Hawk & Steve's baseball blog

One topic that has come up a few times this week is the idea of a pitcher tipping his pitches. I know Ozzie mentioned that he thought in his previous start against Toronto, Javier Vazquez may have been tipping his pitches.

I didn't any information on exactly what Javier was doing that may have tipped his pitches, but what typically happens when a pitcher is tipping (doing something that signals what pitch is coming) for example, is that he will go into his glove for the ball in a certain way on a fastball and a different when when throwing a curve.  It's the type of simple little thing that a hitter or coach will notice and latch onto.

Here's what Jose Contreras used to do: he would go into his mitt and when he was throwing his forkball, his glove would shake a bit because he was wrapping his fingers around the baseball. His glove didn't move when he was gripping his fastball.  Everybody knew it and they would sit all over his fastball knowing here it comes.  Jose had to adapt and decided that every time he threw a pitch, no matter what it was, he would wiggle his glove.  Now hitters don't know if it's a forkball or fastball and good luck hitting him.  You can see all the success he's had since he made that change.

In this high tech age, you've got spies and cameras set up just for that with scouts poring over the video to see if they can pick up anything. There are so many eyes on a pitcher now, if there's the slightest variation, someone is going to pick it up.

DJ