Thursday, May 30, 2013

Saturday

Well, let's give it one more.

We have another game Saturday against the defending league champions so we'll see how that goes.

I haven't updated much because there hasn't been a lot ot say.  I'm about ready to close out this blog as most folks aren't terribly interested in how the season goes.  I guess I could go through the season and just post random things, but I don't think that's what this was about when I started.

I'll do a big wrap up post and then close this out. I have a lot to say about what it's been like to recover from this surgery both physicall and mentally.  I'll do a retrospective as well at some point.

I'm expecting to throw again on Saturday.  Otherwise, I'm getting a lot of good ABs and am playing a bad-ass right field.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Win #1

Not for me personally, but for our team. Felt great!

Turns out, I'm learning to play a decent right field.  I'm starting to wonder if my LASIK surgery was more important than my Tommy John.


Monday, May 13, 2013

Where did my mechanics go?

Whoa, been like 2 weeks. Sorry!

I fixed that little issue that was plaguing me earlier.  What was happening was my elbow was coming out lower in my delivery than my shoulder.  So, any deviation other than a 90 degree angle in delivery is going to cause everything to go haywire.

I made a few adjustments actually:
1. I am relaxing between pitches. I was working really fast which I normally do but it was way too fast.  I now take one or two breaths between pitches.
2. My hands are lower in my set position.  All my career I have been holding my hands at chest level.  I started dropping them at their length around my waist.  This does a few things for me: It makes me break my hands lower which forces my elbow even or above my shoulder and it breaks my hands earlier to allow that extra second (that I discussed earlier) for my feet to get to work.  It feels like there's a lot less torque on my elbow this way too.
3. I lean back a little. I was falling too much off of the 3rd base side during my windup so I worked on leaning back toward first base just a little bit. It keeps my balance better and lets me use my legs more.

These three things don't sound like much and they really aren't.  When they work together though they seem to be pretty solid. I threw the equivalent of 2 innings in an intrasquad game on Saturday and threw a lot of strikes already.  Sure, I got hit around pretty good, but I'm chalking that up to us having good hitters on the team.

The point is that I threw more strikes than balls and I was able to move my pitches around much better than before.  There were also a few things that just weren't working. My change up was not moving like it should. That's for sure. It wasn't sinking. It was hanging.  The cutter was working great and the fastball was fine.  I'm going to try to throw a slider again though.  Maybe with the improved mechanics I can throw it on occasion as a strikeout pitch and call it good.

We'll see!  I've got another game Sunday night.  We'll see what happens.