Power Arms

[DHonks]

I've been thinking (I know, that's dangerous). The Cards are getting praise for drafting power arms. But it's not like the Brewers don't draft power arms. It seems like most of the arms we draft, however, wind up losing velocity. Guys like Heckathorn throw 98 in college and 89-90 as a pro. Arnett was 93-95 in college and 90-92 as a pro. How come some organizations are able to get guys with power arms, and get them to either continue throwing hard OR throw harder, while our guys all instantly lose 3-6 mph? We also draft lots of projectable young guys throwing 89-92, and then they never really project higher. Due to modern teens throwing year round, should the Brewers drop the old concept of guys increasing velocity as pros?

[James Zumstein]

While I'm definitely not an expert on the subject, one of the things I look for when reading scouting reports on pitchers is whether or not they have a clean delivery, or if his mechanics will need to be changed once drafted. Obviously overhauling a guys way he pitches will have an effect on how he pitches. I'm not saying that is why your examples did lose velocity on their fastballs, but it is a very real possibility if our coaches felt for one reason or another that it was necessary to alter their mechanics.

[TheCrew07]

Fixing mechanics doesn't have anything to do with velocity loss, proper mechanics leads to picking up gains in velocity or better location on pitches. I've never seen a QB or pitcher actually throw harder by doing things wrong, it's not physically possible, as in physics meaning the application of force.

 

The Brewers have had some pitchers whom they had dial back their velocity in an attempt to throw more strikes, but that's not a mechanical change.

 

The Brewers simply aren't adept at identifying pitchers who truly have fastball projection left.

 

They've also drafted arms with plenty of mileage already on them who tend to break down. One problem we have is that we really don't how these guys were handled through high school, we can look at their college innings, but nothing prior. Some guys like Arnett were abused as soon as they caught fire going 130 pitches in big games, it might have have been too much too soon for guys like that.

 

If you take a pitcher like Jungmann who relied mostly on his 4 seam FB in college and now is a 2 seam guy, his velocity would have appeared to drop, when he's actually throwing a different pitch. His 2 seamer sat 88-92 when I saw him in college and he didn't locate the pitch well, it still sits 88-92 and his location can be suspect at times... he's made improvement, but it is essentially the same pitch. However people read his pre-draft scouting report saying he's hit 97 in the past and wonder where the velocity went. There was a fluff piece about him from fangraphs a couple of weeks ago and the author didn't even note he was actually throwing a different pitch.

 

Gallardo had some insane pitch counts in high school which were covered by BA at the time and made his draft scouting report, he still picked up a little bit of velocity as a professional eventually topping out at 95, but his arm was quickly fading there for a while. Gallardo is more the outlier in the Brewer organization, a young pitcher who actually picked up velocity, but other organizations seem to do pretty well identifying projectable talent. The Giants in particular are very good at identifying and developing HS kids which add velocity.

 

I just don't think the Brewers are good identifying pitchers to start with, they haven't had much success regardless if they are targeting college or HS players.