Roch: Pitching In

[weams]

Quote

Especially important this week was the acceptance and execution of a message that Hyde and pitching coach Doug Brocail have preached all season. Their pitchers have got to work inside, which in turn gives them more options to put away hitters during an at-bat.

The reluctance or inability to do so has exposed the staff to tremendous beatings. But Dylan Bundy retired 16 of 17 batters after Gary Sanchez’s three-run homer in the first inning and said afterward that he pitched inside “a little bit more than I have in the past.”

“They lean out over the plate all the time,” Bundy said, “and when you’re making quality pitches and they’re getting homers and singles and doubles off them, you’ve got to get them off the plate with a purpose.”

...

“You have to have the desire to pitch in,” he said. “I get questioned on it a lot. Not only my buddies and people around baseball, but even our manager. Why don’t we pitch in? Well, here’s the report. Read it. It’s pound in, pound in, pound in, pound in.

“We had a meeting where Brandon sat the guys down and he says, ‘Guys, if you don’t pound in you’re going to get killed here.’ And that night they went out and we did not pound in. We probably have the most behind-in-counts of any pitching staff I’ve ever seen. You talk about pitching in, you talk about sequencing. When you’re 2-0 you can’t sequence. When you’re 3-1 you can’t sequence. When you’re 2-0 and you’re 3-1 and you go inside, you add another ball.

“What I like is first pitch, you get a strike, go in. You get even, go in. And we do not pitch in. You’ve got to have catchers who want to call in, you have to have a guy on the mound that knows that pitching in buys you real estate. And when you have a young staff, they’ve got to trust that their stuff is good enough to get in.

“We talk about buying real estate constantly and nobody does it, and it absolutely blows my mind that you want to go out and you want to pitch to one side of the plate and continue to get hit like we get hit, but you’re not doing anything about it. It’s disappointing more so than you can imagine.”

Brocail is able to provide a walking, talking example to his pitchers.

“I look back over my career and go, ‘OK, what made me good?’” he said. “My first three years I didn’t pitch in, learned how to pitch in and things got a lot easier. And when you talk to other guys that went through the same thing, ‘Man, I had struggles until I learned how to pitch in. I had struggles until I learned how to pitch up and change eye levels.’

“You don’t have to have the best stuff, you just have to know and have an idea what you’re doing with the baseball and where you’re going with it and get it there. Or get it near there.”

...

“So many times we set up down and away and we make a mistake in the strike zone belt-in and next thing you know we have a guy on second and then we have a pull guy up and they don’t realize that you can still pitch in, but in is now off the plate in instead of in the strike zone in,” Brocail said.

“I’d like to be able to snap my fingers and have it all change overnight. As much as we talk about it, as much as we practice it, we just do not do it. It’s so frustrating

https://www.masnsports.com/school-of-roch/2019/08/brocail-on-pitching-inside-and-fixing-means.html

[LA2]

Wow, there's more in that one interview with Brocail than the whole last decade of O's pitching coaches combined. Not just about pitching in, but long-term goals, off-season routines, Means' future in the rebuild, and more. Very impressed. Sounds very frustrated, but determined to get through to the young pitchers' minds.

[weams]

A lot to digest

[tntoriole]

Good stuff.  I presume Adley, Grayson, DL, etc. will get the memo.

[Frobby]

Brocail sounds a little frustrated.    I think he’s the most vulnerable of our coaches to being replaced.  It’s a lousy staff, but 5.91 ERA?

[interloper]

1 hour ago, LA2 said:

Wow, there's more in that one interview with Brocail than the whole last decade of O's pitching coaches combined. Not just about pitching in, but long-term goals, off-season routines, Means' future in the rebuild, and more. Very impressed. No doubt he is frustrated and is determined to get through to the young pitchers' minds.

I think he's great. He'll give you some quotes! Not entirely sure if he's a great coach, but they seem to like him.

With these quotes, he's pretty much saying "well I'm coaching but they ain't listening". Which is probably true in some respects, but they probably all just aren't talented enough to pitch inside. That's not an easy thing to do. I recall the same spiel from Mazzone about pitching low and away. He was also frustrated. But more of a jerk than Brocail. 

[UpstateNYfan]

Is there anything new here?? First pitch strike, use all 17 inches of the plate not only the outside 8.5. Pound them in and in. Hasn't Palmer preached it for decades. You can't be afraid of hitting batters. It seems sometimes pitchers are trying to go inside and leave it in the middle. It's really Pitching 101 for the professional. Ask Don Drysdale!!

[esmd]

2 hours ago, LA2 said:

Wow, there's more in that one interview with Brocail than the whole last decade of O's pitching coaches combined. Not just about pitching in, but long-term goals, off-season routines, Means' future in the rebuild, and more. Very impressed. No doubt he is frustrated and is determined to get through to the young pitchers' minds.

Wow is right!  That sounded to me like an indictment of not only some on the pitching staff, but also the catchers.  

[mdbdotcom]

6 minutes ago, esmd said:

Wow is right!  That sounded to me like an indictment of not only some on the pitching staff, but also the catchers.  

He didn't discuss why he hasn't been able to fix any of it in more than 2/3 of a season. Sounds like a guy making excuses for coaching a pitching staff that produces exceptionally bad results..

[Philip]

 I don’t under stand pitching sequencing very well? Why is it important to start with a fastball? Especially when they are almost always expecting fastball? And especially when the fastball isn’t your best pitch? 

What is the fundamental problem with using an off-speed pitch as your first pitch?

[Going Underground]

22 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Brocail sounds a little frustrated.    I think he’s the most vulnerable of our coaches to being replaced.  It’s a lousy staff, but 5.91 ERA?

And very few improvements from the guys from last year. Hess,Castro ,Bleier.. Straily imploded when he was here. i can see some regression but most have gotten worse. 

[mdbdotcom]

8 minutes ago, Going Underground said:

And very few improvements from the guys from last year. Hess,Castro ,Bleier.. Straily imploded when he was here. i can see some regression but most have gotten worse. 

Cashner pitched well under Brocail, then went to Boston and sucked eggs. Maybe the other pitchers aren't as coachable or haven't bought in to what he's selling.

[Oriole1940]

The oldtimers had no problem backing hitters off the plate or worse, but since political correctness has taken over, if they look crosseyed at the batter, they  get a warning.    The radio announcers back then would  say something like. man he stuck it in his ear on that pitch.   And of course. if the hitter was real good as many were, they would not be intimidated by the high inside pitch, and would hit the next pitch out of the park.  All of that drama has long since been taken out of the game of baseball.  No comparison.  

[Going Underground]

27 minutes ago, RZNJ said:

How many pitching coaches have we been through? Brocail sounds like a decent coach and pretty good guy.  The light bulb goes on at different times for each player.  It's not the coaching. It's the players.  How many pitchers on this staff have actually had success in AAA?   

I think he should get another year but reading this gives me some pause. Orioles are second to last in strikeouts. See next year and hopefully with Cobb back and a few better pitchers on the staff maybe better results. 

Perhaps the most troubling statistic from Brocail’s time in Texas is how many batters his staff struck out. In each of his three seasons, the Rangers ranked last in the MLB in strikeouts per nine innings. That included a 2017 mark of 6.9. The trend in baseball is moving quickly towards more strikeouts; the MLB average last season was 8.48. That number has rapidly increased. It is concerning that Brocail’s pitchers have not followed that trend.

he Dallas media did not look on Brocail’s tenure favorably. When writing about the Rangers’ decision to move on from Brocail in November, Dallas Morning News’ reporter Evan Grant saidthat “he was brought in to help implement then-manager Jeff Banister’s determination to pitch more inside and with an edge. Though the Rangers won the AL West in 2016, the pitching performance has, statistically-speaking, been an abject failure over the last three seasons.” Grant cites the fact that those poor numbers were posted despite having Cole Hamels and Yu Darvishon the roster for much of his tenure.

https://www.camdenchat.com/2019/1/18/18187490/doug-brocail-pitching-coach-baltimore-orioles-mlb-rangers

[interloper]

18 minutes ago, Oriole1940 said:

The oldtimers had no problem backing hitters off the plate or worse, but since political correctness has taken over, if they look crosseyed at the batter, they  get a warning.    The radio announcers back then would  say something like. man he stuck it in his ear on that pitch.   And of course. if the hitter was real good as many were, they would not be intimidated by the high inside pitch, and would hit the next pitch out of the park.  All of that drama has long since been taken out of the game of baseball.  No comparison.