In the first edition of Bush League, I discussed the viability of sofa-scouting high-level prospects by scouring the archives of MiLB.tv (for a modest subscription price). I also noted the advantages when evaluating pitchers as compared to position players, given the additional off-camera variables that exist for scouting hitting and defense, along with the caveat that pitchers can have volatile mechanics during their development years. The subjects of the original piece included the top two picks from the 2011 draft, Gerrit Cole and Danny Hultzen, and today we’ll take a look at another Pirate-Mariner combination of high-end pitching prospects.

Jameson Taillon and Taijuan Walker were both high-school products of the 2010 draft. Taillon was selected at number two overall by the Pirates, behind top pick Bryce Harper, and Walker was chosen 41 picks later by the Mariners during the supplemental round. I reviewed both pitchers back in July with a brief study of their back-to-back one-inning stints in the Futures Game, and the early returns were impressive. The mechanics of minor-league players are fickle and a pitcher might show different looks on any given day, especially when making a rare relief appearance in a nationally-televised showcase, so the offseason presents a great opportunity to take a deeper look into the performances of these two high-profile prospects.

At the risk of sounding like a homer, some of the most thought-provoking articles that I have read over the last 10 years have been published right here at Baseball Prospectus. These works of analytical art have influenced and often reinforced personally-held beliefs about the sport, from Nate Silver's statistical shenanigans to Mike Fast's work with batted-ball data and Max Marchi's studies of pitch-framing. The piece that made the most lasting impression was a 2007 article by BP founder Gary Huckabay, in which he made the bold proclamation that “Baseball analysis is dead.”

Huckabay went on to qualify the statement, specifying the diminishing rate of return on the investment of performance stats and citing the marginal utility that had been offered by the latest advances in sabermetrics. He emphasized that the major lessons of statistical analysis had already been learned and postulated that the next major breakthrough would come from elsewhere. Gary's words were prescient, as the revelations that grew from the work of Fast and Marchi were made possible by the recent revolution of ball-tracking technology, including HITf/x and PITCHf/x. 

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Gio Gonzalez had a breakout season in 2012, finishing third in the Cy Young voting in his first year with the Washington Nationals. Despite the dominant campaign and a track record for success, Gonzalez had to live in the shadow cast by the spotlights surrounding teammate Stephen Strasburg, putting up with the common perception that he wasn’t the best pitcher on his own team, let alone the whole league.

The trade that brought Gonzalez to the nation's capital marked the fourth time that the southpaw had been dealt since being selected by the White Sox in the supplemental round of the 2004 draft. The Pale Hose shipped him to Philadelphia as the PTBNL in a deal that brought Jim Thome to the south side in November of 2005, only to re-acquire Gonzalez a year later (along with Gavin Floyd) in a swap that put Freddy Garcia in purple pinstripes. The Sox then broke up with Gio for a second time after just 13 months, packaging him to Oakland in a deal that brought Nick Swisher to Chicago. 

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In a Hall of Fame class that was chock full of controversy because of chemical enhancements—both proven and suspected—that helped to obfuscate baseball's sacred record book, Roger Clemens stood out as a potentially-tainted hurler in a sea of power bats. His performance record is one of the greatest of all time, with a major-league-record seven Cy Young awards spread over a 24-year career, but the PED cloud that hangs over the Rocket is blocking his ascension to baseball's highest plane. Much like batting doppelganger Barry Bonds, Clemens experienced a tremendous spike in performance at an age when most players are planning their retirement, raising suspicion as to the legitimacy of his numbers.

Clemens was drafted by the Boston Red Sox with the 19th pick of the first round in the 1983 draft, selected out of the University of Texas after having spent some time at the baseball factory of San Jacinto Community College. His minor-league numbers were unfair: an ERA of 1.47 in 208.7 total innings across three levels, with 240 strikeouts against just 38 free passes for a K-to-walk ratio better than six to one, and just five homers allowed. Less than a year after signing with Boston, the right-hander was pitching in the Show.

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The legend of Felix Hernandez is surprisingly old for an athlete so young. Signed out of Venezuela at the age of 16, King Felix flew through the Mariners system, earning his regal nickname en route to the major leagues and staking his claim to the Safeco Field throne while he was still a teenager. With his combination of elite talent and the work ethic to realize his upside, Hernandez is the ideal pitcher to profile in this first edition of a new series on pitcher development, as we trace his career path “then and now.”

The BP staffers were cautious with ranking the inexperienced right-hander when constructing the Top 50 Prospects list of 2004, eventually leaving him off the list in favor of more seasoned players, but Hernandez would earn redemption in the '05 Annual, receiving the highest pitcher ranking as the number-three overall prospect on the Top 50. King Felix's stay atop the prospect rankings was brief, as he permanently lost his eligibility with a dominant debut that cemented his status as the future of pitching in the Great Northwest. Hernandez’s talent fueled predictions of immediate stardom, as reflected in the following line from his '05 player comment: “He's going to finish in the top three in Cy Young voting in 2006…”

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The end of the year is a time for reflection, and a flip of the calendar sparks reminders of past resolutions while we take stock of our goals for the new year.

The year 2012 was my first as a contributor to Baseball Prospectus, following two years in the BP system at Baseball Daily Digest, a subsidiary of the BP brand that was founded by Joe Hamrahi and has since graduated dozens of writers to the big stage. I have learned much during my rookie season with the ballclub, and though my recent two-part series on Making the Grade was a reasonable summary of the campaign, I have found myself thinking back to those days at BDD, remembering the lessons that shaped my work into something that was palatable to the BP audience.

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Scouting grades evolve in conjunction with player development, and pitching mechanics in particular can change drastically over time. This is especially true of young players in the minor leagues, who are specifically targeting weak links in their deliveries to address before ascending to the majors. The grades that appear in my mechanics report cards are typically a snapshot of a pitcher's skills, and though some elements can be more pervasive, a player's delivery can also morph throughout the season.

Part One of “Making the Grade” dealt with the first half of the mechanics report card, using visual representations of the 20-80 grades on the scouting scale. The subjects on the report card are arranged in chronological order, following the kinetic chain from the pitcher's first movement through pitch release, and the trio of topics on today's agenda covers the final stages of a pitcher's delivery.

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The legend of Greg Maddux already has a life of its own, and he has been retired for only four years.  The widely held perception of the bespectacled right-hander centers on his reputation as “the smartest pitcher who ever lived,” and the prevailing wisdom tends to overlook the raw talents that he brought to the mound. Maybe it's the glasses, with the clichéd connection between poor vision and intelligence. It could be the K rate, which hovered around the major-league average through his career, or maybe it was the indelible impression of a 42-year old Maddux retiring massive sluggers with an 85-mph fastball, but this was not a pitcher who survived only on guile while mentally calculating triple-integrals for every pitch thrown.

Maddux's reputation for intelligence was well-earned, as he had a cerebral approach to pitching and advanced knowledge of his craft. Maddux understood the concept of Effective Velocity long before Perry Husband had conducted his extensive research on the subject, thanks to Maddux's recognition of the relationship between pitch location and batter timing. He knew that a hitter had to begin his swing earlier in order to hit the ball squarely on a pitch located up and in, but that the hitter had a longer time to react to a pitch that was low and away. He also followed the words of Warren Spahn, who said, “Hitting is timing. Pitching is upsetting timing.”

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Grades on the 20-80 scouting scale are subjective by nature. Similarly, the scores that I dole out for the pitching mechanics report cards are based on what my eyes tell me. Each scout sees the player-evaluation world through a unique lens that has been shaped through experience, giving rise to an art of scouting that is rooted in personal observation. The greatest challenge in scouting is also the most fundamental aspect of the process: to convey with words what is seen with the eyes. The grades are only as powerful as the communicative value that the numbers carry, which should be sufficient motivation for an evaluator to be transparent with his process.

I laid the groundwork for the grades in my BP debut, outlining an emphasis on the kinetic chain of movement when pitching a baseball. The chain metaphor signifies the ripple-like influence of the pitching delivery, where a kink in the early links of the chain can lead to inefficiency further down the line. The order of operations is critical within the kinetic chain, and proper sequencing is necessary for peak efficiency, with timing as the key ingredient of the pitching motion.

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A pitcher's throwing arm is the hardest-working limb on the playing field, so it figures to get all the attention, but the oft-ignored glove-side arm has the potential to either aid the delivery or throw a wrench into the system. The non-throwing arm plays a non-trivial role in mechanical assessment—I have occasionally dropped a reference to a pitcher with a “sloppy glove” or one who “keeps the glove out in front of the body,” but I have yet to go into detail on the topic.

We have covered the basic tenets of Pitchology this season, from balance to momentum and hip-shoulder separation, but today will be an advanced lesson in the theory behind one of the finer elements of pitching mechanics. So if the class will indulge me for a lecture, I'll don the tweed jacket while the rest grab a mitt and meet me on the diamond for a virtual field trip.

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The St. Louis Cardinals have enjoyed a sustained run of success, making the playoffs for the third time in four years in 2012 despite a clubhouse that was missing a couple of Busch Stadium staples. The most glaring omission from the roster was the greatest Cardinal legend since Stan Musial, as Albert Pujols chose to pursue the bigger payday offered by the Angels, leaving the team whose offense he had carried on his shoulders for a decade. Manager Tony La Russa opted to end his career on a high note, retiring from the game following the Cardinals' World Series victory in 2011, and TLR took wingman Dave Duncan along with him to further deplete the coaching staff.

Replacing La Russa was former Cardinals catcher Mike Matheny, who shepherded the team past plenty of obstacles throughout the season. Chris Carpenter missed nearly the entire season due to injury, fellow ace Adam Wainwright was inconsistent in his first year pitching after his Tommy John surgery, and southpaw Jaime Garcia dealt with shoulder woes that earned him a summer vacation on the disabled list. Lance Lynn emerged from relative obscurity to spearhead the staff in the first half, but when the dust settled, the best pitcher on the club was Kyle Lohse, the 12-year veteran who entered the season with 4.64 career ERA and is now a free agent.

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The greatest pitchers of the previous generation were dominant on a historical level, and the peak performance of Pedro Martinez might have been the greatest spectacle that the game has ever witnessed. He may have lacked the longevity of Roger Clemens, the consistency of Greg Maddux, or the biological advantages of Randy Johnson, but Pedro introduced the world to an unrivaled combination of intensity, precision, and power that baffled major-league hitters for over a decade.

Martinez lacked the size of his legendary counterparts, but efficient mechanics and incredible athleticism allowed him to get more out of his sub-six-foot frame than pitchers half a foot taller. His effectiveness was enabled by exceptional command of an explosive array of pitches, and he required ideal efficiency to maximize the impact of his pitching career. One need look no further than Pedro's brother, Ramon Martinez, to conceptualize the difference between raw genetic gifts and athletically-trained ability.

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