I watch the pitches and close plays on the monitors; the screen to my right is the Telestrator, where I can scribble lines, arrows, and the occasional comment.
Photo by Corey Sandler
C H A P T E R T W O
Everything starts with the pitcher.
The three people with the best view of the incoming pitch are the batter, the catcher, and the umpire. All the rest of us have a secondhand view: from above, the side, or far away. From the stands—and from the dugout—it’s pretty hard to tell the location and movement of pitches.
Here is where television really shines: You get a great view of the pitch from the camera that looks over the pitcher’s shoulder toward home plate. That’s the one we watch most closely in the broadcast booth.
If you’re at the ballpark, there are other things to watch. Most parks now display the speed of the pitch; you can watch the variations in fastballs and spot breaking balls. And you can learn something about the pitch by the adjustments the infielders make.
Watch the pitcher’s body language. Some pitchers lay claim to the mound with a sneer and a swagger. Others seem to dissolve before your eyes, with a deer-in-the-headlights panicked stare when they give up a few runs.
A guy may be on top of his game, and all of a sudden he has a bad inning and his shoulders drop. The man at the plate is so close to the pitcher he can see the look in his eyes and the droop in his shoulders. If the message is, “I don’t want to be here,” the batter knows he has the advantage.
A good starting pitcher is one of the most valuable commodities in baseball. In today’s game most pitching coaches try to keep him healthy by limiting the number of pitches he throws per outing.
The starting pitcher used to be expected to pitch a complete game, unless he was ineffective or got hurt or if a pinch hitter replaced him in the lineup. There are still some pitchers who can go out and pitch nine innings, but complete games are now about as rare as 50-cent hot dogs.
In 2007 the Red Sox had a grand total of four complete games in the regular season. (By way of comparison, the great Cy Young completed forty-one games all by himself in 1902.) One was the heart-breaking one-hitter (he came within one out of a no-hitter) by stalwart veteran Curt Schilling. A second was tossed by Daisuke Matsuzaka, a solid MLB rookie with a proven record in Japan. The third was a gem by Kason Gabbard, a promising rookie who was traded to Texas late in the season for reliever Eric Gagné. The fourth complete game was the extraordinary no-hitter by Clay Buchholz, who became the first Red Sox rookie ever to throw a no-hitter; it came on his second major league start, on September 1.
Today most managers say, “Give me a solid six or seven innings and the bull pen will take over.” From there they’ll go to the setup man for an inning or two and then to the closer.
During the game, among the pitching coach’s principal assignments is paying attention to the pitch count; before the game begins he’ll usually decide how many pitches he wants the starter to throw. The magic number for most pitchers is around 115; anything above 100 pitches and most managers are looking for the moment to lift him.
Back in the day, a guy like Luis Tiant would tell the manager, “No, no, no. I am finishing my game.” And I played in games with Nolan Ryan when he threw 150 or 160 pitches in completing a game.
But a complete game is now so rare that even if a pitcher is carrying a no-hitter into the seventh or eighth inning, the manager and coach may be secretly hoping for a harmless single to end the zeros in the hit column.
When Buchholz threw his no-hitter, the rookie had not thrown more than 98 pitches in any game all year, and Red Sox general manager Theo Epstein confirmed that he had spoken with manager Terry Francona during the game. They had set a limit of 120 pitches; Buchholz completed his gem with 115 pitches. I think there would have been a riot if they pulled him from the game.
The emphasis on pitch count can sometimes affect the course of the game. The starter might have had a tough first couple of innings, throwing fifty pitches, and then he’ll try to economize the rest of the way, which may or may not be the best way for him to pitch.
There have been more than a few ballplayers who were capable of throwing a fastball at 100 miles per hour but who had no success as pitchers. These guys are throwers, not pitchers.
If every pitch is 99 miles per hour, a good batter will eventually learn to time his swing; mixing in an off-speed pitch, say at 92 miles per hour, at the proper time can be very effective.
A thrower doesn’t know how to set up the hitter this way. And when a thrower becomes a pitcher, it’s not all about velocity: It’s where he puts the ball.
It’s just like real estate: location, location, location. That’s pitching.
Control is the most important skill: A pitcher needs to throw strikes, make quality pitches, get ahead of hitters, and expand the strike zone when he gets ahead in the count. You can’t pitch successfully in the big leagues from behind in the count.
If you can paint the corners all day long, move the ball in and out and up and down, change speeds, and otherwise keep hitters off balance, you are going to be a good pitcher. I think of a guy like Greg Maddux, who is not a hard thrower but is headed for the Hall of Fame.
Pitchers also have to make adjustments. In any particular game only two of his pitches might be working, and sometimes everything deserts him but one pitch, and he’s got to be able to win with that.
And then you have great pitchers who once were fireballers but continue having success late in their career because of their ability to put a good pitch in a good place, even if it no longer scorches the air on the way to the plate. Over the course of the 2007 season, Curt Schilling moved into that group.
Today a guy who can pitch well often does not spend much time in the minors; the parent club will rush him up to the majors as quickly as possible. There simply are not enough quality pitchers at the major-league level.
But sometimes a great pitcher takes a long time to reach his peak. Nolan Ryan is the perfect example. When Ryan came up to the Mets at age nineteen, he could throw the ball through the wall but sometimes couldn’t find the strike zone with a map. His effectiveness as a pitcher developed through experience, and part of that came from realizing that he didn’t have to throw every ball that hard.
Most teams have a well-defined routine for use of the bull pen. If the starter gets in trouble early, the manager is going to bring in a new arm; if he’s doing well, the starter may last until the seventh or eighth inning before the door to the bull pen is opened. In today’s game, though, there is no such thing as an all-purpose reliever; they’re all specialists in the bull pen.
The long reliever has to be ready from the beginning of the game; if the starting pitcher gets in trouble, the long reliever may come in during the first inning and pitch a large piece of the game. The middle reliever is called on for three or four innings of help if the starter falters a little later on.
Then there is the setup pitcher, who is typically expected to keep things under control during the seventh and eighth innings of a close game. And finally there is the closer, who will watch the game in the clubhouse and walk out to the bull pen around the seventh inning only if it looks like a game in which he is going to be used.
Most pitchers would like to be a starter or a great closer. I don’t think anybody says, “I want to be a middle reliever.” The pitcher in this role usually is a starter who has been bumped out of the rotation. The middle reliever’s job is to eat up the middle innings of the game, keeping his team close. He may pick up a couple of runs on his earned run average (ERA) but not a win.
Late in a close game, the manager may bring in a setup man. These are specialists who come in for just an inning or two, or sometimes just for a few batters, to shut down the opposition. Managers like to have two setup men; if lefties are coming up, they may bring in the left-handed pitcher first and perhaps follow with the righty. The goal is to keep the other team off the board until they can get to their stud closer to pitch the ninth inning.
Remy Says: Watch This
The Rules of the Bull Pen
Pitchers sitting out in the bull pen are sometimes in a world of their own, which may explain some of the strange things that go on out there. Most of these guys spend a couple of hours not directly involved in the game, and I guess they have to keep occupied doing something.
It is their little sanctuary, their home away from the clubhouse. They talk a lot. They tell jokes. In some places they watch for fights in the stands. You don’t see anybody going out to the bull pen with a lunch box, but I am sure plenty of hot dogs have changed hands between fans and players. Some players have been known to send out for food.
It can also get a little weird. In 2007 Boston’s excellent relief corps—mostly young arms like those of Papelbon, Okajima, and Manny Delcarmen—were taken under the wing of veteran Mike Timlin. With a lot of time on their hands, these guys chose to reenvision themselves as the crew of a pirate ship, complete with secret names, handshakes, and a stuffed parrot as a mascot. And they put together a powerful rhythm section in the bullpen, pounding away during rallies and in crucial pitching situations with water bottles, fungo bats, and anything else they could scavenge from their kit. Obviously it worked: In the playoffs, the Angels, Indians, and Rockies were robbed on a regular basis.
There is a theory now, and I think it is mostly true, that some of the most important outs in the game may come in the seventh inning. But the problem with that is if the manager uses his best guy then, who does he use in the ninth? Someone not as effective?
In 2007 the Red Sox received the most pleasant of surprises from Hideki Okajima . . . the other Japanese pitcher they signed. Not all that much was expected of the thirty-one-year-old veteran from the Yomiuri Giants and the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters; all eyes were on the much-heralded Daisuke Matsuzaka. But Okajima made his presence known early in the season shutting down the Yankees in a game when Jonathan Papelbon was not available.
Then he went on to establish a remarkable streak as the eighth- (or seventh-) inning setup man who kept the game in control until Papelbon could close.
Okajima doesn’t have a blazing fastball, but there’s something about his windup, including the fact that he looks away from the plate at a critical moment in his delivery, and a few wrinkles in his “Okey-Dokey” pitch that make him very effective. He called himself the “hero in the shadows.”
The perfect closer is Mr. Lights Out: a pitcher who can come in and mow down three batters in the ninth inning before the other side can even think about putting on its rally caps. He almost never comes in when his team is behind and rarely when it is tied. His job is to close the door when the win is on the line.
The best closers are usually strikeout pitchers: The less contact a batter makes, the less chance you have of getting beat. Most closers have a trick pitch, like a splitter or a cut fastball. Or they have overpowering velocity.
A closer has to be able to take the mound knowing there’s nobody else warming up. It’s his game to hold . . . or blow . . . the lead.
Intimidation is a big part of being a closer. Troy Percival, in his prime, squinted at the batter like Mr. Magoo, put a frightening scowl on his face, and then threw a 100 MPH fastball.
The closer also needs a short memory. He is not going to save every game, but he has to be able to forget what happened last night and go back out there the next day. As a hitter, if I went 0 for 5 in a game, I would go to bed tossing and turning. I am sure closers do the same thing after they blow a game. But while a hitter hopes for a .300 average, if a pitcher is .500 as a closer, he is not going to be working very long.
Schilling Talks
Curt Schilling lays it all out there on his blog. He talks about his contract, his life, and everything else. I could never have done that sort of thing. Schilling pitches once every five days so he has the time, and more to the point he loves it. Check it out at 38pitches.com.
“You don’t always make an out. Sometimes the pitcher gets you out.”
RED SOX GREAT CARL YASTRZEMSKI
The manager doesn’t have to hold back the closer for the last innings; some are brought in for sticky situations in the eighth. Let’s say there is one out and the other team has runners on second and third. The manager really needs an out, and the safest way would be to keep the ball out of play and get a strikeout. In that instance the manager might go to the closer and ask him to give the team five outs instead of three.
In 2006 we saw the emergence of a great closer in Jonathan Papelbon, but by the end of the season he was shut down because of strain on his arm from near-daily throwing. As the 2007 season approached, Paps was supposed to be changing over to a starting pitcher—and he probably would have been a good one—but at spring training he solved a critical need on the Red Sox by asking to go back to the bull pen.
Papelbon had a spectacular year in 2007, in the class of Mariano Rivera. He finished with a postseason in which he was almost untouchable: 4 saves, 1 win, and no runs in seven appearances. And his victory dance, a Texas version of an Irish jig, earned him a spot on the Late Show with David Letterman and the thanks of a grateful Red Sox Nation.
You’ve got pitchers who windmill their arms, kick their legs above their shoulders, turn their backs, and do just about anything you can imagine in their windup. Hitters will tell themselves they’ve got to pick up the baseball when the pitcher releases it from his hand; they’ve got to put all of the windup theatrics aside because none of it means anything.
A pitcher’s delivery is like a hitter’s stance before he swings: You can have any stance you want at the start. It’s how you finish that matters, how you make contact. A pitcher can do three flips and a handstand and then throw the pitch. Regardless of what the windup looks like, at some point the pitcher has to release the baseball and that’s what the hitter is supposed to focus on.
Now pitching, Terry Francona
Red Sox manager Terry Francona played for parts of ten seasons in the Major Leagues, coming up with the Montreal Expos in 1981 and later playing for the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds in the National League and then the Cleveland Indians and the Milwaukee Brewers of the American League.
A lefthander, he began as an outfielder but shifted to first base for the latter half of his career. He finished with a career batting average of .274 in 1,731 at bats. He hit a total of 16 home runs and drove in 143 runs. Oh, and he pitched one perfect inning.
On May 15, 1989 the Milwaukee Brewers were being pounded by the Oakland Athletics on the road, behind 12–2 after seven innings. Francona volunteered to give the bullpen a rest, and came in to pitch the bottom of the eighth inning. Three up, three down: 12 pitches, no hits, no walks, and one strikeout. Stan Javier, not a bad hitter, went down swinging on three pitches thrown by Francona.
Today pitchers are not supposed to wear jewelry and other things that might distract the batter. When I played, I faced guys with chains and pendants and other stuff. We had Oil Can Boyd pitching for Boston in the 1980s. Let me put this carefully: He was a bit excitable. He used to wear all these chains and some opposing managers would let him start the game, and if he got himself in a pretty good groove, they would try to disrupt him by asking umpires to make him take the stuff off.
Curt Schilling wears a necklace and various emblems and slogans for causes that are important to him. Josh Beckett also hangs a collar-like “sports necklace” around his neck.
In recent years there have been some funny incidents regarding fashion statements by players. In 2001 Seattle’s Arthur Rhodes came in to face Omar Vizquel, then with Cleveland, in the ninth inning. It was a sunny day and Vizquel asked the umpire to tell Rhodes to take off a big jeweled earring he was wearing.
Now it is quite possible that the glare from that earring really was bothering Vizquel. Or it might have been an attempt to aggravate the pitcher and get him out of his rhythm. In any case Rhodes absolutely lost his composure and started yelling at Vizquel, and there was a bench-clearing tussle that ended up with Rhodes thrown out of the game. All for an earring.
Pedro Martínez got called on the carpet a few times, too. Once the home-plate umpire made him change his glove because it had red stitching that was distracting. He also used to cut his sleeves, and they would be flapping with his delivery. I don’t think he was trying to bother the hitter with it; he just felt comfortable that way. But the rules say you can’t do that.
When you’re up against a guy as good as Pedro, you look for any kind of edge. But with him, it probably works the other way. I don’t know that I would want to get Martínez ticked off at me when I was up at the plate.
And in 2003 Roger Clemens—before he retired, unretired, retired, unretired, and retired—took to the mound for the Yankees against the Red Sox with hopes of winning his 300th game in front of his traveling troupe of friends and family. Right at the start of the game, manager Grady Little complained to the umpires about a flashy “300” patch Clemens had attached to his glove. He had to change gloves, and he was sent to the showers in the sixth inning. The glove escapade just may have nudged the Rocket off course.