for dinner. My wife and MIL were with me and - as though I had never crossed a border before, were adamant that I must not say anything the agent except the exact answer to his questions. So first question was "where are you from" --- answer 'Ann Arbor' next "why are you going to Canada" --- answer 'Dinner' That got an interesting look in return. Of course this was all before 9/11 when things were pretty loose.

a case of localized lead poisoning maybe....