Beyond effectiveness: Exploring how the ‘hidden’ effect of pitchers influences

Through my years covering baseball, I have had the great fortune of growing up alongside great insiders within the game. One of them is the prestigious pitching coach Javier Gálvez, with whom a close working relationship has united me for several seasons.

Coincidentally, last night we were talking about pitching. Or, to put it better, I listened to Professor Gálvez talk about one of the most basic principles and sometimes undervalued by pitchers: The grip of the ball. And, obviously, next to the grip of the ball, we jump to debate about the use of the seams, how pitchers can improve their repertoire and why throwing “strike”, as Gálvez says, can be considered as another pitching in baseball.

Of course, we are talking about great pitchers from various eras, especially those years in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when Gálvez had the responsibility of preparing and guiding several stellar pitchers in our National Series. José Ibar, Raúl Valdés, Lemay de la Rosa, Yuliesky González, Jonder Martínez, the, unfortunately, disappeared Yadier Pedroso and Miguel Alfredo González, led part of the talk, although we also reached Yusdel Tuero, José Ángel García and Ariel Miranda, other pitchers who They were also prepared by Gálvez and the group of coaches of the Vaqueros del Habana.

For almost an hour, we talked about command, quality strike, focus and physical capacity, and even how a scouting report should go beyond the tight “objectivity” of a digit that symbolizes (or represents) a certain launch or zone. However, in such a long and unmissable talk, there was a point where I had to open up my database and bring up some interesting numbers on pitching dominance trends.

Now, more than 17 hours later, as I write this piece, it is important to remember that one of the pitchers mentioned was Erlys Casanova from Pinar del Río. And do you know what the reason was? Well, in essence, it has also been the reason for this piece, as Casanova extended his record to 6-1 this afternoon, throwing seven zeroes with six strikeouts to the Santiago de Cuba Wasps.