Book Review: Dick Bosman on Pitching

One of the joys I have in reading biographies of players and coaches is seeing where current ideas and philosophies originated.  Sid Hudson is a name I did not know and, yet, he has a major influence on modern baseball.  Learning who he was and his impact was one of the many kernels of fascinating knowledge that is held within Dick Bosman on Pitching, an autobiography with a bit of help from Ted Leavengood.  It is a remarkable book that not only informs the reader about Bosman's life as a professional pitcher and coach, but also important ideas and approaches that some think are new but are really decades in the making.  For instance, Sid Hudson's push on groundball inducing pitchers.

Pitching is an element of baseball that has struggled emerging from alchemy to actual data science implementation.  You still hear wild hypotheses with little support, such as the dreaded inverted W or emphasis on fatigue throwing in practice.  However, you do find threads of actual data science implementation over the decades.  You, of course, have your earliest attempts with box scores in the 1800s and notions that guys like Branch Rickey or Paul Richards had.  Similarly, you have guys like Sid Hudson with his personal knowledge of utilizing pitch to contact groundball pitchers.

Dick Bosman, a pupil of Sid Hudson, continued on down the path of groundball inducing pitchers, which was seen during his days in Baltimore as a pitching coach in the early 1990s.  It is funny how memory works because I remember him vividly while growing up with the Orioles.  His words largely impacted me on how I pitched.  I developed a nasty two seamer and I had a throw and forget mentality to pitching.  It is fascinating to me, years before the Moneyball groundball mantra, that I was impacted by a groundball guru in Dick Bosman who contracted the idea from Sid Hudson who probably got the idea from someone else.  Yet, this is still alchemy.  Ideas.  Not well tested ideas.  Notions with little desire to push beyond that.  The key was to them that this approach reduced home runs, reduced pitches per innings, and extended starts.  The Athletics (and others) later found this all to be true, mathematically.  Bosman et al. knew it to be true anecdotally.

Where Bosman crossed over into that data science implementation world was his creation of the side step motion to counter the rampant base running that existed in the 1980s.  He found that any catcher worth their salt had a pop time of two seconds or less (which is well evidenced with Statcast now).  He also discovered that good baserunners will get to second base in about 3.5 seconds if they get a decent lead and jump.  Therefore, Bosman realized that as a pitching coach his best way to limit the impact of baserunners was to develop an approach that would get the pitcher from his hand break to the ball into the catcher's glove within 1.7 seconds to have a decent shot at getting the baserunner out.

Did you just twitch?  Yes, this is an idea that Buck Showalter pounds and pounds and pounds with his pitchers.  It is something that hurt Jake Arrieta before he went to the Cubs and they did away with the time to plate ideology.  It is something that hurt Zach Davies before he went to the Brewers and they did away with the extreme use of the idea.  This may make you think Bosman maybe halfway hit on something.  However, Bosman also notes that a side step should not greatly reduce velocity or effectiveness.  You have to work with the pitcher and take him where he is comfortable.

Now, I think perhaps Bosman might well tell you he would prefer not to have a pitcher with Arrieta's mechanics, but I think he would also say that you need to find a way to make him as productive as possible.  He remarks about Roger Pavlik, who he describes as someone with mechanics similar to Arrieta but worse.  Bosman tried to get him to alter his mechanics, but Pavlik resisted.  This led Bosman to do what he could to put Pavlik in the best position possible given the opportunity.


One more tidbit (there are so many to choose from) was about Ivan Rodriguez.  Bosman describes some of the difficulties he faced as a pitching coach and sometimes how the players could impact what you were trying to do.  Even though he was deadset to kill the running game, he found that Rodriguez was too focused on that element of the game.  When runners were on first base, Rodriguez would call for balls away to get him in a better position to throw out the runner.  It led to hitters being able to anticipate the ball.  Rodriguez kept doing this, so Bosman had to instruct his pitchers to take control of pitch calling and shake off Rodriguez in those circumstances.


Bosman now is a minor league instructor with the Rays.  His knowledge over the years still works very well within the heavy data science approach of the Rays.  The book is fairly fascinating and I suggest spending some time with it.

You should consider going to the Barnes and Noble in DC on April 14th to meet him.

Please join us in welcoming Ted Leavengood and Dick Bosman to sign copies of Dick Bosman on Pitching: Lessons from the Life of a Major League Ballplayer and Pitching Coach from 2 to 4pm on Saturday, April 14th. pic.twitter.com/Px2Wol8miA

— BN Potomac Yard (@BNPotomacyard) April 1, 2018

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Dick Bosman on Pitching: Lessons from the Life of a Major League Ballplayer and Pitching Coach
by Ted Leavengood and Dick Bosman
278 p
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers

Manny Machado And Baserunning Mistakes

Manny Machado does so many fantastic things on a baseball diamond night in and night out that it's hard to keep track. If you're not paying close attention, you may very well miss a spectacular play at any point - whether Machado is playing shortstop or third base, or if he's standing at the plate.

Unfortunately, if Machado is on the basepaths, you might miss something not quite as spectacular. He's made at least several questionable baserunning decisions this season, which is peculiar for one of the very best players in the game.

All things considered, Machado might just be the best third baseman or shortstop in the game. He's clearly the best who can play both positions. So these baserunning mistakes are certainly not ideal, but when combined with everything else that Machado brings to the table, this may appear to be nit-picking. But I'm not really even doing that; I'm just taking a closer look at some bizarre decisions when he's on base. It also shouldn't take long to notice a theme.

Here's an early April play against the Rays. Chris Davis is at the plate, and Machado gets picked off:

Hey, pick-offs happen. Machado was clearly going to take off for second base, so this was a nice play by Jake Odorizzi and the great Steve Pearce.

A couple days later, with the Orioles trailing 4-2 in the sixth inning against the Red Sox, Machado took off for third base with two outs and Davis again up to bat. He didn't make it.


Stealing third without a good jump is difficult enough, but it's even tougher when the right-handed batter's box is open. Machado likely made up his mind at some point during the at-bat that he was going to take off (possibly because of the shift the Red Sox were deploying). Not only didn't it work, but it came in a key spot.

Getting thrown out at third with two outs and Davis up once wasn't enough, so Machado did it again a couple weeks later in Kansas City.


This isn't as bad as the attempted steal in Boston, and it is a better play overall (with a superb pick by Mike Moustakas). Machado doesn't always have great instincts in these situations, and maybe that's something in which he improves. Machado isn't lightning quick, but that's not all it takes to be an effective baserunner.

Still, not only is Machado giving up free outs on the basepaths -- three times now with Davis at the dish. But as you can see in his slide above, he took an unintentional knee to the face, so some of these plays are putting him at extra risk of getting injured. Sure, a player could get hurt on any number of plays -- perhaps just landing on the first base bag wrongly, as Machado has already done -- but there's no reason to do so on plays that only offer a minor benefit.

In May, in a third-inning situation with runners at the corners, two outs, and trailing 1-0 -- and Chris Davis AGAIN at-bat -- Machado seemed to attempt a delayed steal from first base.



At least, I hope that was a delayed steal in an attempt to get the runner from third to score before Machado is tagged out. Roch Kubatko of MASN noted that that's what it was. Regardless, that's a strange thing to do in the third inning with one of the Orioles' best hitters at the plate. That's also the fourth time that's happened.

And here's the most recent baserunning mistake by Machado. Leading by a run in the top of the fifth, Machado leads off by crushing a pitch that slams off the right-center field wall.



The ball briefly gets away from the two outfielders, so Machado makes a dash for third. He didn't make it. You might not believe it, but Davis was due to bat next.

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I'm not going to say Machado is a bad baserunner. He's also done things like this during the season, so he's capable of smart decisions and huge plays. However, for his career, he rates as a below average baserunner (-1.6 using FanGraphs' BsR metric) and has been thrown out on 18 of his 48 steal attempts. A success rate of 63% suggests he should stop stealing altogether, or at least that he needs to get much better at picking his spots. Despite his mistakes this season, he still surprisingly rates above average this season (0.6 BsR) and was also above average last year (1.1).

If there's going to be one thing Machado seems to struggle with, then at least it's his skills on the bases. Regardless, there is clearly room for improvement. My guess is that Chris Davis would agree.

Reviewing Mike Roberts' Baserunning

Baserunning is a richly textured handbook that describes precisely successful tactics and strategy on the basepaths while interweaving a few back stories from a long serving baseball man.  That man is Mike Roberts.  He has seen a lot of baseball.  He was an All-ACC catcher for the University of North Carolina back in the 60s and 70s.  He was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in the 34th round and assigned to their rather progressive academy (under the direction of Syd Thrift and speed coach, the rather famous and controversial miler Wes Santee) whose goal was to turn excellent athletes into quality baseball players (that experimental academy ended in 1974 and was considered a relative failure, but it was an impressive idea).  After two years with the Royals where he showed very good performance at the plate, Roberts went back to UNC and coached the team for 23 years where he:

• went to the College World Series twice;
• won the ACC five times; and
• developed many successful major league players including but not limited to Walt Weiss, B.J. Surhoff, and, his son, Brian Roberts.

He now continues to ply his trade with the Cotuit Kettleers in the Cape Cod Collegiate Baseball League.

I bring up Roberts' back story because this entire book depends on that.  As a reader, you likely picked this book up because you want to be able to: (1) teach your players/kids the finer points of base running, (2) are a player who wishes to hone their own skills, and/or (3) a spectator who wants to more deeply appreciate the skills displayed on the diamond.  Whatever groups you fall under, the message of this book depends on the weight of Mike Roberts.  It is a weight he easily carries as his career as a baseball mind and educator attests.  However, these men often work in the shadows of the professional game and your recognition of his name may be reserved only to sentences tucked away in issues of the Baltimore Sun whenever a writer chewed on his son's background.  In other words, feel comfortable absorbing the knowledge in this book as Roberts is a baseball man respected by baseball men which is as good a reference as you can get in this field.

If you have truly watched Brian Roberts in his career with the Orioles, you have seen the incarnation of Mike Roberts' basepath philosophy.  Brian runs with controlled aggression, a constant alertness.  His movements may seem smooth and elegant out on the diamond, but they feel that way because he is watching for reaction in the opposing players and implementing skills that he has long practiced.  As a statistical analyst, I often cringe when I see a headfirst slide as the concern about the chance of injury (e.g., broken finger, concussion -- it actually appears that outside of foul tips that sliding collisions away from home plate is the second leading event that results in concussions in baseball) seems to outweigh the value long term.  However, you do truly appreciate a well executed slide, which is something we have seen a great deal of over the past decade with Brian Roberts.  Not blessed with elite speed, Roberts had a knack for understanding when a pitcher committed and how to slide based on the positioning and changing stance of the player covering the bag.  It is that fully engrained philosophy and presence of mind that this book tries to convey.

The way Mike Roberts conveys these points is to provide a very brief background or statement of philosophy that he has developed over his years in baseball.  From there, he directly addresses certain points including but not limited to sliding (head and foot first), base running, taking leads, base stealing, and strength and conditioning (with help from Tim Bishop, the former strength and conditioning coach with the Orioles).  When he addresses a topic like running the bases, Roberts breaks it down into different scenarios.  For instance, how does a player run when breaking out of the box from the left or right side.  How does a player run on a grounder or a fly ball.  These points are then accompanied by suggested training exercises for players, which is potentially a major help for coaches enabling them to avoid reinventing wheels.

As guidance, I think Baserunning lives up to what it tries to be.  As a reader with a statistical analyst perspective, it reminds me of questions I still want answered.  For instance, the book mentions that a foot first slide is slower than a head first slide.  That makes intuitive sense to me from running the bases and makes sense to most people who have watched the Olympics as no runner ever drop kicks his way through the tape.  Additionally, we also know it to be true that sliding into a bag is faster than running to it as negative acceleration is much quicker that way.  Where conventional wisdom has made up its mind and where I think there is still wiggle room is to what extent it makes sense to slide into first base on plays.

The book states that head first slides come into play when a pitcher crowds the line on a throw from the first baseman in order to avoid a collision or when the first baseman shuffles his feet in expectation of a poor throw coming up the line.  I agree with those thoughts.  However, I wonder whether properly sliding into first base is faster than running through it.  The hypothesis is driven by the concept that the center of mass (i.e., the torso/thighs) is more in line with the lower body than with the hands.  By coming in high to reduce friction with the group, does an outreached hand touch the bag more quickly than a running foot?  Executed properly, I think it would get there more quickly.  That said, the benefit in speed probably is completely undone by the effects of sliding on every close play down the line and the outcome of a tired player trying to execute a slide.  Still, it would be nice to see a book like this dabble into the statistical play resulting from their solid foundation of knowledge.  This is not a knock on the book, but more of a general call for traditional baseball guidance to come hand in hand with empirical evidence.

That all said, what Mike Roberts writes here is not controversial and really does not need a body of empirical evidence.  With rounded corners, it fits into a perfectly acceptable narrative of play on the basepaths.  A narrative that should make coaches, players, and fans better appreciate the finer points of the game that will definitively improve play.

Baserunning by Mike Roberts with Tim Bishop and forward by Terry Francona
208 pages, Human Kinetics 2013

On the links . . .

Another National screw up.
Esmailyn Gonzalez is not the 19 year old who broke out in his second year of the GCL. He is actually Carlos Lugo who at 23, repeated the GCL and tore it up pretty well. He was, on average, 5 years older than his competition. It is unclear who perpetuated this fraud. Jim Bowden was adament to Stan Karsten back in 2006 to sign this kid/adult to make a cannon shot letting baseball talent in the Latin America know that the Nationals meant business. They gave him 1.4MM as a signing bonus (twice what rival Rangers were offering) and he immediately became one of their best minor leaguers. We had him rated 8th this past offseason. With this new knowledge . . . he is off our top 30. Bear in mind the Nats also have a thin farm system. A 23 year old repeating GCL just is not that impressive. This fraud case may have a deeper story coming out as the top brass of the Nationals were investigated for embezzling last year though nothing concrete has come out of that. Add that to the Aaron Crow debacle and senseless recharacterization of that ordeal . . . Washington does not seem to be the place to be at the moment.

Pitching Injury
This one slipped through the cracks a few weeks back, but I thought it was interesting enough to hit it. The guy at Razzball has developed criteria to identify pitchers at risk:
1. % of Curves+Sliders. The idea being that the more you rely on your breaking balls, the more strain you put on your arm. A third of pitchers who threw more than 27% C+S wound up pitching less than 2000 pitches the following year. A fourth of them saw an increase in their FIP (defense independent ERA) by 0.50.
2. An increase of 700 or more pitches from 2007 to 2008. This is a variation of the 30 inning increase rule. Pitchers over this level rated the same as those who threw more than 27% breaking balls.
3. Rookies throwing more than 2,700 pitches in their first year. The idea behind this is that extensive throwing at a higher level of competition could tax an arm. The numbers from 2007 and 2008 show that a third pitch less than 2,000 pitches their second season and that a fifth see their FIP rise 0.50.
Razzball IDs these as the top 5 guys to worry about:
1. Armando Galarraga - the reason why I hope we let Chris Tillman take his time to reach the majors.
2. Ricky Nolasco
3. Gavin Floyd
4. Brett Myers
5. Ryan Dempster

Baseball Prospectus' Baserunning Indices
The Orioles best base runner last season was Jay Payton. He was ranked 67th in the league. Overall . . . the team was pretty awful on the basepaths. In fact, we only had four starters who were above average:
Adam Jones (0.83 runs; pretty average at everything)
Brian Roberts (0.7; slightly above average at making most of his stolen base opportunities, his other baserunning skills actually produce a negative value)
Melvin Mora (0.47; awful at stealing bases to the tune of over 3 runs a season . . . decent with regard to advancing on base hits)
Luke Scott (0.2; OK at all things)
Markakis (52nd worst), Millar (13th worst in baseball), and Hernandez (23rd worst) were in total responsible for wasting about 15 runs or 1.5 wins last year. Markakis' probably is that he seems to get caught stealing at a decent clip.

Top three baserunners?
1. Ichiro 12.7 runs (a gain of over a run per season due to his base running skills)
2. Willy Tavares 11.9 runs
3. Ian Kinsler 9.2 runs

Bottom three?
Dionnar Navarro -8.0 runs
Magglio Ordonez -8.0 runs
Prince Fielder -7.1 runs