The New MLB Rules Starting this 2023 Season & their Implications
- The Pitcher Timer Rules:
A pitcher will have 15 seconds with bases empty, and 20 seconds with runners on base, to deliver the ball to homeplate. This will certainly speed things up, but also place less decision making in the hands of pitchers, and give more decisions to the catcher. Some pitchers will just go with their own desires and there will be more miscommunication between catchers and pitchers, and therefore more pass balls, wild pitches and dead balls.
A hitter will get 1 timeout per plate appearance and so must be in batter’s box within 8 seconds. The hitters will become more agitated as elbow guards, shin-guards, batting gloves and helmets etc. will not be able to be adjusted, thus leading them to be under more stress in addition to the less time between swings.
Pitchers will get two disengagements (either pickoff attempts or step-offs) per batter, and a failure to follow this will lead to a balk call, as any baserunners will get to move forward one base. The testing of this in the minor leagues ( now called partner league teams) increased by roughly 25% in stolen base attempts. This reduced the game length by 25 minutes in the Minors too.
2. Restrictions Rules:
Two infielders will be positioned on either side of 2nd base when a pitch is released, and harkens back to the traditional fielding set up, so is not much of a break. All four infielders must have both feet within the ground or dirt infield (stay off the grass) when a pitcher is on the pitching rubber. This is also more traditional and so not any real break for most, as this is how most have played the game in their youth.
3. Bigger Bases:
1st, 2nd & 3rd bases will be increased from 15” square to 18” square and will make inside-the-park homerun 4.5 inches shorter. They are selling this, with PR cover, as to the safety of the players, and that is likely true, but it is really about getting more runs and steals.
Conclusions:
The results will certainly be shorter games, but the umpires will now be more involved in the game’s outcome and allow for more corruption- if there is to be any. There will be less thinking involved and so the players will be more instinctive and that is not good for them or those that like to think strategy.
Rafe will affect this aspect of the game as well, due to his ability to put baserunners under more duress as he changes arms. Also due to 2 arms, Rafe will be able to have double the pitch count in the WBC.
Most of all the stats for pitching and hitting will be very different. Batting averages will go up and pitching numbers will suffer. Good for the entertainment value, but make pitchers seem not as good as the ones in the past, as batters will break numbers as we will have a .400 hitter again and new home run king.
Let see if the game is better, and more people take part? In the end it is computer games that are making for lower numbers, but the health of those that are lost to computer games should be also compared as some lose exercise and attention spans, as they get addicted to dopamine hits. Mom’s basement is not better than the base or the ball.
World Baseball Classic vs. World Cup
With the World Baseball Classic (WBC) fast approaching it is a good time to cover the favorites in each pool, and also the fact that this tournament will be going head-to-head with the World Cup of Soccer in the same season. There has been much effort to warm the North American public to soccer as a spectator sport, and Major League Soccer will certainly make the US and Canada more competitive on the pitch. Let start with the WBC pools:
Pool A
The question in this group is can Cuba rise to the position we all know they are capable, as their programs have produced some of the top players in the world. Mind you with professional players in the classic the chances of winning it all seems suspect for Cuba, who have in the past played their best against other nations amateurs. Still they should be able to win this pool, but they must turn up with their players properly motivated. While Chinese Taipei certainly has the ability to win this division, especially with the first round being in their home country, I still think a step towards peace in the region would be to have both Chinese Taipei and China work together to put together one team, with the expertise of the Taipei’s league matched to the numbers of youth in China for development. The two European teams that have a history of doing better than expected are in this pool, these being Italy and the Netherlands. The Netherlands has the tallest average height in the world and they have continued to use this in having solid pitching in the classic series. Panama will have a very tough time with so many quality teams in this division, who are all very hungry to win this pool.
Pool B
With homefield advantage going to Japan it will be hard for anyone to win this pool, yet South Korea, with the historical animosity with Japan, is the one nation that could do so. The question is can South Korea win other games and not slip up if they are able to defeat Japan consistently. Australia could pull off a few upsets, as their program has progressed. Still with most Australians being locked up, due to the Covid, and any training likely suffering heavily, I expect Australia to not do as well as they have in the past. This will help the fast-improving Chinese team and allow them to possibly take 3rd spot in this pool. The Czech Republic has invested much in their baseball program, but they have not been able to rise to the occasion yet, outside of doing so well in Europe.
Pool C
The USA should be able to wrap this pool, but could suffer some loses from a few very motivated players from other countries. With scouts always watching the US games, you can see players from other countries at their most motivated in their lives to both impress their own country and make it to the Majors. Canada has great hitting coming up from their system, while their pitching has had more limited success. With such a short schedule, good pitching will beat good hitting and so the chances of Canada upsetting the USA is slim, despite my full support being a Canadian myself. Mexico should rival Canada for second spot, and with the games being played in Phoenix Arizona, this will help. There should be no weather and travel issues tiring the Mexican team, nor limit the supporters from coming up to help them rise to the second round. So Canada will really need to be up from the start, or it will be Mexico in second and moving to the next round. Colombia is a quality team, as the South American teams have continued to progress, but baring a collapse of Mexico or Canada they should finish fourth. While as good as England is at soccer, they will have a very hard time finishing any other place that 5th. There goal should be to win at least one game, and then 2 or 3.
Pool D
This pool is far and away the most competitive, as onetime WBC pool winner, Israel again turns up to play the favorites of Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Both these Caribbean giants desire for a second WBC championship, and with the experience and depth they have, it will be hard to unseat them. Venezuela is not to be taken lightly and so rounds out the dangerous teams in the toughest pool for the top seeds. Nicaragua will have a hard time getting a win, but will certainly learn much.
With homefield advantage Japan should be unlikely to be upset in winning this round, as South Korea will be facing the other pool top seed. If Cuba is firing all cylinders they might upset Samurai Japan, but it is unlikely.
Quarterfinals Miami
At this round there could be again a loss by the USA with Pool D’s winner coming out of the toughest division. Whether it is Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic the odds will be even with so many Latin Caribbean supporters likely turning up and or living in Miami proper.
Semifinals & Finals
I see Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, the USA, Japan and Cuba being in the final stages and likely either Puerto Rico or the Dominican Republic in the final. The question is will they play each other again, or will the US break up a repeat. Cuba, one would think, would have good support in Miami, but there will be an uncomfortable feeling for the coaches and government representatives as they worry about players jumping ship to flee to the US.
The World Cup vs. WBC Media Competion
Some argue that baseball is boring, yet there is little in nil-nil or ties to trump homeruns in a head-to-head competition in soccer. Older people turn to sports like baseball because they like to chat and be heard with other fans they are with, and not miss a big play. North American Football will not be able to become a popular worldwide national representative game. The reason are equipment and player size, as rugby shows its limits in its players size in some countries, as they allow certain people from other backgrounds to play on the national teams help the smaller stature nations. Being short in height is not too important in baseball fielding and batting, while basketball the height issue is huge factor. How can most short height nations support a sport when no one from their nation is in the pro ranks, and their national team never gets even close to the tops. A great example of this is the Philippines where basketball is loved, but not a single player has reached the NBA and their national team has not gotten past go with the top teams found in Europe.
So the only competition for nation-on-nation competition in a single world sport are soccer and baseball, if the hope is to give shorter nations with smaller budgets a chance.
I left hockey out of the discussion, as it has the expense issue and the obvious issue of needing rinks, but I will still be hoping for Canada in the WBC, and after that Japan, as Shohei Ohtani is always fun to watch and he will be helping us in our efforts here in Nippon- as Rafe approaches the professional ranks shortly.
Is it a Bird, Is It a Plane, It`s an Orochi
`Cometh the age cometh the man`
It is always nice to see things come together, and like the world we are living in many long delays as to the crisis unfolding, we have a game changing pitcher coming into being on queue. Whether it is a return to techniques that I thought would not be taken in, or not being able to find a Japanese pitching coach that would help the situation, we are now finally on solid ground.
The most important step is Rafe`s focus has arrived to the level he needs to have, while at the same time he has given up computer games, that we now both believe steals the ability of users to focus. Most parents, like myself, thought that games would increase the focus of the user, but I very early on saw the reverse. I overruled his mother, and banned their use until he was in university, but once in university the effects were still disruptive. That has now been overcome. The effects have been notable in his baseball efforts and his studying. The effects are vast.
As mentioned, Rafe has now started to study techniques with the will that a switch pitcher needs to have. I am now in the mode of simply agreeing with him and only reminding him of what he wants to do. He recognized his arm slot positions needing adjustments, and then to focus on his core much more to bring it to bear in his delivery. Then he saw on his own how he needs more looseness in his arm.
Here in Japan the pitchers rise up on one leg, and pause, to mix up their delivery timing, and then often do not use their legs as much as they should. In the past, due to Ichiro, there was a fad of batters raising the front leg, but that has faded. Now it is an ostrich single lag pause for pitchers that is not helping. Ohtani surely uses his legs, and has no constant long pause, and maybe others will follow this superior style. Many Japanese pitchers lack the visual leg size that would help with the speed in the delivery, and combined with the before mentioned fashionable technique, has shown a lack of speed. Rafe suffers no such flaws. We have cut to the basics his delivery to allow for speed to the plate and a deadly pick off move, that will be talked about in the days to come. We will undoubtedly bring new drills for others to use, and some can be seen on Rafe`s Utube site.
The other turning point has been his team the Kanagawa Skyhawks, who after some time have come to be a comfortable fit. Their system is solid, and he has finally been allowed to focus on his craft and not have to deal with the dramas his school team had. The best aspects has been one pitching coach, named Mr. Kuribayabashi. He has brought expertise in drills, that we have taken up when we are not even at a practice, and he has also used cameras to good effect, He has even started to do the kind of stretches and flexibility drills that I have wanted to do more of, yet lacked the time and ear of Rafe to do. With the other pitchers all doing these, I am left to center on other things and not have too much on my plate. Everything I want is being done all the time.
The results are dramatic, as his speed is far and away the best on the team, and even in catch ball practices players are getting their bodies out of the way as they fear his throws. The other coaches have taken to scolding the basemen for letting throws that are on the money, but too fast for some of them to handle properly. Rafe does throw to a medium height man, but coming in at head level has some dodging the throws as their bodies are out of position to avoid getting hit. The speed of both arms keeps rising and he still holds back, as to control.
The pitch control has not improved as much as the speed, but there is also the strike zone here in Japan, and the catchers framing of the pitch. Some catchers are moving their hands back upon a catch to soften the hand pain, and this takes the arm and hand up with high arm movement at the top of the zone. When the pitch is low, the catcher`s arms are going down between the legs when low to deal with cushioning the speed. The average catcher is usually above average here, but not with Rafe heat. The general height of batters here makes the strike zone short of course. So there is room for Rafe to deal with these factors before he can always dominate. Our main drills now focus on the short strike zone.
As for the coaches as a whole, he is now used all the time in the scrimmages, as the games often conflict with his studies. I have gone on at length about the strong tendency of batters here in Japan to work to get a walk, which comes from their early years when there is no T-Ball and with little league pitching being suspect. Batters have carried this over into their adult baseball play. The idea of avoiding being caught looking, being worse than a swinging third strike, has never taken form here generally. This is why many foreign players here hold the tops spots in hitting stats in NPB. Something must be done to fix this, so that hitting over walks is hammered home in their youth.
In Rafe`s case they are fanning on their swings and are moving to get a walk, and so until he hits the short strike zone any time he wants his problem will remain.
Despite these intricacies of Japanese baseball, the progress in huge and we have teammates talking of Rafe being a professional in the future for the first time. Rafe and I being the only true believers, aside from some of our readers here, has been joined by his teammates now.
The Skyhawks fielding drills are top level, as they are here in Japan generally, and Rafe`s height and athletic ability gives him a tall range of coverage, as he catches balls that others cannot. His shoelace catches have improved, but not to the level of the shorter pitchers. Still he does so on both sides of the body and the coaches are convinced he has no holes in his fielding. As said, they are coming down on the baseman and not him, as they want fast throws to get base runners out. So we have a team working with him now, though they prefer his left arm….. that is his unnatural arm!
This year we should be going to our first showcase for the professional teams, and I expect word will get out fast as they will see his height, speed, double arms and move to get management to move. As for hitting, which in our league pitchers are not allowed to do, we will move to train with the team next year as his school schedule will allow Rafe to have a 3rd practice each week and have him show what he can do with a bat.
Ohtani has allowed the idea of a pitcher being able to hit and pitch now clearly plausible, yet the hurdle of a switch pitcher being able to switch hit is not been proven on the big stage. We have kept up our training at the batting center workouts, and with the centers here having change ups, breaking balls and speeds up to 150 plus km., I think he has not fallen behind. So fear this beast from the East.
MLB New Agreement & Rules
Minimum salary
2022: $700,000
2023: $720,000
2024: $740,000
2025: $760,000
2026: $780,000
• The first-year increase is the largest single-year increase in history, nearly five times larger than the $27,500 increase in the first year of the prior CBA. It also represents a larger increase than the total from the past 10 years.
Competitive Balance Tax threshold
2022: $230 million
2023: $233 million
2024: $237 million
2025: $241 million
2026: $244 million
• The $20 million increase from 2021 to ’22 is nearly twice as large as the biggest previous first-year increase.
• A fourth tax level has been added at $60 million above the base threshold to address runaway spending.
Pre-arbitration bonus pool
• $50 million (to be distributed to the top 100 players based on awards and statistical performance).
• MLB and the MLBPA will jointly develop a statistical method to allocate the funds.
• Under this system, NL Cy Young Award winner Corbin Burnes would have seen his salary jump from $608,000 to $4.2 million last season, while Rookie of the Year winners Randy Arozarena and Jonathan India would have seen their respective salaries more than triple in 2021.
Draft lottery
• Top 6 selections will be awarded via lottery.
• Odds would be based on the reverse order of winning percentage, with the bottom three clubs each at 16.5%.
• The 18 non-postseason clubs would be eligible, though revenue sharing payees would be ineligible to receive lottery selections in three consecutive years, while non-payees would be ineligible to receive lottery selections in consecutive years.
International Draft
• In exchange for agreeing to an International Draft by July 25, 2022, MLB will eliminate the qualifying offer system (direct Draft-pick compensation) for free agents.
• International Draft would be 20 rounds (600-plus selections), increasing the total compensation earned by amateurs by more than $20 million annually.
• Signing bonuses would be guaranteed for drafted players.
• Clubs who select players from growth countries (countries with less than 0.5% of signings in the previous three signing periods) will receive additional selections to incentivize scouting and signing in emerging markets.
Rules changes
Beginning in 2023, a committee comprised of four active players, six members appointed by MLB and one umpire, will be tasked with adopting changes to playing rules such as a pitch clock, base size, defensive positioning and automatic ball/strike zone.
Other details
• Contracts for arbitration-eligible players will be guaranteed.
• Top prospects who finish 1st or 2nd in the Rookie of the Year voting will receive a full year of service.
• Clubs promoting top prospects to Opening Day rosters will be eligible to receive Draft picks if the player finishes in the Top 3 in the Rookie of the Year voting or Top 5 in MVP/Cy Young voting.
• Expanded postseason: 12 teams, with the top two division winners receiving a bye.
• Universal designated hitter.
• Players may only be optioned five times per season.
Crisis or Opportunity
The Bad
Well the events that have transpired have certainly affected the world, but how are they to affect baseball? Here in Japan the Koshien (National High School Championship) was hugely downsized to a much smaller tournament with only a fraction of the usual teams. Then there are all the cancelled tournaments, leagues and teams that naturally supply the players for all countries in all sports. Most of these will be gutted as so many will not take up the sport to the necessary commitment level needed after the crisis is over. We could have some large changes internationally. As all nations struggle forth with forming future development of top teams and players around the world. I am going to project that some lower ranked nations in the world could rise as many first world nations sporting pastime suffer as players are kept home by scared soccer moms. Many young boys and their parents will prefer little Johnny playing computer games over doing sports outside without masks. Some rightly point out that this will lead to much more falsely named computers “sport games”, that you and I know are not sports at all. Health, self-discipline, fortitude and social interaction will suffer.
I, for one, will not go that way with any grandchildren in my future, as it will lead to laziness and focusing problems at the minimum, as many are pointing to the problems with too much computer time, as alluded to in Mr. Kardaras’s book (Glow Kids by Nicholas Kardaras, Ph.D.).
Also to mention is the clear ability to allow for even more corruption into those computer sport games much easier. One doesn’t have to look too far to see how the music industry has stars now that do not compose their own songs, write their lyrics, do their own choreograph, nor even choose their clothes or any of the artistic aspects of their presentation. They are handled.
Here in Japan even the members of these pop groups are a revolving door of ever changing young people, as the corporations add and subtract members based on contracts and payoffs, that often reminds one of an assembly line. As we know from past history with Milli Vanilli, some of the pop groups don’t even “sing” their own songs, so that they only offer for a short time some looks it would seem as these stars come and go based on polls. For how long this has gone on I would suggest reading Weird Scenes inside the Canyon by David McGowan.
Can you image this if it were to come to computer sports, as any corruption would increase in leaps and bounds? So for the sake of your children, the game and the future of people’s soul don’t let your children grow up to be pop sport computer game stars!
The Good
Yet what is not so obvious for the good side of these changes now is the clear opportunity for anyone who continues to practice smartly and completely will have an easier way to playing at all higher levels. So many players are motivated by the team, coaches, or group- and not themselves to train hard enough. Self-motivated players, and or parental supported player combinations, will progress as if the crisis had not happened, but with fewer people in the way in a “big” way.
The new life given to professional baseball scouts for the national teams or professional levels will now find their abilities one again coming into demand, as these scouts will be able to easily go to limited games and tournaments to gauge the talent. Some old fashion gumshoe scouting will be needed to find the future gems. “Money Ball” will take a backseat for some time, as the stats will not be there to trump expertise, as stats will be too narrow.
In my son & I’s case our long history of working around obstacles has left us unaffected by the crisis. We have not lost a step at all in our training, and our choice of a young adult private team, over our university one, has allowed us to not miss much in the way of team workouts either, as most universities have closed down all sporting activity.
So to those still with their eye on the ball, the odds just got better for your sons and daughters to get to higher levels, as most drop out of the competition. School programs will be devastated and will not allow for athletes the easier high profile way up. In this way farm teams will increase more in importance, even as many are farm club teams are closed down in the economic crisis.
As the Chinese character for crisis is also the character for opportunity (as you can see in the picture of this article), you have the chance to turn this game around. Use this situation as an opportunity and get back to work in isolation to beat those who are prone to not being self-motivated, or who were not prepared for the economic crisis that has been there for anyone paying attention for a long long time.
I hope for all of you in this economic crisis the best of luck and hope you weather this storm, but if you can go for the gold and silver in both economic and sports you are bound to come out ahead in more ways than just sports.
The next article here on this blog will be out dealing with Rafe’s move to the Skyhawks Baseball team. Hope to hear from you all.
Switch Pitcher in the Gym
In the hopes of helping all kinds of pitchers, baseball players and general athletes we have a host of videos of our gym training. Please keep in mind Rafe has just turned 18 yrs. of age. Here is a link: SP Gym Workout
Weight Training in Baseball
There has been great resistance to working out at a gym for baseball players until very recent history, and this has remained even more so in Japan. It was Nolan Ryan and Tom House who won the lifting cause and so I will relate their input through my own logical adaptions. Both have books on the subject, “Nolan Ryan’s Pitchers Bible” by both men & “Fit to Pitch” by Tom House.
The main feature of our drills, especially for high school seniors and onwards, is a higher rep count with lower weights. This can be how younger players, who are still developing and should not enter the gym until the later years of high school, can start to begin to introduce the gym into their training. The goals are to maintain or increase the speed, build stamina and then increase the strength. Young men are too prone to go for the wrong goals in the gym, and so bulk up muscle groups based on bad cultural ideas, which are based on appearance over function. Even here in Japan when we have invited other players into the gym to get stronger they immediately talked about the “bench press” and how much they can press a few times, and had no clue as to how to use the gym correctly.
Bodybuilders work to bulk up with size and focus on certain large (attractive looking on stage) muscles groups, and these drown out the smaller finer muscles that are necessary for dexterity and range of motion. If anyone has seen the movie Conan the Barbarian, with Arnold, you will see on a few occasions he doesn’t look to move smoothly and is even a little clumsy. Dexterity comes from all the finer muscles and supportive joints that must have the flexibility and reverse muscle groups in support to allow controlled movement.
Sumo wrestler coaches here in Japan don’t like too much of the weight lifting in their stables, as it makes their fighters too top heavy, and though pitchers may not need the low center of gravity of a sumo wrestler to throw best, they do need bodies more closely resembling something graceful over pure power. From gridiron thru rugby players, past hockey players on down we move further away from these bulky body builders, but stop short of looking like basketball players and gymnasts in our goals. I say this as a person who played all of the above sports and has a body that reflects this. A good example of this dysfunction can be seen in marathon runners who are all legs with upper bodies that lack all assemblance of purpose, aside from the minimum carrying weight for the legs. To avoid the high levels of injuries found in baseball players there must be the supportive tissue in place.
Stretching
Rafe stretches more than any other athlete I have seen, and certainly much more than any amateur baseball player I have ever seen. Japanese baseball players do not excel at stretching and it is one of the flaws in most of their programs, or at least the ones I have seen at the amateur level. You will not see all our stretching in these gym workout videos, but it goes on before and afterwards. Stretching also happens on days off, and is only skipped on sick days or study days.
The legs can take much more work than other parts of the body. The leg joints are stronger and have had millions of years of human history to allow for their abilities to work out more often. The arms and shoulders are much more delicate, so need at least a minimum of rest days before getting back into action. Even after a two day rest from the weights, if they are still stiff, one only does drills that allow the circulation to get the blood back into the areas to speed up the body’s ability to repair the tissue damaged during in the early week’s workout.
All informed sources in baseball repeat the idea of not using your arms when they are sore, but it still goes on with those one arm users here in Japan. Rafe’s switching between arms has led to the only positive feedback from other Japanese players on his team, when they have had to practice with sore arms because the coach has made no allowance to allow a day off because of pain.
With all that being said, on the third day after a workout there is room for some kind of training, beyond stretching, that must be done to get the blood into the parts of the arms to increase the repair, with only a clear injury being the exception. I have been the most careful in protection Rafe’s arms and so feel confident in this assertion.
Areas of the Body
Starting from the top of the body, some neck work should be done as its supports the shoulders, knowing the neck can get injured with the hard swings of the bat. From there the number of lifts in our videos shows how one must work smartly and thoroughly on those areas prone to baseball injuries. The rotator cuff muscles are key. One of the lifts you will see we use is the “Empty Can Lift”, in addition to more standard ones dealing with the same muscle group. Being a switch pitcher demands double the workload in the gym, and thus makes such a player become the strongest on the team, which is usually the tougher catchers. Rafe has won the Japanese National Sports Test at his school for 3 years running as proof of this fact, receiving a perfect score the last 2 years, and only a single mark short of perfection 3-years ago.
After stretching comes a warm up lift, that should be slightly over half of the weight you intend to be as your maximum. With squats we do a full maximum after our warm up lift, as any other sportsman with no other considerations in mind. At present Rafe’s maximum squat is 180 kg., which comes just after his 18th birthday at his 86 kg. weight on the scale.
After this steady increasing maximum test lift, we switch to the real pitcher lifts which are centered on the idea of pitching in a game with the eventually 100 pitch count always in mind. So we target roughly for most lifts 25 reps in 3 or 4 sets. During the off season it is more often 4 sets. Not all the lifts we do are this number, but a surprising number are despite the demands on the player. The key to this is lower weights that maintain the ideas of faster lifts to keep or grow the speed. Reverse muscle groups are trained to avoid injuries, as was the original motivation to switch pitching training at the beginning, for if Rafe had not been able to pull off the speed and control of a switch pitcher he would have still had a supportive body for single arm duty.
Food and drink choices will allow for better stamina, but we do not use any of the sport drink concoctions common to most athletes, as we make our own. We follow our own recipe and it is uncommon for our time. If one studies history, and that of Milo of Crotona, you can see we are following a theme in originality set out by our possible ancestors on this score. Though we do not eat that much meat and drink that much wine at a sitting- as he did. Our goals are for pitching and not wrestling, and lifting of a full grown bull on our shoulders to march around the Olympiad is not in the cards.
Good sleeping patterns allow for recovery and with computer screens keeping boys up to all hours of the night this is now a serious problem. Self-control must be done by the players themselves in the end, and failure to father or mentor, so as to instead be your son’s “best friend”, may be popular today but is not stoic of a good father. If your son is working hard then you must match this in not having emotional crutches of your own. Trust must come before being a disciplinarian.
Once again for all the gym videos please go to: SP Gym Workout at “Rafe Milo” (Switch Pitcher) on Utube.
Orochi’s Knuckler
Well spring has arrived in Japan and out of the winter cave the very unique baseball player has come out of his slumber. Here on Coaching a Switch Pitcher we have covered the trails and tribulations of switch pitching and switch hitting in Japan. Rafe Milo, nicknamed Orochi, has upped the ante in his original abilities with the addition of his version of a knuckler.
Rafe has been working on the pitch for years, but until this month the control had not been stable. The search for a breaking ball, like the use of two arms to pitch, was meant to avoid joint damage, as much of the conventional wisdom is not to learn most breaking balls before one has a reached an adult bodily maturity. Otherwise there is a higher chance in increased damage to youthful arms.
From the very start with us the goal has been to minimize the risks of injury by balancing his body’s development- even if the switch pitching was not to turn out to be successful. It is the opinion of this author much of the injuries of baseball pitchers derives from all the stresses placed on one side of the body that is not matched by the other side in support. Most would agree that if a pitcher didn’t train the reverse deceleration muscle groups on a single arm the risks of injury would be assured, but then fail to take it to the next step in muscle support.
The battle in Japan for an under 100 pitch count is well underway, but the forces that feel the macho ideas of the coach should be exercised on the arms of young boys is creating a battle. The self-sacrifice cultural ideas in Japan means most pitchers will answer the call to throw more than a 100 plus pitches day after day in tournaments.
The list of blown out arms in their youth must be tabulated by someone and presented before all. Even with Rafe’s 2 solid above average arms in play we are still getting pressure to use one arm over a 100, as each good outing with one arm makes some feel “that” is the better arm, until the other gets its outing and shows it is up to the challenge just as much.
The real motivation is not to point out the clearly better arm, but hammer that nail sticking out. In Japan the old saying the ” the nail that sticks out get hammered” is still in play with Rafe, despite his clear superior pitching numbers, with either arm, as shown on game recorded spread sheets.
So we arrived at the knuckler, as it doesn’t put pressure on joints as a curve, slider and screw ball (Shutto). Yet mastering the pitch has taken much time, and the temptation to go with the very commonly used slider pitch in Japan has been great. The cutter too was one we looked at and it may come into play later as Rafe’s first joint demanding pitch.
For those that know the knuckle ball is the most unpredictable of all pitches for batters, but mastering it can be a real hassle. At the professional levels the pitch is usually undertaken by a pitcher that has lost the speed of his fastball and needs to add another pitch to his resume’ to stay up at the top levels.
Rafe’s knuckler was under control in his last outing and was used in conjunction with his fastballs and change ups. Rafe’s fastballs’ speed is above average for his age of 17 yrs. Despite having a speed gun I have not let him obsess about getting too fast too early. I generally tell him the average for a practice outing, and then sell him on his average as compared with other players around the world. The gun only comes out once every 2 months, so the goal is to have all his fastballs up to speed of the top levels for his age worldwide, and not a few reaching super heights to get him all obsessive over.
In his outing he had 5 strike outs over 6 innings, yet the clear goal with knucklers is to get bad contact on the part of the batters to have easy out plays. Unfortunately the error count for the fielding has plagued Seijo High School, as compared to most schools in Japan, who I would strongly make the case are the best in the world.
His continued progress means other pitching wannabes on the team don’t get any big outings. This would be the norm with any player that has the better arm with any team, but at Seijo this is not the case, as coaching leadership has taken a backseat to the players voting to see who should play each position?
Somewhere in Seijo’s baseball past a coach was replaced because he over did it. Presently the captains can’t make the selections either, but a kind of group consensus, that in the end falls on the person who is the best political insider that can play off jealousies the best. Rafe has a perfect national sports test result of 80 out of 80 and leads the school with that score as a junior. So I rest my thoughts on the dispassionate game sheets and the national sports test to make the case for him to any of my readers.
Seijo is known in Japan as a rich boy’s schools, but one doesn’t see this kind of set up on the Seijo’s rugby or tennis team, as there the leadership is traditional and successful. All that is needed is a change to allow a switch pitcher to train a little different, not a wholesale upheaval is coaching authority.
Yet as we can see with switch hitting worldwide the impatience of leaders to give up future skills for present gains is constant. In Japan some macho coaches wreak other players’ future with overdoing throwing to win the Koshien High School Tournament here, at the expense of a longer career at the university and professional levels.
The other extreme found in the west is the invasion of every snowflake should get a trophy agenda, where catering to the weakest players of the most hysterical parent, over the progress of the strongest and stoic players and their parents is very common. “Having fun” has become a monster of a club to swing around to prevent the future of some players making it to higher levels of play. Like in Hollywood some coaches must spend more and more time campaigning with parents to be semi-PR agents, to make sure the laziest children are not confronted about their lack of focus and their uncanny ability to distract those who do.
Balance and logic is a very Confucius theme that seems lost in many people in both the east and west.
Rafe Milo High School Baseball Stats (Sept. 2018 to Aug. 2019)
Switch Pitching
————Innings Pitched–Runs Allowed–Strike Outs–Wins—Loses
———————————————————————————————————–
Right Arm 13 5 6 2 1
Left Arm 28 11 17 2 0
———————————————————————————————————-
Switch Hitting
——Bating Average—–Singles—Doubles–Triples—Home Runs—-RBIs
———————————————————————————————————
Right . 333 2 1 0 0 3
Left . 588 7 1 1 1 9
———————————————————————————————————
BB Walks: 6
Balks: 0
Successful Pick Offs: 5
Successful Bunts: 5
Base Running : Stolen Bases 7 for 8
Fielding Errors as Pitcher or Center Fielder: 0
The Golden Egg Hatches
Well the Japanese media has finally taken notice of my son, and after about 4 reporters and 8 Japanese stories on sports sites we are no longer obscure. It certainly helps motivate Rafe to work harder.
Unfortunately for the senior team members, in their last tournament, they had to sit by and watch as the journalists huddled around the switch pitcher. Despite the Seijo team winning the opening round, via the seniors efforts, Rafe got all the attention while he sat on the bench. One female reporter gave him the Japanese metaphor of the golden egg to represent something special hatching soon.
Freshmen are unlikely to break into the line-up with only a handful of months under their belt. It is not a rule, but it might as well be one. Teams with a bench, in depth, can have rookie players jump the queue, but when the lineup is thin and seniors/ juniors can walk away from the team disgruntled (if they watch a rookie go on before them) the coach has a real juggling act on his hands. Seniors who have had their time on the bench for years are not keen to have a rookie jump the queue. Still things have fallen into place as one junior pitcher has over used his arm, and is in pain with his doctor telling him no more pitching. This leaves a battle for first reliever, or even the doubleheader starter, more open. Rafe is in the running as one can see the coach wants to use him, but under pressure from the conventions here he is moving slow on this. Rafe is not much of a pinch hitter as we have found in his West Tokyo Dodgers days as he is too excited and needs to get more mature for such a role.
Comments on the big website articles covering his story ranged far and wide with the number of views in Japan being in the tens of thousands. The goal for us is to get his name known so as to have the Japan National Under 18 take a look at him. He offers super speed on the bases, a solid bat on either side of the plate and then of course his size and pitching.
His fluency in his English ability might help too. After watching the U18 World Championship in Thunder Bay, Canada the odds are good for Rafe being attractive to the Japanese scouts. The American U18 team had a couple of players who pitched over 150 km an hour, or 93 mph. This pretty much shut down all the other teams batting, including the Japanese. I expected the Japanese team to do much better, but it seems the Koshien participants weren’t as prepared as I thought they were for international play.
Rafe lacks Seijo Ace’s skills of control to date, while the present starting ace lacks the top fitness and pitch speed of Rafe. So says coach Asano, who is wanting to motivate them both in the areas they lack. With Rafe breathing down his neck the ace is surely feeling the heat and will work harder on his conditioning.
The level of Rafe’s focus during team practices and games has shifted my gauging of his abilities, as he can certainly do much better to date, once in the limelight is on him. Many Japanese youth are known to go down a notch or two when under pressure, but Rafe has gone up a bunch. This has made me relax more when having weaker practices with him, as I know he can do better under the gun.
By the autumn I will finally buy a speed gun so that we can officially see what he is firing. I will tell him only the average speed and work on slowing down his change-up, as he tries to throw it too fast, which defeats the whole purpose. At present his 4-seams and 2-seams are solid and given more confidence with these pitches he will work more on his change-ups and his knucklers. Yes the nouns are plural, as he has to throw each pitch with both arms.
I have also just received a King of the Hill pitching apparatus, which is used to focus on legs. I will write more on that later once we use this and other tools, as his game pitching time increases to warrant more interest nationally, and later internationally.
In his last game he gave up no runs in 3 innings and had 5 strike outs. He hit an inside-the-park homerun. Of lesser note he used his switch pitching ability on a bunt along the 1st base line. He was pitching with the left arm and when he went to field the bunt he quickly took off the glove and then threw with his right, avoiding the risk of turning around to throw. The play was good and brought some smiles from the coaches of both teams as his reputation as a switch pitcher gains credence. At present he is not using both arms in each game, but using one per game. Our plan is not to have his ability be a gimmick, but to have arms that can pitch by themselves, therefore saving the switching to a time and place where it helps. The team has many exhibition double headers, and Rafe could be using both arms in the same day by next year. For now working on one arm each game allows for better focus, and avoids the flipping back & forth to find the arm that is working better in the rush to do better now at the loss of building of both arms. Until next time.
Never Say Never
It is a bit of a back to the future moment for us as we have had a breakthrough with Seijo High School and a new head coach there. Our plans to change schools ran into the system here in Japan where a student gives up his present school spot if he merely takes a test for another school. So in other words one loses his safe spot, with no assurance of his success in writing any new exams to enter other more difficult ones. Added to this the sports entrance procedure, which I will refrain from calling a scholarship (as it involved no financial support), asked for paperwork that was beyond our control. We had no Japanese game sheets, in which Rafe played in going back for a few years in nationally recognized tournaments. So out of luck and we were not interested in asking for special circumstance in such a by the numbers culture. Team meritocracy is fair, if all are in the system, but a great player can play for a weak team, no? This was all very Japanese, as in the West a player is evaluated on his own merits. Rafe had played on our international team in exhibitions as we put together an older team in the last few years. I guess I could filled out sheets instead of coaching and organizing league duties, but I only have so much time.
At the next university level in the future this transfer system does not apply and a student can apply to any school he wants to and not lose his spot in his present school. The escalator system allows a student to level up within a single school group, if his marks are reasonable. Rafe’s marks were all above average and were either a 4 or 5 ranking out of 5. In fact he has one of the top, or the top, marks on his Seijio Junior High Team. This has been no small effort on Rafe’s part, as private schools and public schools in Japan are much tougher in math and science verse Western ones generally, let alone in Japanese language classes in the amount of Chinese Characters one must memorize and be able to write exactingly.
So we were faced with a dangerous risk of changing schools, and Rafe had let it be known he wanted out. His best athlete award in the national evaluation test for the school, added with being top scorer in the intramural programs of basketball, soccer and handball combined; with an 11th place finish in the full student base school marathon meant they had their best athlete sitting out of all their Seijo clubs. We had the schools rugby coach trying to get Rafe to join their club and of course the basketball coach quietly wanting him to join with Rafe’s intramural basketball top points in scoring and assists scores. Doubling his best player’s numbers.
Further adding pressure on the sport program was the junior high’s baseball team’s problems having not ended with Rafe’s departure. The bad leadership in the coaching & captains had led to more boys leaving, as the gang leaders simply targeted other boys. The loss record of the team showed that this chemistry was not working.
So we were happy to hear the bad coaches have quit, as our loud stink, and loss of others, made them lose face. Thus to all forked tongue should justice be made. For us this only helped open the way to the high school team. There the coach was getting wind of the shortage of players coming up from the junior team and no doubt was aware of Rafe’s situation. So my wife and I inquired as to whether Rafe would be allowed on the high school team, as there are no private competitive systems in Japan as all want to be in Koshien Structure. If he stayed with the school and they would not have him suffer any water boy punishment, would we be able to play on the high school team? The answer came back positive, and so we went to work warming Rafe to a return. He was not keen to restart with Seijo, but added to the issues covered in this blog I didn’t want to encourage him to run away from these kind of obstacles, but overcome them with more kinds of skills. With the bad coaches gone we had a solid chance to renew our efforts.
Joining the Seijo High School Baseball Team
I returned to the sidelines and was quite happy there as my workload with the West Tokyo Dodgers left me yearning to watch Rafe only. Our plan to train on the side was to fill in where need be in his switch pitching if the new coach had him only use one arm. For in his case he had made no such promises to that effect, as the bad ones had done years before bringing us to the school. My job would still be easier as I would only need to fill in the gaps over doing everything to keep both arms progressing.
The new high school coach had both a leveled up in difficulty of skills training that was a happy surprise to me and Rafe. The toughness of the practice allowed me to relax as Rafe could now push it and not be slowed down by the lazier players. He started immediately to outpace seniors. As I watched I began to see the high school team lacked both pitching and batting, yet had good fielding.
This made things promising and then the coach tried out Rafe right away as a pitcher to see if his reported switch pitching short comings were true, as is likely the story he got from the bad coaches. Yet Rafe failed to deliver the gossiped view and worked his focus and deliver a above average performance. I will cover our breakthroughs in this area in the next report, but he showed both control and power with both arms. The coach likely thought to himself, “why on earth would they not want a 6’ 3” switch pitcher like this helping the junior high team?” You could see the head coach’s movement from his chair to different angles of view as a suppressed excitement. Here was a big fat solution to his pitching woes. Rafe switch hitting ability will have to wait to be shown with more practices as no one has expressed doubts with his heavy hitting.
So in the end this coach will likely have both arms in his bullpen and likely have Rafe start as a brand new freshman. It is still early, so I will keep you all up to date, but so far things are finally working out as they were envisioned with our Japanese school. Now Rafe must just work hard and deliver, instead of dealing with the politics that comes from insecure in the clique boys and dishonest men.
Coaching a Switch Pitcher 