One of the greatest stories of the 2009 season was that of Zack Greinke's ability to recover from a multitude of mental and mechanical problems early in his career to become one of the most dominant pitchers in the game. After beginning the season with 38 straight scoreless innings, Zack finished his season with the AL Cy Young award; boasting a record of 16-8 on a mediocre Royals team and a 2.16 league leading ERA and 242 k's in 229 innings, Greinke is without a doubt one of the best young pitchers in the game.
We'll look at this video of multiple pitches to see how he does it.
As you can see, the video is of great quality since the clips are from ESPN highlight footage. Unfortunately, some of the footage doesn't show much of his mechanics because of the timing. We'll start at the 27 second mark. Notice as he lifts his leg, there is slight inward rotation in both his front shoulder and front hip. I have no problem with this as long as the pitcher is able to get that front side back toward the targer without over-rotating on the way to release point. Zack utilizes a high hand position for his hand break. Notice how smoothly the hands separate as the back leg bends slightly and the front leg extends forward. (29 seconds into the video) When working with my pitching students, I describe this as "getting into an athletic position." There is a slight bend in the back leg as the elbows work up to that position. At the release point of this clip, you see how well he gets his upper half parallel to the ground and finishes to the target. The best aspect of Greinke's mechanics is the over all fluidity of the movements. There is no herky-jerky movements and the entire body works together to stay tall and powerful at the same time.
At the 48 second, we see a strikeout by Greinke where he gets a guy swinging on a high fastball. I want you to the clip and study his finish. To purposefully elevate a pitch, it is less imperative to finish downhill and bend on that front leg. Instead, you can see how Greinke almost stands up on release. Keep in mind it requires absolute mastery to be able to does this ON PURPOSE and still maintain a quality release point on subsequent pitches.
So as you can see, Zack repeats that fluid delivery quite effectively on ALL of his pitches. Splitter, slider, fastball, all are almost indistiguishable from each other to the viewer and, obviously, the batter.
Go through these clips and others on utube of Mr. Greinke to really see how well he times his body up for release.
Until Next Time!!
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