By CHRIS BRANAM
Valley Press Staff Writer
LANCASTER - Baseball is a game based upon absolutes.
There are three outs in an inning. There are 90 feet separating the three bases and home plate. If a batter gets one hit in every three at-bats, his batting average is .333.
There is a rule book - perhaps the most famous in all of sports - and even an "unwritten" book that determines strategy.
But there is also a facet of the game that can be discussed without a specific right or a wrong. Get 10 pitching coaches together in a room and they might have 10 different ways of describing mechanics.
"When you talk about mechanics, it's really a tough subject," said Jim Slaton, the Lancaster JetHawks' pitching coach. "You look in the big leagues and there are all sorts of different mechanics, different ways of getting into a good throwing motion."
When pitchers and pitching coaches talk about mechanics, they mean the motion that a pitcher uses to throw the ball on each pitch. Solid mechanics are not only the foundation on which the most successful pitchers are based, they also help decrease the chances of injury.
So why doesn't every pitcher throw the same way?
"There's a bunch of ways to skin a cat," said Ron Romanick, the Seattle Mariners' minor league pitching instructor and former Angels pitcher. "There's a lot of philosophies floating around."
Romanick, who says he is more of an "old-school" believer in the aspects of pitching, said that newfangled ways of teaching pitchers how to pitch aren't always correct.
Slaton agrees.
"We try and see if we can get the most out of their delivery," he said. "I don't want to take somebody and say `I'm going to teach you brand-new pitching mechanics and you're going to throw 95 mph. It's not going to happen."
Good mechanics can help elevate a pitcher through the minor leagues and into the majors.
"There are three things that get guys to the big leagues," Romanick said. "Location: Is he going to be able to throw a fastball down in the (strike) zone consistently?; effective velocity range: Can he do that and maintain velocity?; and the third thing is command. That's big-league command, using both sides of the plate with all his pitches.
"If you can do those three things, you're going to be a major league pitcher."
A pitcher's throwing motion can be broken down in any number of ways. Romanick said he looks at four different areas: balance, separation, landing and release.
The first two are the most important. From Grover Cleveland Alexander to Bob Gibson to Roger Clemens, all great pitchers have had great balance.
"If you don't have good balance and you don't have good separation of your hands, you're not going to locate your fastball," Romanick said. "And if you don't do that, you're not going to have consistent velocity.
"Ninety percent of solid mechanics that all great pitchers use are balance and where they separate their hands," he said.
Those things are easy to see for pitching coaches. Slaton said he can detect a potential flaw in a pitcher's motion after only a few pitches.
"You could probably tell right away," he said. "When I look at a pitcher, I look to see if that ball jumps out of his hand, or if it is an effort for him to get the ball out of his hand.
"That's where a lot of the deception comes with your pitches. If (his motion) is nice and easy, and then that ball jumps out of his hand, it's hard for a hitter to time."
The Seattle Mariners' Randy Johnson is a good example of what Slaton is talking about. Johnson doesn't expend that much energy in his motion, but the ball comes flying out of his left hand at 96 mph.
Romanick uses pitchers from the past in his instruction.
"The best advice I ever got is: Find guys who are successful in the major leagues, find guys that are hall of famers. . . and model guys to fit those molds."
Not a single pitcher in the history of the game has come up with what anybody would consider perfect mechanics, but some have come close.
"Nolan Ryan had great mechanics, tremendous mechanics," Romanick said. "Nolan Ryan used to get to the same balance point and his hands came through the same spot, right over the balance point."
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