Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Repairing John Maine

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology..."

While Dan Warthen won't exactly be rebuilding John Maine (retooling might be a better word), there was an emergency bullpen session and some changes have been made to Maine's delivery.

Warthen lengthened Maine's stride, among a few other things.

Joe Janish, of MetsToday.com and more recently web editor of BaseballDigest.com, has been a catcher for 30 years -- if there is someone to ask about pitching problems, he's your guy.

The three things Janish pointed out that Warthen changed are: Allowing the arm to “catch up” to the body, and time the release closer to the hip rotation / explosion, increase the amount of force applied to the ball, and shorten the distance between the release point and home plate.

Janish wrote:
By lengthening the stride, you also release the ball further away from the rubber, and decrease the distance the ball needs to go. Again, this is simple physics — by decreasing the distance, the batter has less time to react to the pitch — even if the velocity stays the same.
Interesting. Hope it works.

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