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Some of the Mustangs were in attendance, mostly the usual suspects. Rob had two tryout players at the practice to further evaluate them for the draft on Saturday - one of them is an outfielder, not sure on the other one. Either way, both seemed like they’d be a good fit on the team - one of them can throw pretty hard as a pitcher, and the other can hit pretty well. We’ll see how it turns out on draft day.

I threw from the mound a bit, but after throwing so much BP and not warming up adequately, it wasn’t too impressive. I switched to my old two-seam curve grip that I used a few months ago when I couldn’t figure out the standard curve grip; I got the idea from a Baseball America profile on an up-and-coming pitcher in the Orioles organization (can’t remember who, though).

Still mashing the ball pretty good, though. I’m going to hit on Wednesday night with Vinny to get a few more hacks in as well as a videotaped session (both pitching and hitting). Rob says that he plans to hit me 3rd or 4th in the lineup, which I was very happy with! I love hitting in the middle of the lineup, and though I really like hitting 2nd, it’s definitely an honor to hit cleanup. Steve and I are the early frontrunners in those spots, with Jason (our shortstop) leading off, as I assume Rob is trying to find a good left-handed bat to hit 2nd. In the early workouts and practices that we’ve had, both Steve and I have the most power on the team, so it does make sense. I’d say at this point Steve is a better overall hitter than me. Checking his stats from last year, it looks like he batted .465/.581/.651, which is pretty sick, even considering Rocky-level pitching. I think an OPS of 1.200 is achievable, but would be pretty damn difficult this year, since we’re facing tougher pitching and defenses.

I feel that I should have no problem in out-producing last year’s stats, which over all the leagues I played in, were:

.300/.380/.410 over 113 PA / 100 AB
30 H, 9 2b, 1 3b, 12 RBI, 14 R, 8 SB, 8 K, 9 BB, 4 HBP

I was hitting .410 going into the last two weeks of the season, where I just slumped. It sucked. I think a reasonable projection for me this year over 120 PA would be:

.400/.470/.600

I will definitely hit at least two home runs this year; there’s pretty much no way to avoid it. I hit at least four warning track shots at larger fields, and I’m worlds better as a hitter now. I still want to steal 10 bases this year, but it’ll be tough with Steve batting ahead of me and clogging the bases!

Robbie has had insane improvement after getting a few lessons at Big League Edge down in Auburn, so I might check it out as well. I’d love to be throwing 8 MPH faster than I am right now, since that’d put me right around the 80 MPH mark.

Time to get some late-night work done before the Oakland/Boston game. Go Rich Harden!

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Here’s what my swing looks like these days:

The image below shows my greatest weakness; it occurs right after front leg block:

As you can see in the video, the frame after I pause for front leg block, my body still carries forward. This is known as “leaking” and is caused by a weak front leg block. I have fixed this in the past, but I get lazy and tend to forget that I need to land with a strong, yet flexed front leg.

Due to this flaw, my hands move in a linear fashion for too long, hence the term “bat drag.” You want the hands to cut across the chest and in a circular motion around the body to produce a short swing to contact. “Short to it and long through it.”

However, because of my aforementioned hand-eye coordination, I am able to get away with it against inferior (sub-85 mph) pitching and get into this position, which is a thing of beauty:

Now this is good form! Proof?

You’ll notice that Pujols front leg is completely locked out in a strong position; mine isn’t. Again, this is due to poor front leg block mechanics, which is something that is somewhat easily fixed. I am convinced that another month of hitting in a cage with video will fix this problem and give me an excellent power swing. After that, it’s all up to me in the batter’s box to identify and hit pitches, something I’ve fortunately been pretty good at my whole life.

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I threw a simulated game to some of my teammates today, and it felt really good. After changing just one or two things about my delivery, I feel more in control than ever. Though my velocity is still low, I attribute some of that to the recoil cycles of training with wrist weights and weighted balls, as well as being in the gym and focusing on heavy lifting. As of next week, I will be stopping the heavy-duty training on my arm and letting it recover to pitch in the regular season.

Against the batters, my changeup had great fade and worked very well, even against right-handed hitters. I still can’t throw a curve ball with any consistency; I really need to throw to some of my high school players when teaching them the pronation curve. I have the grip correct, I just cannot consistently release it on top and get around it far too often. Fortunately, my gyroball remains consistent enough to use against right-handed hitters, featuring decent enough lateral break if I throw it slowly enough. I will probably use a sequence of fastball-change-gyroball vs. righties and fastball-sinker-change vs. lefties. Of course, that means I actually have to master throwing the maxline sinker, but it’s an easy enough pitch to learn.

Not long ago, I was able to throw the pronation slider quite effectively, but only from the Marshall theoretical windup. It’s much tougher to throw his pitches without the body motion, but now that I have eliminated much of the forearm flyout and late turnover in my delivery, I should probably revisit both the slider and curve.

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I’ve been training with my HS kids as well as my teammates 5 days a week for what seems like months. My shoulder is starting to get tweaky again, so lately I’ve reduced the workload and it’s feeling at 90% right now. I’ve concentrated on hitting these past few weeks, and I feel that my timing is getting better and better every day. I am very optimistic for this year at the plate, and I can’t wait to play a few games or scrimmages to see where I’m at!

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Tryouts went well today for Jacob, Jensen, Vinny, and I. Though everyone but Vinny is signed to a team, he sure did look good in the field from what I saw. He said his BP sessions didn’t go so well, but he had a top three arm in his age division, and looked pretty smooth in the infield, which isn’t his natural position!

I threw a bit on the side today, but didn’t feel 100%, so I cut it short after about 20 pitches. The changeup is better than ever, featuring good arm-side fade, but my breaking ball is maddeningly inconsistent. I’m going to work on it tomorrow with Jacob almost exclusively. I took a few balls at third and second base, and booted my fair share of them; everyone else wasn’t too sharp either, so I should get a pass for now. I looked good in the cages, though, which made my manager pretty happy. I put in a ton of work in the offseason on hitting, and the dividends are finally paying off.

Our team (Mustangs) should be pretty good this year, assuming Jacob and I can go back to back starts and throw a ton of innings. What the team needs desperately is league-average quality pitching, and a lot of it, which is why they signed the two of us. Since we’ve been working out for months - throwing long toss, using wrist weights, SPRI bands, full bullpen work, mechanics analysis - we’re at the stage right now where we can throw 7 innings easily as long as we’re getting guys out at a reasonable rate. Our teammates are very impressed with our work ethic; like I said before, we’re going to hit the cages or the field tomorrow to get even more work in.

It’s good to have workout partners that are as dedicated to the game as I am; without them, I wouldn’t be able to motivate myself to hit the gym every other day and to really step up my game. It stems from the fact that none of us are naturally gifted athletes, and that we all need to work extra hard to put us at the level of an average player in these divisions. Without hard work and sacrifice, we are nothing - so it is born out of necessity.

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A short pitching post: One of my major arm action flaws is not driving to the target with my elbow. Though this is less important than my timing issues at footstrike, this is something I’d still like to work on. Check out this awesome slow-mo clip of K-Rod throwing his out pitch, the infamous power curve (yes, it’s a curve, NOT a slider):

Nasty.

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Training

Jacob, Vinny, and I have been training extensively for the past few months. Vinny has transformed from a slow-pitch softball hitter into a power hitting outfielder, and though his tools are still raw, he can certainly put a charge in any fastball left middle-in and down (his favorite spot). Jacob has been training harder than ever since he switched into a job with much less stress and more steady hours, and I have been taking my diet and exercise plan a lot more seriously over the past two weeks. All of the work I have done on swing training through tee work, soft toss, and video analysis (with the aid of Dr. Chris Yeager’s materials) has finally paid off, IMO. I have learned valuable cues (keeping the hands with the shoulders and turning them together; pushing against the ground with a strong front leg block) and I have turned my line drive swing into a classic power stroke.

Today Vinny and I dialed up the two-wheel JUGS machine (something I used to hate) and hit a bunch of fastballs and some sick late-breaking curveballs outs of it. I crushed a ton of pitches after I made the adjustments in my swing that need to be there (again, hands high, a more athletic stance, a better strong block of linear momentum), and I feel that I am 90% of the way to the ideal swing for me.

Free Agent Signing

Both Jacob and I (along with Jensen) were signed before tryouts to play for the Adams division of PSSBL, an intermediate level of competition. They signed us on the strength of our ability to go 7 IP, a testament to the endurance training Jacob and I have followed for months. Both Jacob and I turned in a good tryouts on the mound. My fastball command was better than it ever has been, my changeup was still great, but my breaking (Maxline pronation curve) ball was erratic and inconsistent. There were times when it looked great, and times when it stayed flat, or worse, was way above the catcher’s head. I attribute my failures with the pitch mostly due to inexperience, and I hope to throw a bunch of them tomorrow and over the weekend during individual and team tryouts.

Coaching

Coaching Roosevelt HS Freshmen has been a wonderful experience. Not only am I staying with a lot of the kids from Northeast Seattle Little League, but the team of 18 kids that we have are extremely talented and well-mannered. We have a lot of pitching on the team (some of which will invariably be called up to JV, unfortunately), and the defense is top-notch. We even have a real catcher with his own gear, a good pop time, and a live arm. Our lineup is pretty damn good, featuring a switch hitter and several lefties. I think we’ll compete for first place in the division very easily, depending on the number of kids called up to JV.

Individual coaching of Vinny has also been great! His work ethic matches my own, and he went from being unable to make contact on 20 straight side soft tossed balls to being able to shell Jacob and I from a mound on any given day. I have mostly imparted the wisdom of Chris Yeager on him, but video analysis of my own has proved to help him as well - another testament to the idea that learning by seeing ourselves on video is one of the best (and most underused) tools in baseball today.

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February was a month of spectacular change for me. It seems like the concept of writing things down has held me accountable (writing here has helped, too) for my habits, for better or worse. I haven’t been tracking my weight, but the grabbiness of my flabbiness has all but disappeared, and I can get to the sixth and final belt hole on my 36″ pants holder-upper. I have changed my job to one that more fits my lifestyle, and that has improved my general well being also. My job change also has enabled me to volunteer with the local little league here downtown, something I have always wanted to continue doing.

The stats of my workouts this month are in line with the gains I had last month. I only missed two days of stretching, my last and first days at my old and new jobs. My task load increased 75% (24 last month to 42 this month), my percentage of a workout on any given day rose 11% to 69% and my time spent running rose 66% to nine hours forty minutes for the month. Here’s the chart:

I kept everything pretty balanced as far as hitting and pitching were concerned this month, with only a dash of fielding practice at the end. It’s only now getting to be warm enough to get quality practice in during the twilight hours. As the PSSBL gets rolling, I will most certainly mix much more defense in there, including PFP.

One week till tryouts!

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