Doc by Todd Zolecki

Author:Todd Zolecki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2020-03-10T18:16:34+00:00

14. Philly

Rich Dubee thought a lot about the questions he might ask Halladay when they met for the first time at the Phillies’ spring training complex in Clearwater, Florida. After all, what does a pitching coach ask the best pitcher in baseball?

How can he help him?

Dubee figured that might be the best place to start.

“Okay, what do you need from me?” he said. “What can I do for you that you haven’t been able to achieve?”

“I’ve never been able to elevate a fastball,” Halladay said. “And I have no changeup.”

Dubee had a jumping off point. They talked about Halladay’s thought process when he tried to elevate a fastball. They discussed his past attempts to throw a changeup. Halladay estimated he threw no more than 50 changeups in any season, although data shows that he threw anywhere roughly 100–150 per season from 2006 to ’08. Dubee mentioned that Phillies right-hander Kyle Kendrick found success learning a split-changeup, spreading his fingers just beyond the narrowest seams of the baseball and throwing it with a loose hand and wrist. Kendrick learned the changeup because he was a one-pitch pitcher in the early part of his career. He needed an offspeed pitch to survive. Halladay, of course, had three elite-level pitches. He just wanted a fourth one.

“Okay, when I get throwing here we’ll try it,” Halladay said.

Spring training arrived in February 2010 and Halladay tried the grip that Dubee suggested. The pitch cut a little bit in the beginning, so Dubee had Halladay put more pressure on his index finger.

Halladay threw the pitch for a few days. He fell in love with it immediately.

“Hey,” Halladay said. “I’m going to be able to do this.”

“Doc,” Dubee said, “you haven’t even thrown it off a mound yet.”

“No, I’m telling you,” Halladay said. “I’m going to be able to do this.”

“It wasn’t like that deep split,” Halladay told The New York Times’ Tyler Kepner. “[José] Contreras threw a deep split, but for me it was just a comfortable split and I got right there with it and I was basically just pulling right down through it. We came over here and it was probably my second or third bullpen throwing it, all of a sudden, it was like…”

The ball tumbled.

“It was a lot like the one [Roger] Clemens was throwing later,” Halladay said. “I think his was deeper but I remember him starting to throw it in New York. I didn’t remember him having it that much in Toronto, so I picked it up late, I came over here and started throwing it and it was working in like the third bullpen. Once I took that into the season, it was a revival almost. I wasn’t always as on when I was when I was younger, and it gave me more room for error, because I felt I always had at least two pitches that I could throw for a strike, and on the good days I had three and then I felt like I really had an advantage.

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