Russ Ortiz's Mechanics Improvement Explained

Carlos Gomez has another analysis of a Giants' pitcher's mechanics up again - if you will recall, he covered Matt Cain's and Tim Lincecum's mechanics, in full, just a little while ago - and this time he tackles Russ Ortiz, and while not fully, it is, more importantly, about the different between last year and this year.

It is pretty cool, Carlos points out the exact different thing that Ortiz is not doing: he is breaking his hands earlier. Now, I have no idea what that means and even after he explains it all, I had no idea, but watching the video over and over again, I finally saw what he meant: his pitching arm cocks much faster last year and, while I took physics I am not totally sure what exactly happens, but it appears that the momentum he creates with his arm cock is dissipated by breaking it earlier, and thus he loses that additional velocity and apparently that caused his cut fastball not to cut anymore, or at least not enough to fool major league hitters. As Carlos notes, his throwing motion "this year seems like it's uninterrupted", which I suppose means that the throwing motion builds up the momentum imparted to the pitched ball, rather than just going along for the ride and losing the momentum that the arm can deliver.

But I swear, except for that one little detail, I cannot tell the difference between the two videos. It is incredible to me that just one little detail can be so important to a pitcher. It makes Lincecum's stuff all the more wonderous that he can duplicate that throwing motion over and over again, as even one little detail like this take something away from your velocity as a pitcher. Somebody should give Carlos a job in the professional baseball, this is great stuff, and, you know, it could have been worth, oh, about $22M to the D-backs if they had Carlos around.

I would also note, for long-suffering Giants fans who have a love/hate relationship with Ortiz that if you look at the two videos, Ortiz clearly - though he was never slim - lost a lot of weight between the two videos. I realize that the camera angle might be different and makes Russ looks bigger in the Arizona video, but what I'm referring to is basically how his clothes hang on him, it seems more puffy in the Arizona video than the Giants video.