Carter Capps delivery has some competition
- Thread starter soxhop411
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I think I'd try calling time or stepping out of the box every time he comes to the full stop, and dare the ump to punish me for it.
Unconventional, but not not illegal, unlike Capps, who does not maintain contact with the rubber during his delivery.
Why? The delivery is legal and you'd step out and take a strike?
Knock yourself out.
Suffice to say I don't in the least think it's legal, because it's a clear violation of my interpretation of "without interruption" in Rule 8.01. I recognize that there is an argument for legality that could be considered technically correct, but even that takes advantage of (in my opinion) a loophole in the rule that does not clearly define when and how to penalize a pitcher going from the windup with no runners on.
And, fuck the rulebook for one second. It's bad for baseball. You can't any longer give pitchers carte blanche to mess with a hitter's swing timing - everyone is wise to how big of an advantage being unorthodox can be, and the margins of error for hitters are smaller than ever the past few years. MLB needs to do a better job modernizing their concept of illegal pitches to catch up with where the game is going.
You're wrong, because in the first hitch he's got his foot is NOT in contact with the rubber. He then turns his foot and puts it in contact with the rubber and then pitches without interruption.
And it's legal to do so:
Stop lawyering up baseball, that makes it less fun for everyone. Funky deliveries are cool. I think Capps' delivery is clearly illegal, but Gant's is certainly not.
And it's legal to do so:
Stop lawyering up baseball, that makes it less fun for everyone. Funky deliveries are cool. I think Capps' delivery is clearly illegal, but Gant's is certainly not.
It's unorthodox, no doubt. But if his stutter step, or whatever you want to call it, is something he consistently does on every pitch, is he really attempting to deceive the batter? Any more so than Cueto and his six thousand variations and tempos?
Were I a professional baseball player I'd try to do just that. Instead, just like you, I'm just an anonymous internet hero, so I'll pass.
So every umpire, from minor league ball through the majors is wrong?
>99% of the posters on this site couldn't hit Pablo Sandoval is he took the mound. What do you think this statement proves?
I agree with you, but what does "attempting to deceive the batter" have to do with the discussion, anyway. The rule prohibits deceiving the baserunner (which is the very definition of a balk), but makes no reference of this with the batter, as far as I know.
Deceive probably isn't the right word, but I was mostly responding to JimBoSox9's assertion that the unorthodox windup messes with hitters' timing. If not messing with hitters' timing is the impetus for the part of the rule about windups not being interrupted or altered once begun, then there are arguably other windups that could be considered illegal if what Gant is doing is illegal.
It looks like there has to be something illegal about that delivery, but I am not nearly the MLB rules lawyer required to figure out whether it is or not, and frankly if the Umps don't stop him from doing it more power to him. I always vote in favor of more character and weirdness in sports.
Wait a tic, are you possibly asserting that it doesn't? Hell I thought we were just talking about if the outcome was a net negative. This is why I make cracks about getting in the batters box - you don't need to be an MLB superstar to understand the basics of hitting the ball. If you don't understand the entire point is about deception, you're too far away from getting it to be in the conversation.
YES! When did everyone suddenly become umpire defenders? The core problem is rule book interpretation creep, and that the archaic wording basically didn't envision pitchers trying to do this. Originally their role was to just lay it over, and even as it evolved the understood approach was that a hitter sees the ball come out of the hand and has a reasonable amount of time to react to it no matter what. The idea of where and when the hitter picks up the ball being crucial hadn't emerged yet.
That hasn't been true for 70 years, unfortunately. Pitchers have been slowly pushing the edges of what is allowable deception in windups for decades, and umpires have generally let them. I think Hideo Nomo threw a shit-ton of illegal pitches too. Of course, it's hard enough to pitch at all without being unorthodox with your delivery, which is why the best tricks don't become more widespread, but this generation of pitchers is the first one to come up through the youth systems with coaches who might be willing to tolerate that kind of nonsense if it shows signs of working. There are NO comparable response actions hitters can take to mitigate this. It's wrong and it's stupid and it's fixable and it needs to go.
More importantly, what kind of asshole actually practices that kind of delivery in his free time?
The one who would be a minor league thousandaire without it, and might get to be a Major League millionaire with it. It's like the argument about taking performance enhancing drugs. If you're a AAA reliever who could make a MLB roster with just a few more MPH, the marginal cost to your health may be worth the millions in earnings to you. If you're firmly in the majors, or have no shot at being a pro athlete, your calculus is different.
I'm guessing at one point in his early career he totally lost his control and some combo of pitching coach and sports psychologist helped him develop a new delivery that regained his control and saved his career. I highly doubt he developed this solely to confuse batters.
He said he just started doing it out of no where. His catcher started to make fun of his motion and he was taken aback... "I don't really do that, do I?"
If you're buying that noise. I'm not.