Podcasts hosted by athletes — I don’t learn about all that. However I did get pleasure from a latest clip from Mookie Betts’ podcast the place he was speaking to Cal Raleigh, who was evaluating Zack Wheeler — maybe the very best pitcher in baseball — to his batterymate Bryan Woo.
“[Wheeler] is sort of like Woo,” Raleigh stated. “He glides down the mound. And it’s so easy. Some guys simply have that pure glide down the mound, simple, and [the ball] simply will get on you.”
Coincidentally, in a dialog in late August, Phillies minor league pitching coach Riley McCauley made the identical comparability.
“[Woo] could be very Wheeler-ish,” McCauley informed me.
I’d messaged McCauley as a result of I wished to raised perceive how Woo’s motion associated to his outstanding efficiency. He throws so many fastballs — practically three-quarters of Woo’s pitches are both four-seamers or sinkers. And people fastballs are nearly at all times within the strike zone — he ranks first amongst all starters in each zone share and stroll charge. And but no person can sq. him up.
Even accounting for the three homers he allowed in opposition to the Angels on Saturday, hitters are batting .194 and slugging .304 throughout his 94 innings pitched. The anticipated stats line up together with his outcomes — his .246 xwOBA allowed is higher than any pitcher this season. (Mikey Ajeto wrote about Woo’s injury suppression expertise in an important put up for Baseball Prospectus yesterday.)
How can Woo throw so many fastballs within the zone and stroll away unscathed? I feel it’s principally as a result of he’s a reasonably tall man throwing from a loopy low launch level. Standing 6-foot-2, Woo releases the ball simply 5 ft off the bottom:
Among the many 115 pitchers who’ve thrown 500 four-seam fastballs within the 2024 season, Woo’s launch top is the sixth lowest. That tremendous low launch top means his fastball enters the strike zone on the third-flattest vertical method angle (VAA) in baseball. Solely Joe Ryan and Craig Kimbrel throw flatter fastballs.
Fastballs thrown excessive within the zone with a flat VAA like Woo’s or Ryan’s are as near an unhittable pitch as exists in baseball. Add in Woo’s above-average velocity (he averages 95 mph and might ramp it as much as 97) and unimaginable strike-throwing means, and also you’ve received the recipe for a pitcher who can relentlessly assault hitters together with his four-seam fastball. Regardless that the form is in any other case abnormal — the pitch’s vertical and horizontal motion are each inside a handful of share factors of the league common — Woo’s launch top negates these ostensibly mediocre form considerations.
Which may result in a pure query: If throwing laborious fastballs excessive within the zone from down low is so efficient, why doesn’t each pitcher simply do it? The reply is easy: Not all people can transfer like Woo.
When Woo was a “midlevel” draft prospect, Trent Clean, a pitching strategist for the Mariners, informed president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto that if he had the primary choose within the 2021 Draft, he’d take Bryan Woo. (Henry Davis went first general; Woo fell to the Mariners within the sixth spherical.)
Clean defined why he felt so exuberant about Woo in a July 2024 interview with the Seattle Occasions’ Adam Jude.
“What Bryan has that’s actually attention-grabbing is, he’s a man with energy and stability and mobility, all on the identical time, with good timing (in his supply),” Clean informed Jude. “You’ve received this unicorn of a mover who’s actually sturdy and cell… He popped for us.”
You may draw a direct line from this unicorn motion to Woo’s means to persistently throw strikes from a low launch level with above-average velocity. Every of those qualities will be defined by the specifics of his motion.
McCauley defined to me that the varied positions Woo will get into are “fairly excessive,” even in comparison with the everyday main league pitcher. What separates Woo even farther from the inhabitants is that he maintains his stability whereas shifting his physique into these excessive positions.
I requested McCauley to stroll me by just a few of the phases of Woo’s supply: the leg elevate, the hand break, the entrance foot strike, and eventually ball launch. First, the elevate:
Woo lifts his entrance leg approach up, bringing his knee as much as the letters on his uniform. The excessive leg elevate leads instantly into and influences the subsequent section of the supply — the hand break, or the second when the pitcher separates the ball from the glove.
At hand break, McCauley says, Woo extends the entrance of his physique ahead whereas sustaining stability on his again foot:
“That is very, very, very Wheeler-ish,” McCauley stated. “The glove and the leg are each fairly prolonged. The hand break is fairly lengthy, so he’s making a ton of rotational capability in his supply, which goes to permit the entrance foot to swing open and the higher half to remain closed.”
On the entrance foot strike section, Woo is engaged in maybe essentially the most excessive place within the supply. As he propels the entrance of his physique towards the plate, he’s concurrently shifting the again half of his physique in the wrong way, creating notable hip-shoulder separation.
Woo will get “a ton” of thoracic backbone counter-rotation at the same time as he orients his entrance hip towards the batter, McCauley says. All main league pitchers in all probability do that to a point, however Woo — and Wheeler — stand out amongst even this elite inhabitants.
“It’s a reasonably rotational decrease half the place he’s swinging the entrance leg open, however he’s cell sufficient within the higher half to — you possibly can see his chest is pointing in the direction of us proper now,” McCauley stated, referring to the video body beneath:
All of that lower-half motion brings Woo to his closing vacation spot approach down the mound, completely balanced, channeling practically all of his potential vitality into the discharge of the pitch.
“As soon as that entrance foot hits, he’s superb at getting linear and holding, so now he’s taking that low slot as a result of he’s creating a really secure base for that trunk to get linear and ahead with,” McCauley stated:
What’s outstanding about Woo (and Wheeler, McCauley factors out) is that he can transfer like that with out falling out of sequence. There are benefits to excessive positions: They assist pitchers attain peak velocity and get to the devastating low-slot launch level. However a typical faculty or minor league pitcher with a supply like this, McCauley defined, would possibly run into command issues by trying to repeat this formidable supply pitch after pitch.
“For some guys that get on this excessive of a place, it may in all probability trigger a variety of inconsistency,” McCauley stated.
That being stated, “good” pitching mechanics are usually not nearly reaching excessive positions, however optimally timing the sequence of those positions.
Grant Messner, then a pitcher at Caltech, wrote about going to Driveline in 2018 to kind out some velocity points; I’d advocate studying your entire put up. Driveline discovered that one factor holding Messner again was the timing of when his hip and shoulder, respectively, hit their most velocity. Messner was at nearly zero seconds — to optimize his velocity, he wanted it to be extra like 0.05 seconds. 5-hundredths of a second, in different phrases, separated inefficient mechanics from excellent mechanics. And that’s only one section of a supply that Messner poetically describes as an “infinite-dimensional mechanical downside.”
“Guys that create positions like this — these are the blokes you’re usually seeing have larger stroll charges, spray the ball, get very inconsistent ball flight,” McCauley stated.
As I identified in my article on launch angles final month, the subsequent Bryan Woo is likely to be identifiable from a handful of pitches in entrance of KinaTrax cameras. The exact variables captured by an organization like KinaTrax — hip-shoulder separation, core stability, leg extension at hand break, and so on. — will be measured and in comparison with different professionals to search for outlier performers.
You might in all probability take a look at Woo’s biomechanical knowledge, for instance, and discover proof for Cal Raleigh and Riley McCauley’s observations that Woo strikes like Zack Wheeler.
Wheeler and Woo each succeed as a result of they throw high-velocity fastballs from distinct slots with distinctive command. A fastball like Wheeler’s or Woo’s “simply will get on you,” as Raleigh described it. And the power to throw that fastball will be linked on to the way in which these pitchers “glide down the mound,” harnessing athleticism that stands out even among the many tremendous gifted individuals who throw baseballs for a residing.
“That is subjective, however from what I’ve seen, the larger positions you get into, it’s going to be more durable to create pressure and throw strikes in these positions,” McCauley stated. “However that’s the place you get guys — like Joe Ryan or Wheeler or Woo — who’ve one way or the other discovered stability in these loopy positions. You’ve now created a monster of a man that has elite command and really distinctive supply. And now you’re speaking a few beast.”
