Jason Motte has been a hot topic of discussion amongst Cardinals fans lately and with good reason, as he used a sensational spring training performance to beat out Chris Perez for the team’s role of closer. Opinions are fairly a split on Motte and I’m sure his four-run blown save in his first appearance as the team’s closer has intensified things a bit.

Mostly a one-pitch pitcher, there are some that feel Motte won’t be able to translate his minor league success to the major league level because you need more than one pitch to succeed in the majors, no matter how good that pitch is — and that pitch is really good: an upper 90′s fastball that explodes out of his hand. It’s straight as an arrow, but it’s sneaky and gets on hitters quick because he short-arms the ball, which dates back to his days as a catcher. When he’s able to command the pitch, it’s virtually unhittable.

Motte’s No. 2 pitch is a fringy slider that he’s able to use when hitters start cheating on his fastball or when he wants to throw off a hitter’s balance at the plate. By the way, I know there are some that suggested he develop a splitter partly because it would be easier for him to maintain a more consistent arm slot and I agree with that completely.

Now, I’m not here to give a traditional scouting report on Motte. That’s been done before by Azruavatar and you can read both of those excellent reports by clicking here and clicking here. You can also read Erik’s rundown of Motte’s pitch f/x data by clicking here.

I’m going to actually take a deeper look at Motte’s mechanics — how he generates his velocity and what changes he’s made between this year and last that I think has helped improve his overall command. My hope is that everybody will take away some knowledge about the velocity generating process and some of the more subtle changes a pitcher can make to improve themselves.

The big change Motte made this season was that he simplified his wind-up by lowering his hands and centering everything closer to his core. The 2008 version is on the top and the 2009 Motte is on the bottom:

This year, Motte is in a more athletic, more compact position. Instead of bringing his hands up by his head, he brings them closer to his upper chest area. This change took place partly because of the timing difference between Motte’s high leg kick from 2008 and his smaller leg kick in 2009.

Motte pauses once his knee reaches the pinnacle of its lift before punching the glove, which acts as his timing mechanics to unleash all hell. The difference between the two versions is that the 2008 version pauses for a longer period of time, while the 2009 version gets going much more quickly. This results in a wind-up with better flow — much smoother than before and without any pauses that have the potential to throw off his timing.

Now let’s talk velocity…Motte is obviously blessed with tremendous arm speed and the genetics to throw hard. But he’s also extremely efficient from a velocity standpoint and his arm action is excellent. He lets the elbow pick up the ball, meaning no hook in the wrist, like you see with Rich Harden. He also efficiently loads the scapula, which I’ll try to explain below:

The loading of the scapula is the pinching of the shoulder blades together. The arm is loaded horizontally rather than straight back toward second base. Might it put more stress on the shoulder? Perhaps…but it’s an essential component of velocity.

Watch how Motte’s chest sorta puffs out in the clips above…this is a symptom of the shoulder blades pinching together. Also take note of Motte’s hip/torso separation. I pause the graphic at the key frame. The belt buckle is pointed toward home plate, while the torso is facing the third base direction. Just before his front foot lands, the hips start to rotate and the torso is subsequently unloaded, bringing the arm with it.

The arm’s power is generated from the torso unloading. There is a kinetic chain of events and to generate the kind of velocity Motte does, you have to have a precisely efficient kinetic chain. It’s also important to throw with intent, which Motte certainly does.

One thing I quibble with are Motte’s front side mechanics. The glove generally should be kept firm out in front of the chest. While Motte does firm up to keep his front shoulder from flying open, he leaves the glove down by his side when it ideally should be left out in front of the chest. There are numerous reasons for why it should be kept firm out in front of the chest — lower injury risk, better control, more consistent release point, and better command of one’s breaking pitches to name a few.

Final Thoughts

Nobody should overreact to Motte’s Monday debacle. One game doesn’t make a player. Consider how dominant he was last season at the MLB level even though his dominance occurred in a limited amount of innings.

The jury’s still out on whether he’s a closer-level reliever. That’s probably a best case outcome unless he can develop a consistent secondary pitch that he can go to when the command of his fastball deserts him. Can he make it happen? Only time will tell.

This article is apart of Baseball-Intellect’s Cardinals top prospect list, which you can read below:

Prospects 1 – 5
Prospects 6 – 15

Alex breaks down major and minor league players by using sabermetric and video analysis at the website Baseball Intellect. He’s also done regular work for the Hardball Times and Baseball Digest Daily. You can contact him at baseballintellect@gmail.com

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 8:15 am and is filed under Jason Motte. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.