John Smoltz says his Cardinals teammates told him he was tipping his pitches:
Speaking today on the Dan Patrick radio show, a day after his surprisingly effective start for the St. Louis Cardinals, former Red Sox pitcher John Smoltz said his new Cardinals teammates told him during warmups that he was tipping his pitches and helped him correct the problem. Smoltz said fellow pitcher Chris Carpenter was the first one to notice.
“If I’ve been tipping them in my bullpen, I’ve been tipping them on the mound.”
The question now is, did the Red Sox miss this? If so, they gave him away for nothing.
Update: According to the comments, telling a pitcher he’s tipping is standard operating procedure for the Cardinals when they make a mid-year acquisition.
That would seem to fit with his solid Boston peripherals (3.67 K/BB: stuff’s still good) but absurd BABIP (.386: they know what’s coming).
I think I’m having deja vu all over again…
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – Feb 21, 2008
Wellemeyer and Pineiro, both in-season additions to the Cardinals’ staff last year, said they improved once they realized they were tipping pitches.
USA Today – Aug 20, 2007
Pitching coach Dave Duncan detected that Pineiro was tipping his pitches in his first Cardinals start, … “He had a sensational game,” La Russa said.
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – NewsBank – Aug 3, 2007
Manager Tony La Russa and pitching coach Dave Duncan have insisted repeatedly that Maroth is tipping pitches. But Wednesday night Maroth said he had no idea …
Hartford Courant – ProQuest Archiver – Oct 22, 2006
He said the Cardinals would rally around [Jeff Weaver]. … Duncan thought he was tipping his pitches.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – AccessMyLibrary.com – Oct 22, 2006
But, hoping that Duncan and Reyes had worked out the pitch-tipping problem, La Russa decided against that change. “We decided to challenge Anthony…
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service – AccessMyLibrary.com – Oct 18, 2004
The Cardinals didn’t merely lose, 6-5, to the Houston Astros in Game 4 of the … La Russa and Duncan believed Marquis was tipping his pitches
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – NewsBank – Jul 19, 2001
Matthews said he didn’t think he was tipping his pitches, but Cardinals pitching coach Dave Duncan said he could call from the dugout every pitch Matthews …
Dallas Morning News – NewsBank – Jul 17, 1992
The reason Stewart abandoned the windup was because Duncan feared he was tipping his pitches.
So do you think this is a crutch the Cardinals use to give confidence to a new pitcher having a bad year? Or do the Cardinals look for this before acquiring a pitcher?
LaDuncan can’t possibly have a lock on detecting pitch tipping. They try to convert wayward pitchers to their approach, then I think they do some confidence boosting. Part of that might be using “pitch-tipping” as a kind of excuse to explain past failures. Then, once “fixed,” the pitcher has a reason to believe that the next time he pitches, the results will be better.
All I know is as soon as Smoltz was acquired, people were placing bets as to when LaDunc would cite pitch-tipping.