Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
April 25, 2008
Big Tippers

Todd Jones pens a piece for SportingNews.com on tipping pitches:

When Cito Gaston was managing in Toronto, he had his bench pick apart the pitcher. One guy would study the pitcher's hands, one would study his feet, one his cadence between pitches.

When Roberto Alomar signed with Cleveland (after playing with the Blue Jays and Orioles), a funny thing happened. The Indians suddenly became good at studying pitchers. Derek Bell, another former Blue Jay, went to the Astros and the same thing happened. He used to tell me after an inning he could call every curve I threw. To this day, I still have a habit of looking toward third base before I throw a curve, and Bell could pick that up from left field. So you know others picked it up, too.

I've thought for a while that teams should assign a former hitter to sit in the stands behind home plate and look for this sort of thing in the teams own pitchers. Catch the tips before the other team does, and the club can work on fixing the problem.


Posted by David Pinto at 10:24 AM | Pitchers | TrackBack (0)
Comments

You've got me wondering what teams might be doing this right now. Likely, it would be good offensive teams of course... but hey, I'm curious now. And I'm wondering if some teams are picking apart their own, in order to improve their pitching.

Posted by: Devon Young at April 25, 2008 12:18 PM

"To this day, I still have a habit of looking toward third base before I throw a curve"

Hey Todd, thanks for telling everyone who wasn't smart enough to already figure it out. Let's see how effective you are from now on...

Posted by: rocksfan at April 25, 2008 12:23 PM

Jim Edmonds was reportedly a master at doing this, as well.

Posted by: SleepyCA at April 25, 2008 02:44 PM

I would be surprised if every team didn't do this to an extent. Pitchers are putting this information out there, why not use it to your advantage? Poker players don't call their reading ability cheating... even though it looks like it from the outside.

Orlando Hudson was great at it while he was in Toronto. It's also why I think Cito Gaston should be managing the Jays again.

Posted by: Andrew at April 25, 2008 04:46 PM
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