The Importance of Catch Play and Flatground Work in Baseball

Muscara on using data metrics for pitchers.

We have so much ball-tracking technology in making pitches in bullpens, but I think the biggest piece of what we do is throwing every day, and that's never tracked. That's the part where I think this is such a special product. Again, how many pitches do you throw in a game? 100? 105 at most? And you throw a 20-pitch bullpen. So, you make 125 throws in a week that get tracked, but your other 900 throws are just out the window. The ratio on that makes no sense. So, why not track the other 900 throws if you want to get consistency? That's where the value is in a product like pitchLogic for us.

Muscara’s advice to others developing throwing programs.

I think getting guys to understand the value of being consistent when throwing a baseball is the most important piece. It's played on consistency. What do you do when there's adversity? What do you do when you're in between the white lines? For me, that's being consistently good over being occasionally perfect. So, to anyone who's trying to get a throwing program together, I say trying to get the best vertical movement, best horizontal movement, best efficiency, and best velocity is all well and good, but consistency matters so much more. At the end of the day, baseball is about strikes with good stuff. Not great stuff. Good stuff. Commanding the ball. That's what it's about. Put the ball where you want to whenever you want to. That's what matters.

Jacob deGrom throws 100 miles an hour, but he's so good because of his command. That's why he's so good. We’ve found ways to create velocity, but we need to create consistency. If everybody could create consistency the way they create velocity, we'd be in business.

When we start to struggle, everyone starts saying, ‘Hey, you need to do X, Y, and Z.’ Well, if you do X, Y, and Z, how do you get consistent? You can't fix five things at once. For example, if we need to rotate better, let's do a drill to rotate better. Now, play catch to check for improvement. We got the adjustment. Good. It's not, ‘Do these five things.’ It's, ‘Go do this one thing.’ Do simple, better.

Building consistency, command.

As pitchers, we throw the ball. It’s what we do. As a player, look at what you can do to make yourself better. Can you cut the ball? Can you ride the ball? Can you run the ball? Well, how are you going to learn how to do that? How are you going to figure that one out? Playing catch. That's where you’ve learned how to throw the ball. Playing catch.

The reality is, if you can get consistent in catch play, you will get more consistent in the bullpen. How you do anything is how you do everything. The more consistent you get, if you can have actionable feedback when you're playing catch, in theory, it will be more automated when you're on the mound, and you won't have to worry about it.

With this ball you can monitor this better: Guys throw in catch play 1,000 or 1,200 balls a week, but they may only throw like 40 breaking balls, and then in a game you want them to have a 40% usage of a breaking ball. How do you expect to have command and feel? If you really want to get consistent, you do the same thing every day. If you're going to throw 100 balls, have your usage percentages be indicative of pitch usage in a game. And track it. I think there's value there.