It's funny game. You look at the Angels lineup and scratch your head. Meanwhile., The Yankees are tied for first now with a lineup of second and third stringers and guys they signed off the street the day before Opening day. But they are getting great pitching
Speaking of fast... :shock: There is a guy on the Longhorn board I visit who claims his 11 y/o son can throw a 75mph fast ball. Is he full of it?
In a word, yes. I've seen too many of that kind of father over the years. Their early braggadocio more often than not comes back to bite them in the butt when their kid gets older and it becomes obvious he's not the phenom hid dad claimed him to be when he was a pre-teen. My son knows a dad who a couple of years ago claimed to anyone who would listen that is son's 3rd grade (yes, that's right) basketball team was one of the top 3 third grade teams in the country. The guy became an instant laughing stock. Most really good HS freshmen can pitch in the 70s. I watch a lot of 12 yr. old LL games and 14 yr. old travel team games. I've seen a couple of 14 yr. olds who may be pitching in the low 70s. I've seen no 12 yr. olds even close. I certainly have no way of knowing about the guy's son, but I'll bet the ranch that his kid - IF he's an 11 yr. old phenom - is pitching low to mid 60s at best.
Is it possible? Yes. Have I seen it? Yes. Is it even somewhat likely? No. Sid pretty much covered it here. When you get into that 70-75mph range in LL age, that's the MLB equivalent to a 96 to 98mph fastball. Now stop and think of how many guys throw that, even in the major leagues? They've developed into that and matured. There are very few guys who throw that hard, period. I've seen very mature 11-12 year old kids throw into the 70s. If I had to quantify it, I'd say about 98% of them are the Danny Almonte types (who are actually older than that, but have BS birth certificates) or they are the kid who is as big and fast as he'll ever be at an early age. That leaves the 2%, which is right about where the numbers are for guys who will go on into the higher levels of baseball (meaning post pony league). What the penis envy mph fiends don't understand is that even if that kid is throwing that hard, there are real monsters in the dark waiting for them. The kids I had in Ontario were all batting cage monsters (even the poor barrio and ghetto kids). Everyone had a batting cage in their back yard, or someone on their street had one. You literally could not throw the ball past our lineup, and I could go way deep into the bench before I could find a kid who would struggle against even a high 80s, low 90s fastball. Our leadoff hitters would start every game by destroying the batters box from back to front. Most people assume we're doing that to get deeper in the box. The reality is that our first 7 hitters were batting illegally (allegedly) in front of the plate. We'd do that to take away the breaking ball since that's the only thing that could ever beat us. If you got us with an umpire who would enforce the batters box and a little kid with 31 flavors of curveball, we were dead.. Fortunately, only JOCO (seriously, only JOCO nationally) ever realized this and thus we'd struggle with them. We once faced 3 future major league pitchers in consecutive games who never recorded an out against us. Future MLB closer Chad Cordero once went more than a season and probably 7 or 8 appearances against us without ever getting out of an inning. So let him talk, it'll catch up to him. If you enjoy train wrecks like I do, just pull up a comfy chair.
I fully support Corey's take on the situation. To carry the 70s-80s part of the discussion a bit further, I would say most really good HS seniors throw in the low to mid 80s. When my son was a senior in HS, we had a pitcher who threw real heat. I thought he definitely threw in the 90s. A long-time MLB scout for our area came to a couple of games and put the gun on him. Mid 80s. A year earlier, I saw Ben Van Ryn, who was the #2 pick in that summer's MLB draft by the Expos. It had been publicly said that his fastball was in the 90s. To me as a regular watcher of HS baseball, he was a rocket man. I've never seen a HS pitcher throw that fast, ever. I say all this to emphasize Corey's comparison of 75 mph at 44 ft. to 90+ mph at 60'6". 12 yr. olds....sure, maybe. 11 yr. olds....probably not.
:roll: An 11 y/o who can throw 75 mph? I've never seen that. There's a huge physical difference between 11 y/o's and 12 y/o's. Exactly how did he measure this? The Stalker Pro Baseball Speed Gun runs right around $1,400. I doubt that he had anything like that. There are cheapo "radar" guns as low as $95 bucks that don't really measure anything. Maybe he bought one of those. For an absolute certainty, if he paid less than $500 he bought a toy. Remember, even in MLB, there's often a 1-5 mph difference in the stadium guns, which are supposed to be the best. Sid and Corey have nailed it. This "coach" sound like a nice guy, who loves his son, and has no friggen idea what he's doing...
Back in the day there was kid in our LL that threw hard at age 12. I mean hard. My eyes were my radar gun. The next year, at age 13, he was throwing from 60'6" . That extra 14' was all it took and the kids he wa dominating were hitting him like he was a batting tee.
Wow, you guys are non-believers...today's kids are beasts...and it comes from this generation of parents....now take me for example....I was voted All City Block 4 years in a row, and now today I have created a left handed reliever who averages 94 MPH....on his changeup.....and he's only 14......
Here's some information for all of you home-gamers out there... Lowest ERA for a pitcher in the first 1,000 innings of his career: 1. Mariano Rivera 2. Hoyt Wilhelm 3. Clayton Kershaw 4. Whitey Ford 5. Sandy Koufax
I was watching Rivera finish off the Mariners last night. He is 16 for 16 in saves and his ERA is 1.56. At age 43 he is hitting 93mph and he can put his pitchedon the head of a pin with a ton of movement. He broke four bats in the three batters he faced... he is like a wood chipper with that cutter. He may be the best pitcher I have ever seen because he has been consistently great from one end of his career to the other on the biggest stage in baseball. Better yet, absolutely flawless character on and off the field. Even the guys he dominates love him.
I got him in an automated draft in my fantasy baseball league. I wondered if I should keep him, coming off his injury. I'm certainly glad I did.
On tonight's Dodger post-game show, Kevin Kennedy (player-manager-broadcaster) was talking about what makes Rivera so great. He was analyzing the pathetic performance of Dodger reliever Kenley Jansen, who threw 21 straight cutters until Atlanta bombed back-to-back jacks to ruin Capuano's masterpiece. He pointed out that you can't just keep throwing the same pitch over and over no matter who you are. He further pointed out that Rivera can get away with an unusually high number of cutters, because he has extremely large hands, with a freakishly long middle finger. According to Kennedy, who knows and who has caught both pitchers, the only other man with hands and a middle finger like that was Koufax... His ultimate point being: if your name isn't Koufax or Rivera, you had better move the ball around and change pitches to every batter... BTW- Mattingly is now in big trouble. His battery tonight was a rookie catcher with a former catcher on the mound and he allowed them to call their own pitches... Twenty-one straight cutters with a one run lead in the 8th... I can see Corey choking as he read that...