Tim Lincecum vs Roy Oswalt—The Battle Of The Small Power Pitchers

Tonight we have another great matchup. We will see Giants’ rookie Tim Lincecum pitch against the Houston Astros’ Roy Oswalt for the second time.

Tim Lincecum is listed at 5’10″ 170 lbs and throws upper nineties and has hit 100 mph. Roy Oswalt is listed at 6′ 185 and also throws upper nineties. Most say Oswalt is closer to 5’10″.

However, what is interesting is that both pitchers are considered small by major league standards, and yet both have as good a stuff and velocity or better as any major league starter 6″ taller and 50 lbs heavier. That includes Roger Clemens.

Lincecum would be considered skinny as well. And yet his stuff matches up with Nolan Ryan who was 6’2″ 212 lbs. Lincecum was taken as the 10th pick by the Giants last year. My understanding is that many of the teams who picked earlier did not take him because he was too small. I ask too small for what—football, the strong man competition or power lifting?

Oswalt was drafted later for the same reason. Too small. Major league baseball has the belief that smaller pitchers like Lincecum or Oswalt are not as durable as bigger guys. Where might I ask did they first come up with that idea…that has absolutely no basis in fact. None. What does size have to do with durability when throwing a 5 oz. baseball?

Actually how much work is required to pitch a 5 oz. ball for 100 pitches during a game. Not much. Actually, a ditch digger does more work in fifteen minutes than a major league starter does during a complete 2½ hour game. Do the numbers.

Each pitch takes three seconds. 100 pitches takes 300 seconds or 5 minutes. That’s right, a major league pitcher exerts himself for five minutes per game. What does he do the rest of the time? Stand around, get the sign, walk back behind the mound, walk to and from the dugout, and sit between innings.

Pitching is far more mentally fatiguing than physically fatiguing. But coaches and sports writers continue to discuss the “work loads” of major league starting pitchers. What work loads? Five minutes every five days. Then they do some running in between starts and usually will throw once or twice from the mound.

However, during side-day bullpen sessions most pitchers are only throwing about fifty pitches. Why so few since they are required to throw at least 100 in a game? Because coaches believe they should save their arms for the game. Does that make any sense at all? Not to athletes in other sports.

Ask Michael Phelps, the worlds fastest swimmer who swims 360 days a year and was tested as the weakest swimmer ever tested. Let’s see…pitchers are expected to pitch 100 pitches in a game and to do that they practice throwing fifty in practice. The question is how does their body stay conditioned to throw 100 in a game when it is only throwing 50 in practice? It doesn’t.

So pitchers fatigue in games after fifty pitches and therefor their pitching arms have to do more work because their bodies fatigue because they are not fit to pitch. Then they try to get lost velocity from their arms. Guess what that produces? More nice cars and vacation homes for orthopedic surgeons.

With this type of conditioning routine for pitchers, which is quite common, how does a bigger pitcher remain more durable? Bigger muscles? More fat? Taller? Bigger feet? What is it that makes bigger pitchers more durable? Baseball does not know? Sports writers who write about this foolishness don’t know. Don’t they at least ask themselves the question? Aren’t writers supposed to be researchers as well?

So with no first hand knowledge or evidence to support their beliefs, baseball continues to wait and draft smaller pitchers later in the draft because of this misinformation. And they pay less attention to the smaller pitchers in the minor leagues. I would estimate that every major leauge organization has the equivalent of five to ten first round draft pitchers if they knew what to look for. Are there any of the first nine major league teams who missed out on drafting Tim Lincecum who regret it now? Maybe…maybe not.

They might still be saying—but watch what happens as his workload increases and see how he is pitching after the All Star break? He’ll fatigue as the season wears on. Why would he fatigue? With one 100 pitched game a week, some running and conditioning, and with even two side-day bullpens of 50 pitches, he will work or exert himself each week maybe a total of fiteeen to twenty minutes…maybe a half hour.

What if he works extra hard and spends 60 minutes actually exerting himself every five days? How does any professional athlete fatigue doing one hour of work every five days? Has baseball ever watched professional tennis? Now those guys are conditioned. How? By playing and conditioning. They play sometimes every day for 2-3 hours at full bore game intensity. That’s how they stay fit to play all year long. They do not save it for the match.

Tim Lincecum will only fatigue if he follows typical baseball advice by pitching less and less as the season wears on. He will stay strong and fit if he continues to throw a higher volume of bulllpens in between games similar to Red Sox Matsuzaka, who likes to throw 100-150 pitch bullpens…which he has been doing his entire career.

But American baseball is dominated by foolish beliefs that are killing pitchers left and right. How does Tim Lincecum or Roy Oswalt throw upper nineties being a bit less than 6 feet tall? Lincecum looks like the bat boy and yet he is throwing missles by seasoned major league hitters. His curveball may be the best in major league baseball right now and one of the best ever at up to 80-85 mph.

If baseball coaches could answer that question then there would be far more high school, college, minor league and major league pitchers throwing another 6-12 mph.

Now here’s the answer to how Tim Lincecum and Roy Oswalt are able to throw upper nineties. They both have explosive deliveries that build forward momentum into a very long stride equal to or more than their height. You see no slow movements or hesitation is their deliveries.

Watch other pitchers, including many major league pitchers and you will see “slow and controlled”…lots of hesitation and less than 100% of their height stride length. All of those features kill their velocity potential. The basic fact is that pitching velocity is all about the body building the energy and as Tim Lincecum has stated—his arm is along for the ride…not the source of power.

When baseball gets that hitters will be in big trouble. And then watch injuries drop. Neither long toss, weight training, or throwing weighted balls can improve pitching velocity. Only moving the body faster, building more momentum into a longer stride will help.

There are other mechanical features that are important but I will save that for another article. When Pedro Martinez added twenty pounds about five or six years ago and went from 170- 193 lbs, his fastball went from upper nineties to upper eighties to low nineties and he got injured. What happened? He could not move his body as fast, so his arm slowed down. He started to try to get velocity from his arm when it is the body that produces velocity. So much for hitting the weight room to get bigger and stronger.

So tonight we will watch two small pitchers, one even skinny, throwing missles by millionaire and seasonsed major league hitters. I’ll bet Barry Bonds has mumbled to himself many times about how happy he is not to be facing the “batboy like skinny bodied” Tim Lincecum who has better stuff than 99% of the pitchers that Bonds will face this year.

So if you are a parent of a small and skinny pitcher who loves pitching and has dreams, I hope you will not squelch those dreams because you have been listening to baseball. Pull up your bootstraps and teach your son an explosive delivery building momentum into a long stride. Then sit back and watch them line up when he too is throwing missles by big strong hitters. Tim Lincecum is not a fluke. Thumbs up for the small skinny pitcher.