pitchers often drop down when they are tired or injured. i have never heard of a pitcher raising his arm angle significantly without trying to do that. it’s not natural to go up. it takes a lot of effort which is why when pitchers get tired they drop their hand down and away from center.

doreen-

you should be a pitching coach

people that play golf can relate to what you said. there are only so many things you can have in your head and perform. golfers sometimes play with one swing thought in their mind and this can work. something like ” take the club back slowly” which might translate to “low and slow”.

so wang can have similar “throwing thoughts”. i think in his very slow delivery he may have a kind of” throwing thought” in there to get everything in sync.

what i’m concerned about is eiland simply giving him a “throwing thought” that works well for most pitchers, but just doesn’t work for wang. i may be off base on this, but that’s what i’m wondering about.

there’s another thing too about performing;what you think you’re doing and what you’re actually doing can be two different things. sometimes you have to trick yourself into doing the right thing by having a visualization that isn’t exactly what’s happening.

despite wang’s problems,the yankees are looking very good. it would really be bad for me if the yankees win it all and i have to figure out why cashman wasn’t responsible for the championship

DT is right–it was Gabe Kapler, not Gabe Gross. And, Swisher didn’t pitch the ninth inning, he pitched the eighth.

Other than those, your comments were entirely accurate. I’ll attribute the errors to the late hours you’ve been keeping.

minor error in your notebook story – Swisher struck out Gabe Kapler – not Gabe Gross.

maybe you are just checking to see if we are paying attention.

Randy, is he releasing the ball too soon, then?

I think perhaps Eiland wasn’t asked the right, specific, questions. How many times do we listen to these interviews and no one asks the most obvious questions? And most of the time the most relevant information is not volunteered. And no follow-up questions are ever asked!

I guess it’s possible Wang is trying to overdo? It’s obvious he’s out of whack and if he’s trying to correct things, he’s probably thinking too much about mechanics on the mound, which is not good. I think when you’re thinking about what you’re doing physically it ends up messing you up more – takes away from the “natural” way you do things when you’re mentally breaking it down – AND TRYING TO DO A JOB AT THE SAME TIME. During practice sessions, breaking things down doesn’t work against you, because that’s where all your focus is. But during a game, I would think that thinking about your mechanics results in split focus. You can’t think about two things – mechanics and the hitter – and do it well, in my opinion. His mechanics have to be second nature.

That’s why I ask, should he have been (or should he be, if his next start is as bad) assigned to Tampa or AAA or AA or somewhere to get everything worked out?

(My frame of reference here is singing. I sing, or I used to. And when I was thinking about technique, the end result wasn’t as good as when I was just free and easy, just singing the song.)

doreen-

that’s it! you got it. his release point is almost a foot higher and closer to his head in the data for his first start this year.

so as you saw, he’s getting his arm up to high. i could even see this in a spring training start with my eyes because it was so obvious.

you said ,”You know that behind doors there’s so much going on, so much discussed, so many variables that we can never know but only guess at.”

this is one case where i have some inside info because i know the pitching coach really well who taught wang the sinker in the first place. i talked with him for quite a while last spring in spring training about wang. he told me exactly what he did with wang when he taught him the sinker. he told me that he showed him the grip. he shortened his stride. and he had chien ming throw the ball.

there was instant success. there was no change in arm slot. this was because wang’s arm slot was what made this pitching coach thing wang could throw the sinker.

seeing that wang’s natural arm slot was perfect for throwing a sinker was the epiphany that the pitching coach had( my words not his).

wang is not likely to mess with his natural arm slot on his own. natural is natural. it doesn’t change much.

i never hear anything about wang’s stride from the yankees, but that is exactly what was changed with wang in the first place to throw the sinker.

i just want to know something very simple. when eiland works on wang’s arm slot and reease point is he raising it or lowering it ?

i wouldn’t think that’s so difficult for him to say.

it really wouldn’t confuse us fans or go over our heads.