Blessing you today with 30 seconds of Greg Maddux being an absolute wizard on the mound this tuesday afternoon. What I loved about this clip was the comment that it came along with, “This would dominate in any era!!” There’s this notion that certain players wouldn’t thrive as much if they played in different eras of their sport. Are there certain guys that would struggle playing in today’s baseball environment than in the 90’s? Absolutely! With that being said I do think it’s a little unfair to put players in that scenario and any player who earned their way deserves recognition. There is one statement that will always hold true despite the playing in different eras debate. The great players would have been able to adjust and dominate just the same, no matter the time they were playing in. Greg Maddux is one of those guys.
There’s a lot to break down in the video and Maddux’s style of pitching is something that is not seen as much in MLB today. Maddux was known for not being a very high velocity guy, but a pitcher who can spot up on a dime. As you can see from the video, the catcher barely moves his glove for any of the pitches that Maddux throws. I’m positive that he could do it blindfolded, that’s just how special of a pitcher he was. He was in a class all by himself when it came to that too close to take strike three pitch. As a result of this many strikeouts we see in the video come via the strikeout looking. Either his pitches were in the perfect spot for a borderline strike or his pitch came in as a ball and crossed the plate as a strike, thus freezing the batter. As beautiful and entertaining as the sword strikeouts we see today are, the backwards K is just as satisfying. Maddux has always been an unbelievably efficient pitcher, throwing a ton of strikes, because of hat he would finish games with a little over 100 pitches. Something like that is very rare these days, there are few pitchers who have the ability to go full games with that low of a pitch count.
Maddux was the type of pitcher that loved to steal strikes from from hitters, if they were going to give him a free one, he was more than willing to take it. His goal was to steal six or seven strikes a game, thus putting more pressure on the hitter and lowering their chances of getting a hit. He fully utilized the movement of his pitches and realized that he didn’t need a menacing 98 mph fastball. What he focused on was the last 10 feet of his balls movement. To put it into perspective, if a pitcher is throwing 90 mph, the hitter has 125 milliseconds to try and determine the pitch type, whether they want to swing and to start their swing. Yes, the harder a pitcher is throwing, the less time they will have to decide to swing. This results in many swing and misses in today’s game because guys are throwing at such high velocity with a ton of movement. Going back to what Maddux focuses on, the last 10 feet of movement, minus the 5 feet for striding, leaves about 55 feet for a batter to decide if they want to swing. Say the ball looks like a ball for 45 feet of that, the batter is more inclined to lay off the pitch and in the last 10 feet as the ball moves back in the strike zone it already becomes too late for them to decide to swing, thus resulting in a looking strike. Sorry, doing some math today.
Now look at the video of Jordan Hicks, different styles of attacking the hitter, but the end result is the same. Many swing and miss strikeouts start with pitches that look like a strike coming in and at the last moment the ball is in a completely different spot. Remember how hard it was to recognize a 90 mph pitch, Hicks throws the ball over 100 mph with insane movement. Now the hitter has even less time to decide if they want to swing or not and as soon as they decide that the pitch is going to be a strike, the ball has moved out of the strike zone. This is a main reason why you get some goofy looking swings against guys like Jordan Hicks, and shows you just how hard hitting a baseball is. Will a pitcher who throws low 90s have a lot of success in today’s game? Probably, that’s why many pitchers in the MLB are throwing 95 and up. If you are going to get away with throwing a low velocity, you better have Godly accuracy like Maddux and the movement/deception to go with it. When you combine velocity and movement like Jordan Hicks you create pitchers who become extremely hard to hit.
The Washed Up Athlete 