Phillies pitchers attempting something new this year

Pitching philosophies are constantly changing it seems. Wee all well aware of how much the Pittsburgh Pirates loved to use the sinker during their playoff runs of the early 2010. Wee now seeing how much spin and the ability to measure it has led to teams adopting a certain thinking about how pitching should be done. Part of the previous coaching regime philosophy when it comes to pitching was that the higher the spin rate https://www.philadelphiagearstore.com/Tim_Mccarver_Face_Mask-470, the better. High spin rate is en vogue these days, meaning that part of what Gabe Kapler and Chris Young loved so much was to throw those four seam fastballs at, or near, the top of the zone, then follow with high spin curveballs down to either grab the bottom or cause batters to chase the pitch out of the strike zone. While that type of philosophy might be sound in its logic, there is also the idea that you need those types of pitchers in order to fully implement that thinking into the gameplanning. Zach Eflin might have something to say about that.Last year, Joe Girardi and Bryan Price came in and tried to teach to do what you do best. For someone like Eflin, that meant leaning into his best pitches more often, which explains the huge spike in sinker usage in 2020. It something so simple (use your best pitches more) that it makes one wonder why teams need to continue reinventing the game https://www.philadelphiagearstore.com/Mauricio_Llovera_Hoodie-152. Unfortunately, with Price departure, there may have been a fear that whoever was going to replace him would get away from that line of thinking.With Caleb Cotham coming in, the team looked like on the surface that they were leaning into the concepts of pitch design a little more since Cotham is a well known devotee to the methods and teaching of Driveline Baseball. It not as though Kapler and Young were not disciples of that group as well, but it felt that they were so devoted to one line of thinking https://www.philadelphiagearstore.com/Alec_Bohm_Flag-187, they were going to force their pitchers to adopt the igh four seam/high spin curveball thinking whether they were going to be successful or not. Where we can already see a difference in them and in Cotham is in an idea so simple, so obvious, it sometime easy to forget, yet has led to success through their first four games (yes, yes, yes small sample size).Throw strikes! Throw them early and throw them often!Weird, right?This type of thinking, the basic tenet of pitching is something that has eluded the team for these past few years, but so far in the early going looks like it is manifesting itself in the games.