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December 27, 2012

Pebble Hunting

Sean Doolittle and Learning How to Pitch

by Sam Miller

Back in June, I wrote about Sean Doolittle in a piece for ESPN the Magazine about position players converting to pitching:

Pitching is supposed to be complicated. It's supposed to take years for a pitcher to learn how to pace himself, to stay healthy, to adjust to batters, to get the feel of touchy secondary pitches. But the modern bullpen doesn't reward finesse and strategy as much anymore; it thrives on heat. Pitchers can enter a game for the seventh, eighth or ninth, blaze a dozen fastballs near the strike zone and never worry about developing a changeup or stamina. In an earlier era, someone like (Kenley) Jansen might have spent years learning secondary pitches. In this one, he pumps fastball after fastball. By the time hitters catch up, he's out of the inning.

Even within the cohort of players I was writing about, Doolittle was an extreme case. At the time I wrote that article, he had been pitching for less than a year. He had a total of 26 minor-league innings (50 strikeouts, eight walks, 1.04 ERA) and around seven in the majors (14 strikeouts, two walks, 5.14 ERA). If pitching in relief is simpler than it’s ever been, it couldn’t possibly be so simple that Doolittle had nothing to learn. It would be completely reasonable to think that the Doolittle who finished the season with 73 innings as a pro would pitch a bit differently than the one who began the season with one inning as a pro. So let’s see what he learned in his first full year of pitching.

Hypothesis no. 1: He would throw more breaking pitches.
The simplest stereotype about pitchers-not-throwers is that pitchers-not-throwers are able to make lots of pitches move in lots of different directions; and, furthermore, are able to throw those pitches in a variety of situations and counts, ruining the hitter’s balance and giving the pitcher a bit of sneakability. Doolittle ente