Coors and Fastballs

Nick Groke at the Denver Post explores why the Rockies are concentrating on developing fastball pitchers:

Charlie Blackmon swears a fastball is the key at Coors Field, where it can come at a hitter quicker than at other ballparks. Denver’s thin air doesn’t push back, so velocity jumps. And it doesn’t rely too much on the movement found in soggy air at sea level.

“If I was a pitcher,” said Blackmon, the Rockies’ starting center fielder, “and I could decide what kind of pitcher I wanted to be in order to be successful at Coors Field, I would really focus on my fastball. Pitchers have to have a good fastball. That’s easy to say. That’s nothing new. But I really do think fastballs play up in Denver.”

There’s a very good discussion of how the fastball is actually many different pitches, spin rates, and movement. For example, Jason Motte talks about location:

“When I’m good, I can go out there and boom — up, out, off, down,” he said, pointing all around a phantom strike zone. “People come (to Colorado) and they try to get too cute. ‘I’m going to try to really fool this guy.’ Like, we know what you’re doing. From a hitting standpoint, you can tell when pitchers aren’t comfortable.”

We’ll see how this works out for the Rockies staff this season and into the near future.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/1TXGbHe