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Yesterday’s practice was a good one for myself as well.  I’d felt as though I’d hit a wall the last few times I’d thrown the ball, the velocity was there, but my control wasn’t.  I’ve been trying to add more backside drive when coming down the mound, sometimes this changes the plane of my shoulders and I miss my target.  It’s a small adjustment, and I fell I put it together for a few pitches yesterday.

It’s tough working on things when you’re simultaneously trying to make an impression on your new teammates.  I’ve thrown so many bullpens this off-season that if I don’t have a specific thing to work on, I find myself not able to really “lock in”… but I think that will be easily remedied by having some opposition.  I’m the kind of pitcher who needs to get some guys out before I can start to show my leadership on the mound.  Two scrimmage innings on Sunday is the next step in that direction.

The Adams division is an interesting situation.  With only six teams, we are going to play each other four times…  which paves the way for some intense rivalry and revenge opportunities.  Our scrimmage Sunday is against division opponents, but it’s the pre-season.  I’ll be curious to see if the turnout justifies actually playing, hopefully eighteen guys show.  I’m also anxious to see how intense the gamesmanship is.  Many of these guys know each other, so it will be interesting to see how hard people play in the spring muck.

Our team is taking shape, I really like the quality of ballplayers Rob has assembled.  We’re deep at just about every position, even catcher.  Competition from within combined with a good practice regimen…  Sounds like the perfect approach to the season.

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More people showed up to tonight’s practice, about nine altogether. We had the two guys there from the previously mentioned post, who ended up falling to us in the draft. Both of them can throw pretty well, but one is pretty raw (never pitched in HS) and the other just needs some more time on the mound. I would imagine that both should become pitchers on the team, as they definitely have the ability and both seem to want to work hard, which fits in with the team’s philosophy.

Rob reaffirmed the notion that no positions or spots in the lineup are completely spoken for, which is just how I like it. Despite the fact that I was told that I’ll be batting in the middle of the lineup, pitching, and possibly playing 2b on my days off, I never take anything for granted anymore. I welcome the competition (both of the new guys can hit and one looks to be a good infielder) and like the chance to compete for the shortstop position as well! I do prefer playing second base, but if my bat and glove carry me on the left side of the infield, that’s where I’ll play.

I feel like I had a great session all around today. I hit well, I fielded plenty of balls cleanly and made mostly good throws, and my breaking ball is getting more consistent now that I’ve taken a bit off and switched to the two-seam grip. A big dilemma for me is the fact that I throw so much more consistently and with more velocity from the pseudo-traditional windup and drop-step delivery that Marshall teaches, but I’m not sure what umpires are going to say. It’s a completely legal delivery and fits well within the rules of MLB and our league, but that might not necessarily fly. I plan on throwing using those mechanics in the Sunday scrimmage; we’ll see how the Bulls like it (I’m sure they won’t).

Tomorrow I’ll be holding optional BP for the HS team, and I’ll probably throw some to the catcher there as well as long as my arm’s not too sore. After stopping the heavy-duty wrist weights/iron ball/lifting program, my arm is feeling better than ever and I daresay at 100%. I’m going to start cutting weight, which is what I wanted to do earlier, but didn’t want to run a caloric deficit while on the serious workout plan. I learned the hard way last year that cutting calories while on such a program can seriously deplete muscle mass and inhibit recovery on my arm.

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Saturday came and went without a scrimmage due to the poor weather (snow on Friday, bleh), but we had a small practice. It was good to get outside, hit some balls, and field a few grounders. I’m always up for practicing and getting more work in, and I’m genuinely surprised at the number of people who aren’t. Yes, I know I have a very flexible schedule since I’m self-employed, but on weekday nights and weekends, there’s little excuse not to get some work in.

Anyway, I hit a ball off Jacob that I thought for sure went out, but my teammates said it bounced off the warning track before going over the fence. Bah. Maybe with a dry ball and a warm day it would have sailed out; either way, I’m not too concerned, as the power is there. One thing I need to do is to develop a more consistent swing and approach at the plate. To that end, I hit three buckets’ worth of balls (about 200 total) today outside and at Arena Sports by myself, since I couldn’t get in touch with anyone who wanted to hit on a beautiful Sunday afternoon/evening. I am getting the four stages of the swing down pretty well, but I have a nagging suspicion that I’m introducing a bit of bat drag in my swing, something that’s always a concern when I hit too much off a tee or soft toss. Nothing can replace live pitching, since when my swing gets a bit long, facing live pitching always exposes the holes. I might swing by Strike-Zone tomorrow afternoon and hit 200 pitches out of the machine since there’s no HS practice due to spring break. I haven’t hit off a machine in a long time, especially the Iron Mike variety, which is as close to live pitching as you’re going to get out of a mechanical arm. Hopefully I’ll drag my video camera down there and finally get some tape. With any luck, there will be a HS kid to catch me a bit so I can tape that as well, though I’m less concerned with my throwing action.

Rob, my manager (also a faithful reader of this blog, Hi Rob!), is batting me third or fourth in the lineup, as I’ve said before. Most people would be thrilled, and I am, but I see this as a challenge within an opportunity. There are plenty of guys on the Mustangs who can hit, and I can easily remember two years back when I was struggling to make contact with BP fastballs in the NABA league. I spent full games on the bench and never really earned the trust of Zane on the Mariners, which drove me to work as hard as I did in the offseason to become the best hitter I could be. Personally, I feel like I have miles to go before I am content with my swing, and that’s the way I like it. I know that I have plenty of untapped power in my body built up from heavy lifting, and I strive to get better with every passing day.

Two years ago, I wrote in my personal blog that I wouldn’t stop working hard, and I’m happy to report that I’ve fulfilled that promise so far. That being said, complacency is the enemy of progress, and I am always pressing myself to improve. I really do believe that I have the talent at the plate to play at the Olympic level and beyond; I think I can be good enough to play independent league baseball if I work my ass off. I’ll never be great in the field, but I know I can hit well enough to get me in a lineup somewhere.

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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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