Young pitchers ramp it up early in camp
It just didn’t used to be like this.
Jason Foley, in his first spring outing Tuesday, threw a 100-mph sinker and his average velocity on 11 of them just a tick under 99 mph. Casey Mize, whose average fastball velocity before his surgery, was 93-94, has been sitting near 97 mph all spring. Drew Anderson’s average fastball over his two innings Tuesday was 97 mph, 5 mph firmer than he was throwing the last two seasons in Japan.
And there was Tarik Skubal hitting 99.6 mph in his first spring start Wednesday in the Tigers’ 5-3 spring win against the Pirates. He averaged 97.5 mph on nine four-seamers. That after ringing up 99.5mph in his first live BP session last week.
Back in the day, like five or six years ago, pitchers used the spring to gradually build arm strength and step-by-step ramp up their velo. That was deemed to be the healthiest approach, using the spring as a prelude to the six-month, 162game grind.
It seems fair to wonder, is there a health risk to these pitchers coming out so hot so early? What’s it going to look like in July, August and September?
“I don’t put too much stock in it,” Foley said. “If you prepare your body enough, you’ll hopefully be able to maintain it. There’s going to be ups and downs and days when you aren’t feeling great. But for the most part, if you keep your body in check, you’ll throw pretty consistently from a velocity standpoint.”
Both Mize and Skubal have said the same thing. You build up as much armor as you can during the offseason and then you just go out and let it eat. Pitchers got hurt and experienced dead-arm periods with a slow ramp-up, too.
“I like to come in ready to go, just me personally,” said Skubal, who walked one and struck out two in two scoreless, hitless innings. “I want to be out there, go compete and be who I am on the mound. If I were to come in at 91-92, I wouldn’t be confident in that on the mound.”
He also doesn’t want to get into bad habits.
“This is just me, OK?” Skubal said. “I feel like when I’m working at lower velocity I create bad habits and those bad habits are hard to break. Especially when you’ve done the same thing for a while in the offseason and all of a sudden you get in season and, ‘OK, now I need to be 95-96.’ But those habits you created are now subconscious.
“Let’s just be smart on our throwing days. Let’s come in great shape because I want to be able to work on things, especially at this time of the year. I like to work. I like to come in great shape and I don’t want to have any bad habits.”
A strong breeze blowing out to left field Wednesday did not discourage Skubal from attacking right-handed hitters with his four-seam fastball. He used it effectively to get strikes and to set up his changeup, which got three swings and misses on four swings. Only one ball was hit hard off him. Jason Delay ambushed a first-pitch fastball and drove it deep to right-center.
“I didn’t even watch it,” Skubal said. “I thought it was a homer. He hit it. I put my head down and I just looked over to my dugout.”
Pitching coach Chris Fetter gave Skubal the out signal. Center fielder Parker Meadows made an outstanding catch two steps on the warning track.
“I was like, ‘That wasn’t a homer?’” Skubal said. “Wow.”
Skubal threw 29 pitches, 19 strikes.
“It’s just about getting in a game again,” he said. “The first one is like, go compete again. Get used to the pitch clock and runners on base and the whole timing of stuff. That was my goal.”
As for his velocity, he simply said it’s what he’s capable of right now.
“I want to be sore tomorrow,” he said. “That means you worked.”
Skubal said he doesn’t expect to be able to sustain 98-99 mph across six or seven innings in a regular season start. But he fully expects that extra velo to be in the tank when he needs it all season long.
“A lot of my confidence in myself comes from my preparation,” he said. “But that’s me. There’s guys who don’t throw hard early and they’re just fine come opening day. It’s all about preferences. But I don’t know if I would have the confidence to come into camp and my best bolt was like 89.”
Manager AJ Hinch isn’t trying to throttle anyone down. At least not right now.
“I think the velo right now across the league is all reflective of what the players have committed to do over the offseason,” Hinch said. “The players who are showing peak velocity now, they’ve done a ton of work to put themselves in this position. It’s hard to argue with that.”
Hinch compared it to the questions he gets about Riley Greene’s health issues.
“It’s like trying to tell Riley Greene to play careful,” he said. “He’s going to get hurt if he tries to play careful. It’s a fine line.”
What they can do, what they’ve been doing, is monitoring the players bio-mechanics, fatigue and stress levels and making sure they are properly recovering from their outings.
“Do we need to look into more rest periods in between outings?” Hinch said. “Do we need to look at their readiness? Do we need to look at the overall length of spring training topic? Sure. Because the players are capable of getting ready faster based on the work they’re doing in the winter.”
Might as well embrace it and extol the performance gains these athletes are making.
“As long as their body is ready for it and they are recovering, we have to accept it as our reality,” Hinch said. “Because that’s the way the modern athlete is built.”