On July 27, 2018, a piece titled A Conversation With Oakland Pitching Coach Scott Emerson was published here at FanGraphs. Notable about the piece is that a question I’d asked about a particular pitcher, Daniel Mengden, ended up segueing into a variety of related topics. As I noted at the time, Emerson loves discussing his craft.
Six years later, that hasn’t changed. A few days before the All-Star break, I once again sat down with Emerson at Fenway Park. I wanted to ask him about pitch counts — the night before, A’s starter JP Sears threw 114 pitches across 5 2/3 innings in Oakland’s 5-2 win over the Red Sox — and expected our chit-chat would last roughly five minutes. Not surprisingly, we talked a good bit longer. Moreover — again not a surprise — we ended up discussing not just what I’d intended, but other aspects of the art and science of pitching as well.
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David Laurila: JP Sears threw 114 pitches last night. “What is your philosophy on starters going deep into games in terms of pitch count?
Scott Emerson: “For us last night, he had an extra day of rest, and we’re also going into the break, so he’s going to have some rest there. We wanted him to get through the sixth so we could get to [Austin] Adams, [Lucas] Erceg, and [Mason] Miller. We thought that was our best chance through their lineup.
“As for me, I like starters to go as long as they can and as hard as they can. I don’t think 114 is necessarily that high of a pitch count. I thought he was throwing the ball fine. [Mark Kotsay] and I talked about it, and [Sears] felt good about himself, so we tried to get him through [Rafael] Devers. That was the goal.”
Laurila: Generally speaking, how does a pitcher’s arm action and pitching style factor into it?
Emerson: “Well, everybody has their own tall-and-fall [or] drop-and-drive. Everybody has their own style, and their own uniqueness, that they’ve pretty much grown up with. For me, it’s, ‘Are we taking pitchers out of their style to create something totally new and different?’ But if you look at 15 pitches an inning times nine, that’s 135 pitches. For me, if you’re cruising and rolling — you aren’t laboring in any one inning — I don’t see why you can’t go 135.”
Laurila: Paul Skenes was just pulled after seven no-hit innings and 99 pitches. Obviously, the Pirates want to protect his arm…
Emerson: “I don’t know exactly where Skenes is at, but if he hadn’t been up to 110 pitches all year, surely they’re not going to take him to 135. But if he’s been to 110-115 at some point during the season, then 30 more pitches wouldn’t have been too many, in my opinion, for him to chase a no-hitter.”
Laurila: Those things said, long innings are an issue…
Emerson: “Yes. The more pitches you throw in one inning, the more you’re going to tire. When our pitchers throw batting practice at the start of the season, we go two ups at 15. We don’t let guys throw 30 straight pitches, we take them out at 15 so they’re fresh for the next 15.
“If you look at high-leverage relievers, they’re throwing 22-23-pitch innings. You really can’t pitch them two innings, because that’s 44-45 pitches and they’re unavailable the next day. A lot of these guys go out there and burn it like a drag-racing car. They go as fast as they can for one inning, and that can put a lot of stress on the arm, especially if the delivery isn’t very good. So for me, 15 pitches an inning — league average is just over 17 — is fine. I don’t see why you can’t keep going back out there if you’re cruising, and the game allows it.”
Laurila: Is 15 pitches per inning the same now as it was prior to the pitch clock?
Emerson: “The pitch clock study is pretty interesting to me. But you’re getting some foul balls. You get 30 seconds in between hitters. I don’t think 15 pitches with a pitch clock is that big of a deal. Now, if you’re getting into 25-26 [pitches] and you’ve got to hurry it up, that could be tiring. But I like the pitch clock. It keeps guys on their toes. It gets these guys throwing strikes and keeps the game moving along.”
Laurila: How much biomechanical information do you get on pitchers in game?
Emerson: “We don’t get the biomechanics during the game. We do get release heights, and obviously spin rates, horizontal and vertical movements. If the spin rates or velocity are going down, or the release height is going down, they’re probably tiring somewhere. I can take a look at the iPad if I see a drop in release height, or if I can see the legs dropping or the posture changing. The iPad during the game is very useful.”
Laurila: What do you typically see with Sears? Is he pretty consistent throughout a game?
Emerson: “Yes. From our biomechanical data that I get from Ethan Stewart, Sears pretty much maintains the same delivery throughout the game.”
Laurila: What information do you get after games?
Emerson: “We get the kinematic sequencing, the front leg blocking, the horizontal abduction — the AB deduction of the elbow — pelvis rotational speeds. Every biomechanical piece out there. Our biomechanist gives me a good report on each guy, what they’re doing stride length, stride width, whether they’re landing closed or more open.
“We’re trying to get them to repeat their deliveries the best they can each and every outing. If something changes we flag it. We have postgame meetings with our starters after every game, and with our relievers after every three or four games. We compile the data and give them the information.”
Laurila: How much variation in the data do you see among individual pitchers? I assume there are outliers?
Emerson: “Yeah, there are plenty of outliers. Can the guy keep his posture down the slope? How long is his stride, or how short is his stride? Is his stride open or is it closed? Where is his elbow height? How fast is his pelvis moving? Is he holding his pelvis? Is it tilted? Is his trunk tilted with his pelvis? There is what we call ‘stacked,’ where the pelvis is under the trunk and they’re moving in a lateral [direction]. There are outliers, but there are also a lot of similarities in pitchers. Are the hips rotating before the shoulder? Most big league pitchers are in sequence pretty well.
“The more you can repeat your delivery, the more you’re going to repeat a release point. When you repeating a release point with all of your pitches, you offer deception and you’re going to throw more strikes.”
Laurila: Deception can be hard to quantify…
Emerson: “I’ve always thought — and I still believe — that deception is having the ability to throw all of your pitches with the same pace to your delivery, with the same arm slot to your delivery. Some guys on their breaking ball will change their posture. They’ll raise their torso and you can see the ball pop out a little bit. For me, deception is coming out of the same window on a consistent basis with the ability to change speeds.
“I like slower guys to move faster. It makes their slow stuff better coming out of their hand, and it can make a below-average fastball look a little bit faster because they’re moving faster. Deception is a huge part of the game, and it’s that tunneling effect of having the same release point on every pitch.”
Laurila: Have your opinions on any specific pitches evolved?
Emerson: “Well, it’s really hard for soft-tossers to throw sweepers left-on-right or right-on-right. In my opinion, those can be hanging breaking balls because it’s a softer ball coming into the barrel. If you can get the gyro going for those guys, I think that’s really important. For hard throwers, a sweeper is maybe 15 [mph] off their fastball, but if they’re throwing 100, that thing is 85. The change of speed is really good.
“I’ve always been a fan of splits, or spreaders, or fosh changeups. Those kill a lot of vert and kill a lot of spin. A lot of our guys in the past have thrown what might be classified as changeups, but they’re more spreaders or split-fingers. The bottom falls out a little bit better. It’s a good way to take the rpm off the ball.”
Laurila: I know that one of your starters is about to throw a bullpen. Is there anything else we touch on before you head out there?
Emerson: “Everyone thinks that everybody is chasing velocity, but I think that everybody has always been chasing velocity. I pitched in high school, junior college, and in the minor leagues, and I always tried to throw harder. I don’t think guys are getting injured because they’re trying to throw harder; I think there are a lot more guys who are throwing harder with bad deliveries who are getting injured. They come out, as I said earlier, like a drag car going down the lane as fast as it can. If you jerk that steering wheel, that drag car is going to go out of control. If you hit a bump in the road, that drag car is going to go out of control. Same thing for a pitcher. If he’s got bad mechanics and is trying to throw 100 mph — he is throwing 100 mph — right then and there you have an injury risk waiting to happen.
“I know that guys are getting bigger, stronger, and faster because the weight training programs are a lot better. ASMI and Glenn Fleisig had reports a long time ago that the ligaments and tendons could take up to 10 times as long to support a developing muscle. So, when you start seeing guys get really strong really fast, that’s maybe a red flag. But again, everybody has always tried to chase velo, yet we’re kind of just kind of blaming it on that.
“We’re also throwing more spin. Fastball usage is going down and we’re spinning the baseball more. Yeah, the studies say that the fastball is the highest risk on the elbow, but I always ask, ‘What about when you’re tired? What’s the highest risk there?’ Would you rather throw a fastball with bad mechanics or a slider with bad mechanics? I’m going to say fastball, because if you get around a bad slider, and you put your elbow at risk on that bad slider, that’s an injury risk waiting to happen.”
Laurila: Bad mechanics can lead to injuries…
Emerson: “Yes, and it’s not just when you get tired. It can be bad overall mechanics. There are guys that head-whack, or they’re not on line, They’re chasing velo by having a higher effort level than they control the ball with. I want our guys to go as fast as they can under control; they can control their bodies and from that control their ball. Some guys are moving so dang fast that they don’t really control the ball, they’re just throwing it in the box. And more times than not, you look up and they’re throwing more sliders than fastballs because they have to spin it in the zone, because they don’t know where the fastball is going.”
Laurila: You want pitchers to improve their mechanics, but at the same time, you don’t necessarily want to get them too far away from how they naturally move. Is that correct?
Emerson: “I mean, yeah. Everybody has a way they should be moving. In today’s game, too many people are trying to make guys move a certain way, and that way might be detrimental. You don’t want to take a guy who should be tall-and-fall and make him drop-and-drive, and you don’t want to take a guy who should be a drop-and-drive pitcher and make him a tall-and-fall. You’ve got to find out which way is best for that guy to be able to throw the most strikes, and hopefully get the most velo out of what that delivery has for him.
“I think a lot of people misunderstand biomechanics. Biomechanics is how you’re moving, it’s not how somebody else moves and trying to create that person within you. What you want is to take the biomechanical data of a pitcher and compare him to himself. When you start comparing guys to other guys and forcing them to do something totally different, that’s yet another injury risk.”
Laurila: It’s hard to have a good pitching staff when you don’t have a healthy pitching staff…
Emerson: “Exactly.”
