Zito a Changed Pitcher?

There is a nice article by Mychael Urban about Zito's return on CSNBayArea.com.  It noted one major change that Zito made while out on the DL:  dropping the slider from his repertoire.  This is significant, he notes, because Zito added this pitch after his Cy Young season, as that is what Zito is about, trying to improve himself, constantly.  It was bad because the slider has to be thrown from another arm slot and, so the thinking goes, throws Zito out of his rhythm when he throws his signature pitch:  his 12-to-6 curveball, which, ideally, has to be thrown from the overhead position, to have the greatest effect.

Urbs said that this curve is back in spades, and that is what made Zito successful previously, the inability of hitters to distinguish his curveball from his fastball, which while slow, is like 100 MPH when compared to his curveball.

Why So Long?

This for me brings up a lot of questions.  This is all very reasonable thinking that makes a lot of sense, but why did it take 9 years for someone to make this discovery?  I love Rags, but shouldn't he have been able to spot this?  Tidrow?  Any of the other pitching experts we have?  The article did mention a number of mechanical flaws that were fixed as well, so I assume they had a hand in those, but still, given how much this all makes sense, why wasn't this figured out sooner?

I can see why he might have finally figured this out during this period.  He's in baseball mode now (rather than off-season mode) but was unable to do anything baseball related while he's recuperating from his injury.  He's always been a thinker and I imagine he thought a lot about baseball and himself while he was down.  Sometimes epiphany finally comes when you least expect it.

And I can see why the Giants might not have noticed it initially.  This is something that happened long ago, after his Cy Young year with the A's, that's like a generation ago in baseball years.  But given his struggles with locating pitches while he's been with the Giants, one would have thought somebody would have noticed something that seems so elemental, as it is explained in the article, at some point in the prior four seasons.

Where's the MPH?

In addition, while this is all and good, Zito has lost another couple of MPH from his fastball again.  He was not able to pitch well like that, as his first two seasons demonstrated.  Once he got his fastball velocity back up to the 87 MPH level, then he's been pretty good (and he has been the past two seasons plus;  low 4 ERA plus lots of innings pitched is worth a lot, though obviously not as much as we are paying him).

The interview with him noted that he got stronger as he got to the 5th inning, so perhaps it is just a matter of him really being still in spring training mode and building strength in his arm.   That rings true with me, I imagine that he could not do anything to keep his legs in shape in the early parts of his DL since he had to keep pressure off his feet while recovering from his injury.  Still, most reports I've seen says that he only got to mid-80's "heat", and as I noted, he's never been effective while working in that range of velocity.

And, OK, he did have this problem with the slider the past couple of years too, so that is something different from the mid-80's Zito we saw in 2007 and 2008.

Encouraging, But Baby Steps: Won't Get Fooled Again

Still, in the final analysis, this is very encouraging news.  If getting rid of the slider helps him be more consistent with his ability to locate his other pitches for strikes, that has to be good, as his problem before was all the inconvenient walks.  And they invariably often scored.

And he did very well in his first start, but I think this will be a start to start acceptance that this is something that is real and not another soundbite that gives encouragement to the fans but ultimately fails us.  As it has many times before, like last season, when he started out great, but petered out by the end of the season.

I'm hopeful but cautious to believe that this time he finally figured it all out.  The article makes a lot of sense about how it affected his pitching to his detriment.  If he can bring low-to-mid 3 ERA performance to us, imagine what a 6-man rotation we would have, where every pitcher is capable of giving us a low-to-mid 3 ERA performance - or better  for some - from 1 to 6.  Not only would our starters be fresher at the end of the season, this has to extend their careers a little, I would think, just from the lack of extra work and stress on their arms.

Even a return to his 2009-2010 form would still be good, as that would be enough that he could pitch and there would not be that big a drop-off in performance, but when there is an off-day, he would be the one who is skipped in that run through the rotation.  Though that could be anybody in the rotation should the GIants decided that a starter needs a one start break to freshen up.   I am still worried about the long-term effects of all the extra pitches they threw last season due to the playoffs, hence my hope that the Giants go with a 6-man rotation.  Perhaps the Royals doing it will give them the confidence to go with it.  Well, that and a big lead over the rest of the NL, we still have to wait for Sanchez to get off the DL before a 6-man rotation would be doable.