Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 26, 2005
Attitude and Adjustment

Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News sees Ryan Drese's success as a combination of attitude:

Soft pitchers do not have a mound presence. Slump-shouldered and defeated pitchers do not have a mound presence.

Mean pitchers, in the most complimentary sense of the term, have a mound presence. They are as prickly as Barry Bonds on a bad day.

Nolan Ryan was a mean pitcher. Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling are mean pitchers. They let everyone know who is in charge.

Drese does not have their skills, but he was a mean pitcher last season.

The spring-training letdown fueled Drese. He turned it into the crankiness, the I'll-show-them cockiness needed to control games.

He took annoyed hitters out of their comfort zone.

And adjustment:

A year ago, the scouting report on Drese was that he would try to get by on a high fastball that lacked the needed force. He surprised opponents by changing his approach, junking the high fastball and relying on the sinker.

As the season progressed, the element of surprise lessened.

In his first start against a team, Drese was 5-5 with a 3.79 ERA. In all other starts, he was 9-5 with 4.57 ERA.

Hitters and pitchers play a version of one-upmanship. The pitcher changes, forcing the hitters to scramble. The hitters make changes, leaving the next move up to the pitcher.

"It's a cat-and-mouse game," Drese said. "Every year, you have to put in new wrinkles."

Drese had a better year than his stats indicate. He was tied for 5th in win shares among AL pitchers with 17 (tied with Pedro Martinez and Jake Westbrook). It's good to have the "want to win" attitude. My feeling is, however, the adjustments he makes now and during the season will contribute much more to a repeat of 2004.


Posted by David Pinto at 08:29 AM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

That's why we're so happy up here in Red Sox nation that Jason Varitek was re-signed. He would have made those changes for Drese. We'll see what he can do with Matt Clement.

Posted by: Orville Overall at February 26, 2005 04:24 PM
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