Pitching 3D: Intriguing Arms of the NL West

Pitching might be the most misunderstood part of the game, yet every play on the diamond begins with a pitcher delivering the baseball. How can something so fundamental to the game be so widely debated? The position is as old as the game itself, yet the evidence suggests that today's pitchers are evolving in a way that accelerates their eventual demise.

Welcome to a new series about pitching, with the aim to dig a bit deeper in understanding the intricacies of the craft. I take a three-pronged approach to pitcher evaluation, leaning on stats, stuff and mechanics in order to develop a fuller profile of a player. It's an appreciation of process versus outcome, as a pitcher's stuff produces the outcome of stats but pitching mechanics start the domino rally, setting the stage for stuff and command to work as intended.

The Pitching 3D series will begin with a romp through the league, division-by-division (starting with the NL West) so that we can become more acquainted. The stats speak for themselves, and in this series I will be zeroing in on those stats which might act as an indicator for further research into stuff and mechanics. For stuff, I utilize the invaluable resource at Brooks Baseball, which measures velocity, frequency, movement and even release points of every pitch that takes place in a big-league game. For mechanics, I will lean on my experience at the National Pitching Association, where I worked under Tom House as the director of the 3D motion capture system that formed the backbone of our research into pitching. I have worked as a coach, scout, analyst and researcher of the mound game for the past decade (for those interested in a deeper dive, House and I wrote a book on the matter), and my goal is to open the awareness of the audience to some of the lesser-appreciated aspects of pitching.

It's the mechanics piece that can be the most arcane, so this preseason will provide the opportunity for me to introduce the concepts of pitching mechanics one chunk at a time. I have created a Mechanics Report Card that gives pitchers a scouting grade on the 20-to-80 scale (where 50 is major-league average) for five distinct elements of pitching mechanics, as well as an overall grade for the delivery in its entirety. These six tenets will be covered at a rate of one per week, and this week we'll start at the top with the most fundamental aspect of pitching a baseball: balance.

Balance

Our first subject under the microscope is also the most fundamental of athletic concepts. Just about every sport appreciates balance, from the obvious (martial arts, surfing) to the not-so-obvious (bowling). We occasionally hear about hitters that are well-balanced yet the description is rarely applied to pitchers, who are instead expected to deliver 100 mph spheres from angles that are intended to make life difficult on opposing batters, whether or not such an approach is conducive to hitting targets. That's a long-winded way of saying that balance should be greatly valued with hurlers but often isn't, so it is one of the first things that I look for when evaluating whether a pitcher has athletic control over his own body.

There are two grades on the Mechanics Report Card that fall under the category of "stability," and balance is the first of those subjects. To put it simply, I look at the position of the player's head throughout the delivery in order to determine his balance. Ideally, his head should remain stable above the body throughout the motion, and there are three planes in which balance can fall off-track. The first direction – which is also the easiest to see from a standard television feed – runs side-to-side from first base to third base. A pitcher with an imbalance in this direction (the X-plane) will often exhibit a backwards lean at maximum leg lift (toward first base for a right-handed pitcher) or with a hunch-over the front side during their stride. Chris Sale presents an example of a pitcher who is hunched over during his stride, creating an imbalance in the X-plane (the blue line runs through his approximate center of mass; the red line runs through the center for his head; ideally, these lines will be right on top of one another).

The second direction is up-and-down, as the Y-plane refers to a pitcher's ability to keep the head stable in the vertical direction. Common techniques such as "drop and drive" have encouraged pitchers to artificially lower their balance, rather than allowing the head and center-of-mass to follow a natural progression that is consistent with the slope of the mound. In the following example, Clay Buchholz exhibits the Y-plane disparity of his center-of-mass (as denoted by the blue line) from his first movement to the stride portion of his delivery.

Finally, there's the Z-plane, which runs from second base to home plate. Pitchers with imbalance in this direction will often keep their weight shifted back during the stride phase or finish with a lean out in front as they near release point. It's common to see pitchers who utilize the "rock n' roll" method, in which they rock back toward second base before rolling forward into release point. A perfect example of this technique is offered by Trevor Bauer (the blue line represents his center-of-mass).

We'll talk more about these specifics in the mechanics section for each of the following pitchers.

And here are five pitchers from the NL West who carry particular intrigue into the 2016 fantasy season:

Patrick Corbin

Everyone in Arizona is talking about Zack Greinke, and he will obviously be the first Diamondbacks pitcher to get drafted in fantasy leagues this spring, but what he brings to the table is relatively well-known. Corbin, on the other hand, has a number of confounding factors which confuse the effort to peg his contributions for 2016.

Stats: Corbin pitched 85.0 innings in his return to the majors after missing the 2014 season recovering from Tommy John surgery, and his peripheral stats were even better than before he got hurt. In a half-season worth of pitching (16 starts), Corbin had a higher strikeout rate (21.9 percent) and lower walk rate (4.8 percent) than both of his two prior MLB seasons. The similarity between his "before" and "after" stats paints the false impression of a 3.50 ERA we can trust, but there are several caveats (sample size, the missed season, the busted UCL, etc.) to suggest otherwise. He will likely be on an innings limit this season, so his ability to help in the counting stats will be blunted compared to full-time pitchers.

Stuff: His velocity came all the way back to pre-TJS levels, averaging 93.0 mph when weighting his two- and four-seam fastballs on Brooks. One might expect Corbin to lay off the breaking balls in his first year back after major surgery, but the usage of his sweeping slider went up from 22.9 percent in 2013 to 28.9 percent last season. The results were excellent, as opposing batters hit .159 against the slider and the pitch accounted for 48 of his 78 strikeouts.

Mechanics: Corbin's balance loses stability in all three directions, though neither direction is especially egregious. His X-plane balance involves a hunch over the front side (toward first base) followed by a re-direct to the third-base side after the front foot comes back into contact with the ground (aka foot strike). He has some drop in his delivery that registers as slightly worse than average, and he often finishes out in front, harming his Z-plane. The end result is a below-average score in the balance category, though it does mark an improvement in the stability department when compared to his motion from before the surgery.

Jon Gray

Gray has been on the prospect radar for a few years, and though few evaluators doubt his raw ability, the big question is whether he can break the mold of pitchers before him and succeed at altitude. If the answer is "no," then is this a pitcher worthy of streaming for road games? Let's take a look.

Stats: It's tough for any pitcher to succeed at altitude, as the thin air takes some of the bite off a pitcher's secondaries and batters are greatly rewarded for contact. My feeling was that Gray had all of the tools necessary for success, but that his skill-set would be marginalized in Coors Field. Through the first 12 starts of his career, the results have been somewhat predictable (regardless of sample size caveats).

• Home: 8.27 ERA, 15 K, 6 UIBB and 3 HR in 20.2 IP
  
• Road: 2.70 ERA, 25 K, 6 UIBB and 1 HR in 20.0 IP

Mechanics: Gray used to be a picture of stability, earning a 65-grade for his balance with the upshot to crack the 70-barrier on the 20-80 scouting scale if he continued to make improvements. However, his balance went backwards last season, adding a heavy dose of rock n' roll to dent his Z-plane balance and exaggerating the drop in his delivery to harm the Y-plane. The net result is still above average, but what was once his greatest mechanical asset has quickly become an area that needs to be addressed in order for him to hit ceiling.

Alex Wood

I could go with Kershaw here, but there's no intrigue with him. Kersh is the best in the game, bar none, and should be drafted as such. To me, the real interest starts after Kershaw has taken his turn in the rotation. Wood's intrigue has been in serious flux over the past couple of weeks, as each starting pitcher signed by the Dodgers bumps him further down the rotation. The signing of Kenta Maeda all but punched Wood's ticket to the bullpen to start the year, but pitcher attrition being what it is, there is still a good chance that he gets some significant playing time this season.

Stats: Wood is coming off his most difficult season statistically. His K-rate cratered from the 24.2-percent frequency of his first two seasons to last year's modest rate of 17.4 percent. The walks and homers allowed were in line with the previous season, but the lack of strikeouts made him more vulnerable to balls in play, resulting in a 3.84 ERA that was more than 0.70 points higher than the other two seasons of his career.

Stuff: Wood has suffered a precipitous loss of velocity over the past few years, averaging 92.5 mph on the heat in 2013 but bringing it at just 89.8 mph last season. Part of that is his transition to starting more games, as it's expected for pitchers to throw harder in shorter stints, but Wood has crossed over into the sub-90 mph realm where pitch-speed is no longer an asset, no matter that he's a southpaw.

Mechanics: Wood has some of the worst balance in the game (he looks like Neo dodging bullets in the Matrix), and it's somewhat miraculous that he hits catcher targets as well as he does, as most pitchers with such weak balance carry erratic release points as a direct result of the unwieldy approach. Wood's walk rates have been better than average, and though some pitchers have a distinct disparity between control (throwing strikes) and command (hitting targets), the anecdotal evidence suggests that Wood had the command to back up his impressive showing in the walks department. Wood actually represents the second pitcher on this list with solid walk rates despite poor balance, a factor which makes them especially intriguing, though the general connection involves pitchers with poor balance who have high walk rates and erratic release points.

Andrew Cashner

Cashner's impressive combination of velocity, movement and mechanical stability had me driving his bandwagon at this time last season, but his 2015 campaign was a stream of disappointment that further cemented his status as enemy of the Friar faithful, given what the Padres gave up to acquire him (Anthony Rizzo).

Stats: Cashner had posted an alarmingly-low K count in 2013 and 2014, so his jump of two percentage points in strikeout rate was a nice development, though his results were otherwise unsightly. As if the 4.34 ERA wasn't bad enough (an ERA+ of 84), Cashner gave up an unreal count of unearned runs, such that his average runs allowed equaled 5.41 per nine innings.

Stuff: Cashner's velocity was fine last season (in fact it was up a hair from 2014), averaging 95.6 mph when weighting his four-seamers and two-seamers. The issue was pitch command and a slight lack of movement, and the combination of muted break and lesser execution put more of an onus on the fact that he lacks a plus breaking ball. His fastball is key to success, so when that pitch is off his whole approach becomes tainted.

Mechanics: Cashner has exceptional balance, an attribute that is exceedingly rare among today's breed of power pitchers. It is tougher to maintain stability at high intensity and many pitchers will sell out balance in the name of velocity, but Cashner has no such issue. His balance is very strong in all three planes and hits a 70-grade at peak. That balance was seemingly uncompromised last season, putting the onus of his command issues on mechanical timing and repetition (which we'll get to in our fifth piece).

Johnny Cueto

The Giants have become one of the game's big spenders, finishing as one of the four clubs whose payrolls were so large as to clear the luxury tax threshold, and they went back to the bank to address their rotation this offseason with the signings of Jeff Samardzija and Cueto.

Stats: Cueto's struggles down the stretch last season are well-known, as he had a very difficult transition to the American League. He gets to head back to the NL after signing with the Giants, and though his peripherals have never supported his ERA, the fact that Cueto brings several looks to the table and will be pitching in the cavernous confines of AT&T Park could conspire to let his surprisingly-stingy run prevention make another appearance.

Stuff: The right-hander's velocity has maintained a plus standing for the past six years, as his 93.2 mph average of 2015 is just a rounding error away from his pitch-speed of 2009. The cut fastball became a major part of his repertoire three years ago, and over the past few seasons he has been mixing his fastball, cutter and changeup to keep opposing batters off-balance. Cueto's success has more to do with subtle movement and deception than overpowering raw stuff.

Mechanics: Cueto is widely known for his twist into maximum leg lift, which involves a 180-degree rotation at the hips (reminiscent of Luis Tiant) that has him facing the center field bleachers by the time that he fully executes the technique. He is also known for his myriad timing patters, sometimes adding a head-fake along with a pause at the top of his motion, other times ditching the Tiant-twist when pitching from the stretch and also showing a willingness to execute a quick-pitch at any time – no twist, no leg lift, just a quick move to throw the baseball. He has been able to repeat these disparate timing patterns with ease in the past, but it's possible that the approach was too complicated and made it tougher for him to find his rhythm when he was off his game.

Next week, we'll turn our attention to the AL West and the mechanical element of posture. Stay tuned.