When Brent Strom Speaks Pitching, People Listen

The legendary pitching coach never fails to inform or entertain

Diamondbacks pitching coach Brent Strom sat down to address the media this morning ahead of the NLCS game three contest against the Phillies. Here are the highlights from his media session

Q: Are you emphasizing pitching inside a little these past couple of days to get the Phillies hitters moving their feet?

"Try about two years. It's been an emphasis for two years, okay? Obviously it is a factor in opening up the outer part of the plate. It's not a thing that's relatively new to baseball, I don't think. It's just pitchers have to have the will to do it and whatever you want to call it to do so."

Q: Brandon Pfaadt had success with the changeup against the Dodgers. 

"The changeup has been a work in progress for Brandon. He found it in the Dodger game. That's going to be a key obviously to both lefties and righties. It plays to both. Again, he is going to have to do some work to -- these are not uneducated hitters. They study our tendencies and things like that. So what we need to do is be a little bit unpredictable in our times that we use the changeup and when we use our fastball or the breaking ball below the zone."

 Q: On Pfaadt moving from the third base to the first base side of the rubber

"My reasoning for doing it, from his arm slot and the way his ball moves, what I was trying to do was to create the illusion of the ball riding in on right-hand hitters that would look like a strike as it enters home plate. And then play that with the breaking ball that would then separate as it gets to about the halfway point, and then you have the changeup down under. When he was throwing from the far third base side of the rubber, the angle was such that he had to pull balls and that didn't really match up with his other pitches."

On the importance of fastball location changing looks for the hitter. 

"I've talked at length about here, is that a 90-mile-an-hour fastball that is coming into a right-hand hitter is a lot faster to the hitter than a 90-mile-an-hour fastball that's down and away. They're two separate pitches, completely separate.The gun may say 90, but to the hitter, there's a huge difference in the two. What we're trying to do is -- it's not scientific. It's speed people up. Slow them down. Speed people up, slow them down. That's the essence."

Q: Have the rule changes had any major impacts on pitchers

"Everybody thought that the pitchers, especially the veteran pitchers, would fatigue and not have time between pitches and things like that. I have not seen that with our guys."

Strom went on to say the only issue they had early on was not having time to call the correct pitch when pitcher and catcher were not on the same page, but that's been cleaned up. He ended by pointing out that slow paced pitchers are not seen in the game now. 

"There have been some in the past that have used almost a half a minute in between pitches. Those guys are gone. They're not here anymore."

Q: What are the pros and cons of trying to use a pitcher on short rest in the postseason

Well, if I called Sandy Koufax, he would say three days are too long. He went on two days' rest, and won the seventh game of the '65 World Series. But those days are gone also.If we can win today and then we roll tomorrow, we'll play tomorrow tomorrow and see what it brings. I think it would be asking too much at this point in time to ask Zac to come back after 80-plus pitches, and then Merrill obviously would have regular rest with the off day if we're fortunate to get back to Philadelphia.We're not looking too far ahead. I'm looking at 2 o'clock today and see by 5 o'clock where we're at.

Brent Strom is a treasure. The Diamondbacks were both smart and lucky to be able to lure him out of "retirement" when he left Houston.