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Stuff to Read: 9/12/2011 (Steve Delabar Story, Jason Vargas THT Post)
Looking for a velocity-adding weighted baseball program?
Steve Delabar’s journey to the major leagues with the Seattle Mariners is a feel-good story anyone could love, right?
Maybe not. Think about it: Why didn’t organized baseball have a velocity development plan for Steve to get him back to where he needed to be? Why did Steve need to explore alternative options by himself to break back into professional baseball?
I wrote about this on my latest short article at The Hardball Times – Steve Delabar: How Organized Baseball Failed Him. Go check it out.
Additionally, there’s also my longer article about Jason Vargas and “The Twist” that he added to his mechanics. It seems to have added some fastball velocity for him, so I broke it down a bit at The Hardball Times.
A related article from The Hardball Times that I wrote is The Fear of Unorthodoxy: A New Model of Player Development. It talks about Trevor Bauer’s unorthodox training methods and how “weird” it looks for him. With 43 strikeouts in 25.2 innings pitched in minor league baseball this year (albeit a high ERA due to one bad outing), it’s looking like the “strange” training methods Trevor used are serving him just fine.
Things to Read: 9/1/2011
Here’s a few links and resources to keep yourself busy!
Stephen Strasburg at Ball Release
- With Stephen Strasburg‘s return to professional baseball, these popular articles go over his mechanics and some of the basic theories of elbow injuries:
- Strasburg, The Inverted W, and Pitching Mechanics
- Stephen Strasburg, Mechanics, and his “Timing Flaw”
- Elbow Injuries and What Causes Them (Stephen Strasburg Bonus Content!)
- I still get a ton of hits on this article, and with summer coming to an end and people wanting to get into shape for the school year (and fall baseball), it’s worth revisiting P90x for Baseball, an article I wrote last year.
- With fall baseball upon us, many college athletes are outside running their poles in the heat, getting their 5 mile jog in. Long distance running is stupid for pitchers!
Oh yeah: I get a lot of requests for where to buy a cheap dense black foam roller. I always point them to this black foam roller on Amazon for self-myofascial release and dynamic warmup purposes:
Foam Roller - High Density (Black)
Can’t beat the price, and it works great. I have a half-round version of it as well to help me keep lumbar extension while sitting!
TangoTiger Fans’ Scouting Report
Posted by Kyle in Links, Sabermetrics on August 23, 2011
The Fans’ Scouting Report is a crowd-sourced effort to get scouting grades on all the players in MLB. Anyone can fill out a ballot of players for their hometown team (and others if you like) to contribute to the effort.
Baseball’s fans are very perceptive. Take a large group of them, and they can pick out the final standings with the best of them. They can forecast the performance of players as well as those guys with rather sophisticated forecasting engines. Bill James, in one of his later Abstracts, had the fans vote in for the ranking of the best to worst players by position. And they did a darn good job.
There is an enormous amount of untapped knowledge here. There are 70 million fans at MLB parks every year, and a whole lot more watching the games on television. When I was a teenager, I had no problem picking out Tim Wallach as a great fielding 3B, a few years before MLB coaches did so. And, judging by the quantity of non-stop standing ovations Wallach received, I wasn’t the only one in Montreal whose eyes did not deceive him. Rondel White, Marquis Grissom, Larry Walker, Andre Dawson, Hubie Brooks, Ellis Valentine. We don’t need stats to tell us which of these does not belong.
It’s a lot of fun and it produces some pretty solid results that match up with the popular defensive metrics like Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR).
Go check it out today and participate – The Fans’ Scouting Report by TangoTiger.
The Importance of Training Environment
Jack, our throws athlete (meaning discus and shot put), wrote this great article about The Importance of Training Environment over at our other blog/site, Driveline Athletics. Here’s an excerpt:
At Driveline Athletics I’m surrounded by people who work hard and understand what training is and help you reach those goals. No one uses a pillow on squats or does bicep curls or stares at you like you are crazy. We play music we like; we’re not looked down upon when we throw bumper plates down: We understand what training is at Driveline Athletics. I did not realize or understood how important these people at Driveline Athletics and environment were to my training. If you are struggling with form they will help you if you have a heavy squat set they will motivate you through it. It has been harder than I thought to train in Maine and I will always take this into account. I will always try to be with people who want to train and work hard. I will always be grateful for what I have at Driveline Athletics. Remember to always train with people who want to train and work hard. It will make a huge difference in the long run.
Thanks, Jack!
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Kyle’s Hardball Times Articles- Chris Sale and his faulty elbow May 14, 2012
- Ubaldo Jimenez: A quick mechanics review May 7, 2012
- Ubaldo Jimenez and his missing 96 mph heater: A mechanical look May 4, 2012
- Scouting Mark Appel: the possible first pick overall in 2012 April 11, 2012
- The 39-year-old who won’t give up on his dream February 21, 2012
