Tipping Pitches

You have to admit that something doesn’t fit here. Smoltz was pitching for the Red Sox with an ERA North of 8.00. He then comes to St. Louis and proceeds to throw 9 strikouts in five innings, no runs. There are several possible explanations:

-He knows the National League better
-He has been refining his mechanics after an injury and just now pieced it together
-He was amped up to be out of Boston
-He is more relaxed as a Cardinal (more pie, John?)

Heck it could be all of these things. BUT. You can’t deny that the guy’s stuff is still filthy. He was hitting low to mid-90s on the gun. His secondary pitches had movement. And let us not forget that the Red Sox play tough teams like the Yankees and Rays over and over again throughout the season. If 1-2 of those types of teams figure you out, they will eat you alive.

I don’t know if Smoltz has been tipping his pitches. But if he can regularly give us 70% of what he showed on Sunday, then he is probably the THIRD best pitcher in this rotation.

Joel Piniero was heard giving Smoltz some advice before the game started. It sounded something like this:

Relax, all right? Don’t try to strike everybody out. Strikeouts are boring! Besides that, they’re fascist. Throw some ground balls – it’s more democratic.

a couple other ways off the top of my head:

- changing arm action (goes along with release points as mentioned)
- arm speed
- if a pitcher shows the ball early in his arm action, the grip will be visible
- some pitchers will have a quicker pace when throwing fastballs vs offspeed, etc

not to say that smoltz is doing any of these in particular – i haven’t really looked at his mechanics – but there are so many little things a pitcher can do that will stick out to a hitter that it’s pretty impossible to guess what he might have been doing.

I honestly trust Carp more than I trust Duncan. Duncan is great at gameplanning and the like, but he’s never seemed like someone who’s a mechanics whiz. Carp noticed a flaw in Wainwright’s delivery earlier this season, and that helped a ton. If Smoltz pitches well for us the rest of the way, and it was because of a mechanical issue, I’d assume it was what Carp said more than anything than Duncan said.

Hitters always seem to know when he’s throwing a fastball.

the explanation is not simply that he’s moved from the AL East to the NL Central (and facing the Padres) as Rotoworld so snarkily offers up. His first start of the season was against the Nationals and it was a representative outing for his time in Boston.

Could be a mental thing. You want a pitcher to have confidence in his stuff – you tell him he’s tipping so that he doesn’t think his stuff is that bad (maybe it is, maybe it isn’t) but you tell him some batters knew what was coming so that’s why he got hit so hard.

Somewhat unrelatedly, it really shouldn’t be unexpected that a pitching coach can have a dramatic effect (especially short-term) on a pitcher by changing one or a couple of things about mechanics or approach. If a golfer (even a veteran one) who has struggled gets a new swing coach, makes a few adjustments, gains some confidence, and comes out with a good tournament…is anyone surprised?

it’s over-tipping.

It seems like people always need to find a reason for why things happen. The truth is that it’s probably 10% real changes and 90% random variation, as reasons why Smoltz was so good yesterday.

look at the righty-lefty splits. He was only tipping his pitches to lefthanded hitters but not to righties? He was only tipping his pitches after the 1st 25 he threw or after the 2nd inning? His splits are stark. Maybe Duncan picked up on a tip but I don’t believe for a second that’s why the AL hitters were killing him b/c the splits are so profound.

15% or 20% now a days?

have mastered the art of sarcasm yet the media has not. Can’t you just picture Tony, Dave and the pitching staff joking about the tipping pitches theory gag being swallowed yet again?

Media demands an answer, the team isn’t going to give away anything concrete (real or imaginary), therefore, let’s throw the media a nice chew toy and they’ll go about their business.

I am looking for specific tips that coaches/hitters look for- I don’t give a crap about Smoltz tipping because he probably never was.

but does anyone know of any work on predicting the next pitch based on the previous sequence of pitches?

I’ve heard that professional athletes are often remarkably good at randomization (and hitting game theoretic optima) in terms of choosing left/right in, for example, PKs in soccer, or serves in tennis. Is anyone familiar with similar work for pitch selection?

The Boner Finger

Essentially it works like this: pitchers who keep a finger out of their glove while pitching will sometimes stick it straight out on certain pitches. Some do it on breaking balls, some do it on fastballs, some just don’t do it at all. There is a reason why the majority of MLB either keep their finger inside the glove or use a finger hood.

Could a pitcher go and intentionally ‘tip’ his pitches the first time through the order, say, by indicating curve, and then swap signals the second time through the order?