It’s a bright day for Yankees pitching as Mel Stottlemyre resigns. Mel never saw a strikeout pitcher he liked. His philosophy was to induce ground balls. Not the kind of pitcher you want on the mound with the poor Yankees defense behind him. Maybe Joe Girardi will stick with the team as the new pitching coach.
Have there been other pitching coaches who were former catchers, rather than former pitchers? It strikes me as a great idea, but off the top of my head I can’t think of anybody who has tried this.
Dave Duncan.
ah, yes. Thanks David.
I would love it if Girardi stuck around as pitching coach. I don’t know if the Boss would go for it. Mazzone’s on the market, I’ve heard.
If Mazzone goes anywhere it’ll be to join his best friend, Sam Perlozzo.
http://www.times-news.com/articles/2004/12/02/sections/regional_sports/sports61.txt
“A successful manager in the minor leagues, Mazzone says he has no aspirations to manage in the big leagues.
“No way,” he said. “My only other aspiration is to be Sam’s pitching coach. After that, we’ll be done.”
The time for Perlozzo, who has interviewed for the Seattle Mariners job as well as the Orioles’ position twice, to manage in the big leagues is drawing near, according to Mazzone.
“It’s going to happen,” he said. “There is no doubt in my mind or the minds of anybody in the big leagues. Sam is going to be a manager, and a (darn) good one at that. And like I said, I’ll be his pitching coach, and after that? We’ll be done.”
Assuming that Mel wanted to induce ground balls on this
or any team, would this also be considered bad if you’re
just talking about a late inning pitcher or closer? After
the closer gets lots of so’s, which we all like, there are
other factors. If you have a closer, you’d much rather
have a high # of GO’s vs AO’s. I look down the list at the
closers’ GO/AO. Sometimes you see one who looked
good for a year or 2, but whose mechanics caused him
to be injured after all his flashy strike outs, along with
a higher ratio of AO’s. It has been often said that Mel &
Joe encouraged Mariano to go for wimpy ground balls
over SO’s. Even though Mo gets a lot of SO’s and did
so this year, not only is he a great enough athlete
that he often picks up these ground balls himself (as
did Wang this year), but Mel felt it would extend Mar-
iano’s career. Even though he’s had his share of time
on the DL, so far he’s had 11 straight years in the
pressure cooker. I am aware of the many pitching
problems on Mel’s team–most of them were people
you wouldn’t want on your team. Mel wasn’t perfect,
but how do you know what other influences were going on with that pitching staff? The people in Tampa
have more authority (although less knowledge) than
the people in New York, and they tried to screw up
everything they possibly could, esp. the pitching. I
also read that Mike Scioscia would like Frankie Rod-
riguez to pitch “more efficiently, not trying so much
for the strike-out.” This also came to mind in my
question to you about the strike out issue. Mike S.
is generally seen as quite smart, and here he is not
wanting FRod to go so much for his violent SO’s. Just
thought I’d mention it.
You can strike out batters and still be efficient. See Greg Maddux during the 1990’s. The problem with Mel is that it’s better to get ground outs than strike outs, and that’s wrong. Balls in play turn into men on base about 30% of the time. That percentage is close to 0 for strikeouts.
I agree with you that strike outs are efficient. I’m just
saying that going for that seems to work out for very
few pitchers, for physical reasons, be it blisters, arms,
shoulders, elbows, knees, or backs. And, in late inning
relief, if the hits you allow are more AO’s instead of
GO’s, you’re more likely to blow the game. Do you know
if the Tampa people felt ground outs were better as well,
or was it just Mel? Just wondering.