I'm not sure I understand this, but Brad Lidge has decided that his recent come down from unhittable to hitable is due to his using the Windup some of the time. So he is going to stop doing it and pitch only from the stretch. According to this article almost all closers pitch solely from the stretch, I don't really understand why this is so, I always thought that the choice had everything to do with baserunners or lack of baserunners. So why is it different for closers than starters? Here's a good article on Lidge and his decision. ________________________________________________________________ Lidge finds his villain: the windup By RICHARD JUSTICE Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle This isn't about Albert Pujols or Scott Podsednik or any of the problems Brad Lidge had last fall. This is simpler. He doesn't have command of his fastball. Until he gets it, it's going to be ugly. It's not about stuff or confidence. He's hitting 97 mph consistently. His slider has bite. His confidence seems fine. None of us can get inside his head, but there's nothing to indicate a problem. If Lidge lacked confidence, he would be timid in the strike zone. He's not. He has also talked to enough closers to understand that stuff happens. Mariano Rivera and Dennis Eckersley had October problems, too. They kept going, and so will Lidge. He may already have found a solution. After the Astros' 5-4 victory over Washington on Monday, he said he would stop throwing from the windup. "Put it this way: It has been a long time coming," he said. "I've had a lot of negative reinforcement." Following Qualls' lead Just as teammate Chad Qualls did last season, Lidge will throw every pitch from the stretch. "All my bad pitches have been from the windup," he said. Hitters have reached base four times in seven plate appearances when Lidge pitches from a full windup. They're 2-for-11 when he works from the stretch. "Almost no other reliever throws from the windup," he said. "It's just not something you practice that much. It's a different set of mechanics." Throwing from the stretch allows Lidge to slow his body down and depend on fewer checkpoints for things such as his arm slot and shoulder action. Tall pitchers seem vulnerable to losing track of their mechanics. Ward isn't fooled Beginning tonight in San Francisco, Lidge will have one less thing to worry about. He left a slider in Daryle Ward's wheelhouse in the 10th inning Monday, and Ward hit it out of the park. "That guy has my number," Lidge said. "It seems like no matter what I throw him, he gets a hit." Morgan Ensberg bailed Lidge out with a game-tying dinger in the bottom of the 10th, and the Astros won it 5-4 in the 12th. Even after 238 big-league appearances, even after establishing himself as one of baseball's best closers, Lidge remains a work in progress. He was among baseball's best closers last season before a pair of postseason defeats. Some have been quick to look for a larger meaning. Like permanent psychological scarring. There's a textbook description for this kind of analysis: stupid. But questions will linger until Lidge gets through the opening weeks of this season. Because he has allowed runners in each of his first three appearances, there is added fuel. There is also the insistence by manager Phil Garner regarding pitch selection. Garner wants fewer sliders, more fastballs. He wants Lidge to be the pitcher he was when he arrived three years ago. That Brad Lidge set hitters up with the fastball and put them away with the slider. Every year, he has thrown more and more sliders. One reason he keeps returning to the slider is that it might be the most unhittable pitch in baseball. Yet it taxes his arm and eventually could shorten his career. Lidge is also blessed with a terrific fastball. Garner wants him to understand that hitters can't hit it when it's well-placed. To his credit, Lidge has thrown the fastball even when he has had trouble command- ing it. This he must do. Seasons unfold so gradually that the bigger picture sometimes takes months to come into focus. And sometimes the first snapshots are false ones. That's true of small issues such as Lidge and of larger ones like the evolution of an entire team. Until Monday, Qualls was the only serious concern the Astros had. He began the day with a 23.14 ERA, then threw two perfect innings to cut it nearly in half (12.46). The Astros need Qualls. With Dan Wheeler and Lidge behind him, he's the guy who can make a decent bullpen one of the National League's best. After Qualls was torched Saturday, Garner walked into the training room and tapped the reliever on the shoulder. He said he was only going to give him 75 more chances to get straightened out. "I told him he was going to have a whopping ERA if something didn't change," Garner said. "He's our seventh-inning guy. He's going to keep going out there in the seventh." Qualls took the chat for the vote of confidence it was. "I went out there (Monday) and just told myself I wasn't going to hang a slider," he said. With Lidge and Qualls on the road to getting straightened out, with the middle of the order (Lance Berkman and Morgan Ensberg) on track, and with the rotation a work in progress, the Astros couldn't be happier about a 5-2 start. And there's only 96 percent of the season to go. "We're not playing our best ball," Garner said, "but we still managed to have a nice homestand." richard.justice@chron.com