Bleacher Bums Forum

Lester gets 50 pitches in to pitch into the 3rd, walked a couple, HR, three hits.  still has yips: knocked down a hard-hit ball, and tried to throw fairly decisively to first, but spiked it maybe half of the distance from the mound to first for an error.

On the TV part in spring training, they don't seem to show velocity readings, even though in the live mlb game-day gamecast (?) they do. 

Q:  Is there a way within the mlb.com gameday to go back and get full, pitch-by-pitch-with-velocity for an earlier inning?  I rewound and watched a couple of Lester batters, and was curious where his fastball was at.  I'd guess probably upper 80's again, but my eyeball guessing is terrible, so it wouldn't shock if he was touching 90 or faster.  I was just curious if there was a way for us as fans to go back and get the list velocities somewhere. 

Simmons intrigues me.  He could be a factor at some point this season.

Lester ... still has yips: knocked down a hard-hit ball, and tried to throw fairly decisively to first, but spiked it maybe half of the distance from the mound to first for an error. ...

Apparently Lester spiking his throw into the ground is only partly yips, it's apparently his new plan.  To try to spike the ball into the ground and hope it can bounce/roll over and beat some runners. 

https://baseball.realgm.com/wiretap/48471/Jon-Lester-Using-Jordan-To-Pippen-Bounce-On-Throws-To-First

I can see a certain logic to that.  But the inability to have any clue where you'r going to throw it would still seem to impact, as on the play yesterday.  It was way off line, and it hit the ground, maybe half the distance to first.  But I can see the logic of intending to throw low; theoretically less of the two-base flying-it-over-the-head errors.  Rizzo should be able to keep most of the wild spikes in front of him and hold them to one-base losses instead of two.  And maybe by just letting it fly, sometimes it will bounce over in time within range of first to get an out. 

Who knows, perhaps by just letting it rip and throwing it into the grass, he'll start to "un-yip", and will start to get some over on one-bounce-on-the-grass for a while, then maybe he'll be even able to get it to the dirt, or in time actually get some in-flight to first? 

I assume the underhand will still be the way to go on 1st-base-side balls.  Not sure the spike would be usable as a pickoff throw.

It sounds funny to say about a guy with Darvish's track record, but it really seems to me that if someone (Hickey) could figure out the magic formula, he could be an order of magnitude better.  The guy is like a video game pitcher - he can pretty much make the ball do whatever he wants it to.  The trick is figuring out just how much of his arsenal he needs to use for maximum effectiveness.  He's not the easiest personality to deal with in that sense - very smart, very passionate in his views on pitching, stubborn, and (for lack of a better word) mischievous in his approach on the mound.

When you consider Happ did a lot of what he did last year as a 22 year-old, it's surprising he doesn't get more hype.

Happ singles in his third AB.