Quote:
Originally Posted by 'Hamas' Jenkins
I think BRC's line of critique was more appropriate for Brad Lidge, who could never throw his slider at the bottom of the zone for a legitimate strike and couldn't locate his fastball for shit. I always thought the approach of any team facing him the first time should just have been to keep the bat on your shoulders, because he could not locate his pitches in the zone.
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Lidge was the same guy I was thinking.
Lidge couldn't duplicate his arm angle either. If he wanted to get the slider down, he'd have to alter his release and the spin on a slider can be recognized much sooner than the drop on a split/change. He telegraphed the slider almost his entire career, everything just came so fast and turned so hard that, when he had his fastball command, there just wasn't enough time to gear up for it and recognize/adjust slider.
When that fastball command abandoned him, guys just stopped gearing up for the heat, spit on it if he threw it and waited for him to telegraph a slider.
There's much more deception to Mujica's arsenal, though his raw stuff is nowhere near Lidge's at his peak.