{"id":54338,"date":"2025-05-10T14:36:16","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T14:36:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=54338"},"modified":"2025-05-10T14:36:16","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T14:36:16","slug":"an-old-school-pitching-coach-says-i-told-you-so","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportnews.azontree.com\/?p=54338","title":{"rendered":"An Old-School Pitching Coach Says I Told You So"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Professional baseball has a pitching crisis, as its starters throw harder and faster\u2014and get injured more often. In search of what\u2019s gone wrong with a pillar of this beautiful game, I drove along Lake Hartwell, in South Carolina, and pulled into a dirt driveway, where a baseball wizard by the name of Leo Mazzone greeted me. From 1990 to 2005, he oversaw the Atlanta Braves\u2019 pitching staff, one of the greatest in history. He\u2019s long been dismayed by Major League Baseball\u2019s relentless focus on analytics and what it has done to pitchers, and I figured I would give him a chance to say I told you so<\/i>.<\/p>\n

I asked Mazzone: What happened?<\/p>\n

\u201cAll anyone in the majors watches now is how damn fast a guy can throw,\u201d he told me, rocking on his heels. \u201cGrunt and heave, grunt and heave. It\u2019s not pitching; it\u2019s asinine.\u201d<\/p>\n

He chuckled.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see guys with these crazy-violent deliveries, spinning out on the mounds. Would I trust these guys in a game? Sheeit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mazzone, 76, lives in a retirement exile, ignored by the Ivy League quants who now dominate teams\u2019 front offices. In December, though, Major League Baseball released a report that implicitly acknowledged the core truths of Mazzone\u2019s critique. The emphasis on throwing as hard as possible on every pitch is likely ruinous for a pitcher\u2019s ligaments, the report found, and has led to a sharp increase in elbow surgeries. A pitcher\u2019s craft is reduced to optimizing his \u201cstuff\u201d\u2014arcane computer-driven metrics such as spin rates, horizontal and vertical breaks, and radar-gun-certified speed.<\/p>\n

Beyond putting pitcher health at risk, this insistence results in boring, plain-ugly baseball. Pitcher workdays come with strict limitations. Two decades ago, after injury rates began to climb, teams imposed a limit of 100 pitches a game, and that somewhat arbitrary threshold yielded to limits of 90, 80, and even 70 pitches\u2014meaning that most starters leave the pitching mound after five innings, before being replaced by largely anonymous relievers who are also throwing as hard as they can.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe focus on velocity, \u2018stuff,\u2019 and max-effort pitching\u2014have caused a noticeable and detrimental impact on the quality of the game on the field,\u201d the report observed. \u201cSuch trends are inherently counter to contact-oriented approaches that create more balls in play and result in the type of on-field action that fans want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

[From the July\/August 2023 Issue: Moneyball broke baseball]<\/i><\/p>\n

So far, though, the report hasn\u2019t changed anything, perhaps because the fixation on pitch velocity and spin rates has become entrenched throughout the sport, from youth travel baseball to college to the majors. Electronically clocking a prospect\u2019s fastball, and analyzing the arm and wrist torque that causes a ball to spin, is easier than forecasting whether he has the mental discipline and control needed to thrive for years in the majors. Front offices may calculate that burning through little-known relievers is cheaper and easier than finding and nurturing future stars.<\/p>\n

More than two decades into the sabermetrics era, baseball evinces what is obvious in many fields: Fixating on statistics changes everything, and not always for the better. Pitching is not math; it\u2019s an art.<\/p>\n

Mazzone still advises college coaches and speaks at youth baseball conventions. He shudders when he sees young pitchers lift barbells and hurl weighted baseballs at walls. \u201cThe game now is all about speed,\u201d he said, \u201cand it\u2019s all bullshit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mazzone grew up in the rural sawmill town of Luke, Maryland, and labored for 10 years as an itinerant Minor League pitcher, including a stint in Mexico with the Guaymas Oystercatchers. As a Minor League coach for the Braves, he found a mentor in Johnny Sain, a perpetual rebel and pitching savant. Sain had tutored baseball\u2019s best pitchers and insisted that they concentrate less on brute strength than on varying speeds and the location where the ball crossed home plate. \u201cEvery night he took me to his RV and fired up his grill, and we\u2019d have a sip or two and just talk pitching,\u201d Mazzone recalled. \u201cI wondered about all the dumbasses who would not listen to this man.\u201d<\/p>\n

From Sain, Mazzone learned the elements of his pitching gospel. \u201cAll of our efforts were put on movement, change of speeds, location. Velocity was No. 4 on that list,\u201d he said. Mazzone settled on simple rules: A good pitcher should throw at 85 percent of his full effort and learn to save his best for late in the game.<\/p>\n

Mazzone was elevated to Braves pitching coach. His three best starters, Greg Maddux, John Smoltz, and Tom Glavine, won a total of six Cy Young awards as the best pitcher in the National League during Mazzone\u2019s tenure in Atlanta and strolled into the Hall of Fame. He worked his magic on many other starting pitchers, whose careers were revived with the Braves. Some baseball writers and historians argue that Mazzone, for his wisdom and innovation, belongs in the Hall too.<\/p>\n

Mazzone left the Braves in 2005 and served as pitching coach for the Baltimore Orioles, grooming some fine starting pitchers. After the Orioles fired him in 2007, Mazzone was prematurely retired, his strong opinions and barbed wit doing him no favors with front offices.<\/p>\n

For more than a century, the starting pitcher was a favored prince. Tom Seaver, Bob Gibson, Juan Marichal, Justin Verlander, Steve Carlton, Pedro Martinez, Jim Palmer, Randy Johnson: To rattle off these names is to conjure up that lovely baseball pleasure, the solitary duel between a great pitcher and a great hitter.<\/p>\n

I recall as a kid watching on a black-and-white television the 1973 World Series between my beloved New York Mets and the Oakland A\u2019s. There was Seaver, with that relentless drop-and-drive delivery of his, facing off against Reggie Jackson, the swashbuckling Oakland slugger\u2014darting fastballs and curves matched against a magnificent swing.<\/p>\n

Batting styles have also changed since then, with much emphasis put on hitting with power, preferably home runs. Strikeouts have spiked sharply, and batting averages have plunged.<\/p>\n

[Matteo Wong: The great torpedo-bat panic]<\/i><\/p>\n

Mazzone does not care for that: more dullness. He\u2019s not opposed to computer analysis as a tool in a coach\u2019s arsenal. But his pitching credo had little to do with 100-miles-an-hour fastballs and the obsessive monitoring of pitch counts and spin rates. Mazzone has no patience for the conventional wisdom that pitchers tire and struggle on the third time through an opposing lineup, in the sixth or seventh inning.<\/p>\n

Mazzone told me that his most reliable pitchers played well late in games. \u201cThe key was controlling the amount of effort,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In 1987, the Braves traded a fine but aging starting pitcher, Doyle Alexander, for John Smoltz, who came from the Detroit Tigers\u2019 Minor League system. People chattered that the Braves had been fleeced. Take the kid out back to a pitching mound<\/i>, then\u2013General Manager Bobby Cox told Mazzone, and tell me what we\u2019ve got<\/i>. Scouting reports suggested that the 20-year-old Smoltz had a lively but erratic fastball.<\/p>\n

Mazzone and the kid walked to a back lot in the Braves training complex. \u201cI told Smoltzy to just throw natural,\u201d Mazzone recalled. On the fourth or fifth pitch, Smoltz shook his head and muttered,: \u201cThis ain\u2019t right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat ain\u2019t right?\u201d Mazzone asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, my left leg has to go here, and my right leg has to go there,\u201d Smoltz said. \u201cWhen I was in Detroit\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n

Mazzone cut him off. \u201cYou\u2019re not in fucking Detroit. Throw natural.\u201d<\/p>\n

Smoltz\u2014who has recalled their conversation similarly\u2014calmed down and tossed one fastball after another across the plate, beautiful as could be. From there, Mazzone worked on developing Smoltz\u2019s off-speed pitches.<\/p>\n

A year later, Smoltz reached the majors at age 21. A year after that, he pitched more than 200 Major League innings. \u201cI said to myself, Damn, this was too easy<\/i>,\u201d Mazzone recalled.<\/p>\n

Although Mazzone kept a clicker in his pocket to count pitches, he is no fan of that stat. From Seaver to Nolan Ryan to Ferguson Jenkins, many great pitchers threw more than 270 innings in multiple seasons\u2014which meant they tossed well in excess of 100 pitches a game. Yet the record shows that most of them, particularly at their career peak, were harder to hit in later innings than earlier in the game. Mazzone\u2019s top Braves pitchers averaged 200 to 250 innings a year and rarely missed games because of injuries. \u201cMy greatest satisfaction was the health of my staff,\u201d he said. \u201cWe gave them a chance to earn their money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even when Mazzone counted pitches, he was purposely erratic about the count, he gleefully admits. He wanted to teach his pitchers to work through fatigue without resorting to trying to muscle pitches by a batter. Far better to rely on good form and guile. \u201cHell, I used to cheat,\u201d he said, cackling. \u201cSmoltzy would come off the mound and say, \u2018I\u2019m a little tired\u2019 and I\u2019d say, \u2018Geez, that\u2019s strange\u2014you\u2019ve only got 60-something pitches.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Cox caught on: \u201cBobby Cox would ask me, \u2018Is that the real pitch count or is that fucking yours?!\u2019\u201d Cox, who had the fourth-highest win total in history as a manager, was not much more enamored of data. Because of him, Mazzone said, the Braves stadium was the last in the majors to install a digital screen showing the count and speed of pitches.<\/p>\n

Quants would counter that trying to return to Mazzone\u2019s era would be folly. Hitters have more sophisticated workout regimens, and the emphasis on swinging up on the ball to hit home runs has changed the game. To ask a pitcher to throw at less than maximum effort is to risk getting clobbered.<\/p>\n

But many successful pitchers have eschewed that ethos. In 2016, I watched Bartolo Colon pitch for the Mets at age 43, well past the point when most pitchers have retired. A portly fellow, he threw a fastball that was notably slow and more often traveled in the mid-80s. Yet he artfully varied speeds and hit his spots, and pitched nearly 200 innings and finished 15\u20138.<\/p>\n

Compared with today, pitchers were at a far greater disadvantage in the \u201990s and 2000s\u2014baseball\u2019s Frankenstein Era, when steroids were rampant among power hitters and home-run totals soared. Yet in 2000, the relatively diminutive Pedro Martinez (5 foot 11 and 170 pounds; known for his exquisite control) pitched 217 innings for the Red Sox, struck out 284 men, and posted a record of 18\u20136 with a microscopic 1.74 earned-run average. In the National League that same year, Maddux, then 34 and past his prime, pitched 249 innings and finished 19\u20139\u2014even though, Mazzone recalls, his fastball rarely edged past 90 miles an hour.<\/p>\n

If, in that most hostile era, the best pitchers could control the strike, today\u2019s pitchers have nothing to fear. \u201cHitters are bigger and stronger, but they make less contact than ever,\u201d Mazzone said. \u201cThat\u2019s good for pitchers!<\/p>\n

Mazzone\u2019s motor never stops. When he was with the Braves, he rocked back and forth on the bench. The more intense the game, the faster he rocked. As we sat in his study\u2014lined with uniforms, signed baseball photos, championship rings, and bats and balls\u2014and talked about recent pitching foolishness, his voice rose, and he rocked in his chair. He dismissed any suggestion that he was stuck in the past. He endorsed recent reforms intended to liven up the game that has slowed down dramatically in the sabermetrics era.<\/p>\n

He likes the pitch clock, which gives pitchers no more than 15 to 18 seconds between throws. Starters, he said, should adhere to a brisk pace. And he has made peace with the decision to start extra innings by placing a man on second base. \u201cIt adds strategy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But he\u2019s no optimist about the future of his beloved starting pitchers. From the majors to youth Pony League, a mania for speed predominates, as if everyone has purchased stock in radar-gun makers. \u201cI talk to youth leagues and warn them: Never talk about velocity to your kids,\u201d he said. \u201cThen I take questions, and it\u2019s all about speed.\u201d<\/p>\n

[Devin Gordon: Arms are flying off their hinges]<\/i><\/p>\n

When I interviewed Mazzone several years ago, he recounted how Maddux had once tried to explain to young Braves pitchers during spring training how old-fashioned craft could lead to fantastical riches. \u201cYou know why I am a millionaire? Because I can put my fastball wherever I want to,\u201d Maddux had said. \u201cDo you know why I own beachfront property in L.A.? Because I can change speeds. Okay, questions?\u201d<\/p>\n

I asked Mazzone: What would happen if Maddux gave that speech today? Mazzone scoffed. \u201cThey\u2019d nod,\u201d he said, \u201cand go back to throwing weighted baseballs at walls and trying to throw 100 miles per hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Article originally published at The Atlantic<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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