My Addition to the Science of Pitching
By Vincent DiGeronimo
TSBC was this past week, and believe me when I say that the entire SAGA e-board is thoroughly grateful for your participation. We saw many interesting panels and loved the conference, and we hope you enjoyed the event as well.
I thought I would take the time during this editorial to make an addition to one of the panels. In the Science of Pitching, one of the topics discussed was building a dream repertoire if I were a pitcher. After some research, this is what I came up with.
I would have a Mike Mussina fastball. It was fast enough, had amazing spin, and was very effective against batters. I would effectively throw this for a strike and it would lead to all of my off speed pitches being effective.
Blake Treinen sinker. Look it up. It is very fast, has a lot of downward movement, and is something that offsets the cutter and is very hard to hit.
Aroldis Chapman slider. If I had these two previous pitches, the slider would be a perfect offspeed that I can paint the edges of the strike zone with. In contrast with the two high velocity pitches, this is a perfect off speed pitch that has been and always will be effective.
As a bonus, if we were to give my dream repertoire an attitude to go with it, I would pitch like Max Scherzer from a couple of years ago. He was gritty, pitched with tons of intensity, and made the batter fear him.
Three pitches is a small repertoire but it would be effective. My opinion will always be favorable towards the more recent players, but I think this repertoire would be very hard to stop. This is a perfect combination of all my favorite things about pitching and I think this would have been an interesting addition to the panel.