Lou Marson Spills Secrets of the Phillies!

by dajafi on Nov 23, 2009 2:59 PM EST Comment 10 comments

Well, not exactly. But the former farmhand does share a couple interesting tidbits in this Baseball Prospectus Q&A:

David Laurila: Lou, since coming over, have you found many differences in how the Phillies and Indians do things in regard to pitching?

Lou Marson: One big thing I noticed when I got here is the pitchers weren't long tossing. They only go out to 120 feet. That was something I noticed right away, because in Philadelphia, they have all the pitchers long toss from, what, 190 feet? They go pretty far, and try to maintain that throughout the season. You know, it's just different opinions on everything, and that's one thing I noticed, that we weren't long tossing as much. We were just kind of playing catch, and getting loose, and going from there.

DL: How about pitch usage, especially coming up through the system? Some teams emphasize the importance of the changeup more than others.

Marson: The Phillies were definitely like that. [Pitchers] had to throw a certain percentage of changeups a game. Philly definitely did that. Going to [Carlos] Carrasco, I think that's why his changeup is one of his best pitches, because of how much they made him throw it coming up through the system.

Maybe the prevalence of long-tossing helps explain why the Phils haven't had so many young pitchers, starters in particular, getting hurt over the last few years compared to the late '90s. Not to jinx it, and there have been obvious exceptions like Scott Mathieson, but the fact that they got Brett Myers, Gavin Floyd and Cole Hamels (as well as less-heralded prospects like Happ and Kendrick) to the majors and kept them relatively healthy through the "injury nexus" has struck me for awhile as an unheralded success of the organization.
The organizational emphasis on the change explains a lot as well, including perhaps Kyle Kendrick's progress in 2009... and makes me wonder if his 2007 promotion and initial flukish success wasn't a hidden negative, in that it probably robbed him of a year in the high minors when the pitch would have developed. Hopefully his remedial season in Lehigh Valley did the trick.

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A few more

Don’t forget Randy Wolf and Ryan Madson. I’m sure there are others, but both Wolf and Madson made it up without much by way of injuries (although they’ve had them in the majors).

by David S. Cohen on Nov 23, 2009 3:14 PM EST reply actions 0 recs

I dunno about Wolf

He was not managed well in his first few seasons. 198 innings between the minors and majors at age 22, 206 at age 23, and he was a high-strikeout, high-walk, high-WHIP guy. I think there’s a causal connection between that and his later struggles with injury and ineffectiveness.

by SethC on Nov 24, 2009 5:51 AM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Cole Hamles

Didn’t come up healthy at all. He’s been mostly healthy here in Philly, but in the minors he was the pitchers equivolant of Marian Gaborik.

by philiafan14364 on Nov 24, 2009 11:31 AM EST reply actions 0 recs

Who the hell

is Marian Gaborik?

Hamels had issues in the minors, but only once that I recall was it anything pitching-related. He broke his hand in a bar fight or some such; then he had an arm problem in (IIRC) the spring of 2004 and was shut down for the rest of the year. I think it speaks well to the Phillies training staff that they acted assertively to prevent the injury from escalating to the point that it would require surgery.

Since he’s been in the majors (which, I think, is what David was referring to), Hamels has been healthy aside from a brief stint on the DL in his rookie season, which turned out to be nothing.

by phatj on Nov 24, 2009 12:12 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

hockey player for the NY Rangers

Ya, Hamels hasn’t been bad with injuries in majors; his injuries were in the minors at the time making it seem as if he was going to be an injury riddled player throughout his career.

by Ant on Nov 24, 2009 1:52 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

this

Hamels spent a lot of time on the DL in the minors, but it turned out that this was incredibly wise: it saved him from turning relatively minor injuries into the shoulder-reconstruction variety.

Admittedly, at the time I thought it was postponing the inevitable, but he’s going to turn 26 next month and seems physically okay. Big win for the Phils’ training and development teams.

by dajafi on Nov 24, 2009 3:34 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

I read somewhere that his wife wipped him into shape, by forcing him to take better care of his body. Whatever works!

by philiafan14364 on Nov 24, 2009 3:47 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs

Exactly. Which just goes to further support your original point.

Having a pitcher be a horse while he’s in the minors is nothing to brag about. One: that isn’t the purpose of a farm system. And two: it probably isn’t attributable to anything you did, since pitcher abuse and smart handling of pitchers both take a while to show their effects.

Having a pitcher start his pro career with fragile tendencies but develop into someone who doesn’t get hurt says more about your organization than anything else could.

by taco pal on Nov 25, 2009 2:40 PM EST up reply actions 0 recs