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June 20, 2007

Under The Knife

Less Than Ideal

by Will Carroll

Is there an ideal pitcher's body? There's some irony here since the pitcher who asked me that is 6'10" (as well as 3-0 with an 0.64 ERA), but ignore that for a moment. Scouts often say there's a type that's "durable" or "ideal." In fact, the evidence suggests that what they're actually saying is shorthand for "There are better odds to have someone at or near the average, with a tendency to the bigger"--which usually means stronger. Short pitchers tend to be finesse guys or, less frequently, fireballers like Roy Oswalt or Tim Lincecum, the kind of guys who don't look like they'll hold up, even if they often do. Tall pitchers have divergent biomechanics. For every Randy Johnson, there's a Ryan Anderson, and most end up like Jon Rauch or Andy Sisco.

William Burke, one of our tireless behind-the-scenes researchers, pulled up the sizes for the average pitcher in every year ending in 6 (1906, 1916, etc, through to 2006.) It was essentially a way to minimize his work while getting a meaningful sample. While height and weight data is not exactly scientific, you'd be surprised that the changes really aren't that significant. It's gone from 5'11.5"/180 (or roughly Yusmeiro Petit, if you believe his listed weight) in 1906 to 6'1.5"/191 by 1966 (or roughly Lance Cormier). Today, at nearly 6'3"/201 on average, Mark Buehrle is an average pitcher, at least in size. Burke also found the pitchers are generally a bit bigger than position players, something that I find unsurprising. What we're seeing is more variation, largely because the population from which baseball pulls is ever larger. Scouts aren't wrong in playing the odds when looking for the next Tom Seaver, but the next Greg Maddux won't be found by looking purely for a set mold.

Powered by the new The White Stripes album, on to the injuries:

• The Dodgers have a lot of questions about Jason Schmidt and what's going on in his shoulder. They'll know soon. Schmidt is being sent for exploratory surgery on his pitching shoulder, and most expect the findings to be poor. The initial surgery will be a simple scope to visualize the shoulder, but don't be surprised if more is done. It's not often that a surgeon just looks around, pulls his scope back out, and says, "Nothing to see here." At best, Schmidt is probably looking at a cleanup along the lines of what Mark Prior had--cleaning up some fraying in the rotator cuff or labrum or removing the debris caused by years of pitching. If there's any positive here, it's that Schmidt will have Dr. Neil ElAttrache, one of the top shoulder surgeons, on the other end of the scope. (How good is ElAttrache? I once heard Jim Andrews say that the first thing he did when faced with a shoulder injury was call ElAttrache for a consult.) The surgery is scheduled for Wednesday and we should know much more on this by tomorrow.

  In the meantime, the Dodgers will slot Chad Billingsley into the rotation. The Dodgers don't just have Schmidt heading to the surgeon either: Yhency Brazoban will have his shoulder scoped as well, not an uncommon occurrence post-Tommy John surgery. Yes, ElAttrache will also be doing this one, and reports that there is a labrum tear indicate that this could keep Brazoban on the shelf a while.

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