Jump to content
View in the app

A better way to browse. Learn more.

Surly Horns

A full-screen app on your home screen with push notifications, badges and more.

To install this app on iOS and iPadOS
  1. Tap the Share icon in Safari
  2. Scroll the menu and tap Add to Home Screen.
  3. Tap Add in the top-right corner.
To install this app on Android
  1. Tap the 3-dot menu (⋮) in the top-right corner of the browser.
  2. Tap Add to Home screen or Install app.
  3. Confirm by tapping Install.
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business & Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Advertise... Tailgate Donations

Featured Replies

I'm not gonna assume the A's are going to start losing until they get around to actually doing it.

  • Replies 27.9k
  • Views 1.3m
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Most Popular Posts

  • Bregs is going Crawford Boxes right here.

  • Prior to the footage being edited by Bender:

  • wesleywest
    wesleywest

    Two Diamond Club tickets available for the Sunday night game.  Free.  Need to pick them up from me in 77027. Rules: Poster must be a big contributor to this thread/last years shag thread.  No gue

I'm not gonna assume the A's are going to start losing until they get around to actually doing it.

This is about me now.
I’m mean they HAVE to... but they don’t.
Dammit

Pressure's still on them.

 

Gotta be tough to win-win-win...not make up any ground.

 

Fuck em.  Go Astros!!!

Pressure's still on them.
 
Gotta be tough to win-win-win...not make up any ground.
 
Fuck em.  Go Astros!!!

Yeah they could win tonight, improve to 8-2 in September...and still lose 1.5 games over that stretch

Bases loaded no outs in the 3rd for As against cashner. Looking like status quo so far. Gotta pound the D-backs and hope the rays slow them a bit this weekend

2 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

4-0 A's in the third. No outs.

7-0 still no outs

Whatever.  The A's can win out and they'll finish 3 games back.

9-0 still no outs. Glad we close the year with a series against these orioles

pretty sad oakland is about to be 7 games up on cleveland and 5 games up on the entire nl.

yankees better be careful or they'll be flying west in a few weeks.

Gerrit Cole, Dallas Keuchel, and Charlie Morton on Developing Their Fastballs

September 11, 2018

Pitchers learn and develop different pitches, and they do so at varying stages of their lives. It might be a curveball in high school, a cutter in college, or a changeup in A-ball. Sometimes the addition or refinement is a natural progression — graduating from Pitching 101 to advanced course work — and often it’s a matter of necessity. In order to get hitters out as the quality of competition improves, a pitcher needs to optimize his repertoire.

In this installment of the series, we’ll hear from three pitchers — Gerrit Cole, Dallas Keuchel, and Charlie Morton — on how they learned and/or developed their go-to fastballs.

———

Gerrit Cole, Astros

“It’s all about the fastball. From a young age, I’ve thrown both the two-seam and the four-seam. I just try to keep my fingers on top of the ball and get after it, man. It’s pretty simple.

“You try to locate it the best you can, knowing that overcooking the pitch — whether that’s overthrowing it or overthinking it — can cause you to maybe leak the ball over the plate or simply lose some of the quality of the pitch. You try to be as relaxed as you can, and have the most-connected delivery that you can. You keep your fingers on top of the ball, spin it, and take it right through the glove. Don’t try to do too much. Just let it eat.

“The fastball is important for sustainability. It’s important for the baseline. Regardless of a starter’s repertoire — and everyone will tell you this — it boils down to fastball command. When you can throw strikes and establish all four quadrants of the zone… you have to get ahead of guys. You have to put pressure on hitters. You have to be able to establish the strike zone with your fastball, whether it’s a four-seamer a two-seamer, so that you can get swings and misses on breaking balls outside the zone.”

Dallas Keuchel, Astros

“I had a standard two-seam grip. I was in college — I think this was 2008, my sophomore year — and one of the ESPN games was on. Jon Lester was throwing. He had this one-seam grip. He offset the two-seam in a way that when he throws it, the hitters only see one seam. That’s why they call it a one-seam.

“They were showing his pitch grips [on the broadcast]. They were saying how he offset his two-seam because of Tim Hudson and how he got better action out of it. I started tinkering with that. I’d always had run on my two-seam, but then I started getting sink and run. Two-plane movement is better than one-plane movement.

“Something that that works in my favor is that I’ve always gotten great extension out front — I’m above league average — and I think late movement happens with full extension, as opposed to when you’re cutting yourself off. I think it’s one of those things where it kind of naturally comes out of my hand the right way.

“Everybody has their quirkiness about them. Everybody has their specialty, and mine is late movement. I don’t really know how to teach that, other than full extension out front and just letting the grip do the work. Some guys have high velocity and some guys, like myself, have late movement. Part of that is God-given ability, and conversations and adjustments also factor into it.

“I’ve never talked to Lester about it, but I do talk to our guys. We have a pretty good group, and as pitchers, if you don’t have conversations, you’re missing out on stuff. There’s always room for improvement, whether you’re the worst pitcher in baseball or the best.”

Charlie Morton, Astros

“My sinker is a pitch that developed over the course of five years. My two-seam used to not do anything. When I got to High-A, Bruce Dal Canton — he’s since passed away — was there. He was a really good man, and a really good [pitching] coach. I worked with him in Myrtle Beach, and he recommended that I offset the grip on my two-seam.

“With a normal two-seam you might be between… the bottom of the horseshoe, how it comes together — where the two seams become the closest — that’s where a lot of guys put their fingers. They put their two fingers between those seams, right at that spot. He showed me a grip where I moved it down, closer to the bottom of the horseshoe, and I have my index finger up against the seam. My middle finger was dry. So both of my fingers were inside that half of the ball. It actually started moving a little bit. That was a pretty big deal for me, because now I had a fastball that was moving.

 

Morton.jpg

 

Charlie Morton’s two-seam grip.

 

“I kind of stuck with it here and there. Then I got to the big leagues. It was a pitch I threw a decent amount of the time, but then in 2011, when I changed my arm slot… that arm slot, coupled with that grip, made my sinker a lot better. It made it more dynamic. It started [to move] more vertically, as opposed to horizontally.

“I’ve tried to grip it normally — like it would normally be gripped — since, and I don’t get as much movement. I don’t get as much sink on it; I get some run. So for me, that was a pitch that developed over time, based on a few changing variables.”

Astros Milb teams Tri-City and Blues Creek both won there championships. CC should have won also, but had some bad management for the third game. Two more to go.

Saw today that Correa has something like 3 extra bass hits in his last 105 at bats. He’s been fucking worthless. Statistically, he, Margo and Reddick all look like the same player. Since coming back from his “injury”, he’s a bottom 6 SS in baseball, offensively. But, hey, $400million man and shit. 

It would be nice if he took less than two strikes in every at bat during the playoffs and maybe run into something he can drive as a result. 

Saw today that Correa has something like 3 extra bass hits in his last 105 at bats. He’s been fucking worthless. Statistically, he, Margo and Reddick all look like the same player. Since coming back from his “injury”, he’s a bottom 6 SS in baseball, offensively. But, hey, $400million man and shit. 
It would be nice if he took less than two strikes in every at bat during the playoffs and maybe run into something he can drive as a result. 

d0bd9304c2e012d4276959092e8f6ea9.gif
47 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

Of course the A’s are going to miss Snell this weekend.

I realized this earlier today and was cursing aloud!

Fuck the A's!

Yeah but it's 6 over the rays

1 hour ago, WBT said:

Yeah but it's 6 over the rays

Well shit, forgot about them.  We're fuct.

As a Birds fan first and Stros fan second (sure was a lot easier when my teams were in different leagues), I want to say the one positive to this season is our ability to contribute 4 losses to the Stros to finish the stretch. 

For the optimists (me), what is your dream WS?  Gotta feel like it’s 1a) Cubs and 1b) Cardinals

Both would be so much fun. 

How about your team fucking win a game today? 

7 minutes ago, Scraps said:

How about your team fucking win a game today? 

Yeah, no

11 minutes ago, Scraps said:

How about your team fucking win a game today? 

When you consider Machado leads our team in average, HR and RBI, despite having been traded long ago, there is little hope. 

Edited by Bert Orange

12 hours ago, closetojumping said:

Saw today that Correa has something like 3 extra bass hits in his last 105 at bats. He’s been fucking worthless. Statistically, he, Margo and Reddick all look like the same player. Since coming back from his “injury”, he’s a bottom 6 SS in baseball, offensively. But, hey, $400million man and shit. 

It would be nice if he took less than two strikes in every at bat during the playoffs and maybe run into something he can drive as a result. 

Typical post from you. Come back when you really have something new to add. Marwin has been one of our better hitters for a month or so.

1 hour ago, Scraps said:

How about your team fucking win a game today? 

 

1 hour ago, Bert Orange said:

Yeah, no

one goddam hit?

I miss Carlos Correa.

I like that the A's are winning. Keep pushing us, Atleticos! 

2 hours ago, Bert Orange said:

When you consider Machado leads our team in average, HR and RBI, despite having been traded long ago, there is little hope. 

I realize you guys don’t have much left to offer for Correa. But I’m still willing to listen to ideas. 

1 hour ago, ckhorn said:

Typical post from you. Come back when you really have something new to add. Marwin has been one of our better hitters for a month or so.

I don't live on this thread like you do, or in your sunshiny fantasyland. I'll continue to come and go as I please, and you and TonyTexan can continue to braid each other's hair and sob to one another about me not recognizing the hidden value of concepts like Margo having one above average month during his walk year. 

14 hours ago, closetojumping said:

Saw today that Correa has something like 3 extra bass hits in his last 105 at bats. He’s been fucking worthless. Statistically, he, Margo and Reddick all look like the same player. Since coming back from his “injury”, he’s a bottom 6 SS in baseball, offensively. But, hey, $400million man and shit. 

It would be nice if he took less than two strikes in every at bat during the playoffs and maybe run into something he can drive as a result. 

He's arbitration eligible this off-season.

He's saving the Astros some money.

I hope the injury is still causing him problems.  This funk being mental would be much worse.

Correa is still hurting. He says some days are better than others.

1 hour ago, mycox said:

Correa is still hurting. He says some days are better than others.

That goes perfectly with your avatar

He ain't hurting.  He is sucking.  He has a built in excuse.  Man up and quit planning your wedding.  

3 minutes ago, Scraps said:

He ain't hurting.  He is sucking.  He has a built in excuse.  Man up and quit planning your wedding.  

i disagree with others that hope it's physical.  i'd rather it be where he's just sucking or it's mental.  he has loads of natural talent and the best possible people in the world around him to work him through it, not to mention 3 weeks and a great team to (hopefully) hold this lead while he gets it together.

if it's physical, he may not be right until the offseason or longer.

he just needs to fucking find it.

btw, altuve has not been himself either, and springer has turned into a singles hitter.  

I would like to see a list of players who had a season this bad that wasn't injury related.  I don't believe this kind of drop off is normal for the level of player that we thought he was before this season.  That's why I hope it's injury related.

Edited by kevwun

It's obvious the Astros won't have the 2017 playoff offense this year. It's going to have to be the pitching that gets them to the world series. Why can it never be both?

3 hours ago, closetojumping said:

I don't live on this thread like you do, or in your sunshiny fantasyland. I'll continue to come and go as I please, and you and TonyTexan can continue to braid each other's hair and sob to one another about me not recognizing the hidden value of concepts like Margo having one above average month during his walk year. 

😎

1 hour ago, mycox said:

It's obvious the Astros won't have the 2017 playoff offense this year. It's going to have to be the pitching that gets them to the world series. Why can it never be both?

This. You're are not going to win it without great pitching. We just going to need some clutch hitting. We have the 2nd best record in baseball in the most competitive division and most likely get at least 100 wins again. All of this with about half our hitters under performing this year or nursing enough injuries to hold them back. 

It could also be just big titties.

Astros have had the best offense in MLB this season even with Carlos' struggles.  They might destroy the ball or they might not hit for shit in the playoffs - it's a crapshoot - but their offense has been fine.  

44 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

Astros have had the best offense in MLB this season even with Carlos' struggles.  They might destroy the ball or they might not hit for shit in the playoffs - it's a crapshoot - but their offense has been fine.  

I think MLB Stats would disagree with you, but yeah they are a top ten offense despite some down years for some of our players.

 

Astros lead MLB in wRC+ at 112 (Red Sox and A's at 110, Yankees at 109). 

4th in runs scored behind BOS, NYY, CLE

Correa, Gattis, Gurriel, Marwin and Reddick have all been about league-average hitters (all have wRC+ around 100) and that's 5/9 of your lineup most days. 

Bregman, Altuve and Tyler White have kept this offense near the top. 

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...
Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business & Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Advertise... Tailgate Donations

Configure browser push notifications

Chrome (Android)
  1. Tap the lock icon next to the address bar.
  2. Tap Permissions → Notifications.
  3. Adjust your preference.
Chrome (Desktop)
  1. Click the padlock icon in the address bar.
  2. Select Site settings.
  3. Find Notifications and adjust your preference.