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Question about Pedro's intelligence

Bret Sabermetric Apr 13 2006 10:26 AM

Everybody (especially Beningo ranting on the subject just now) agrees that Pedro's excellence on the mound is helped out by his consummate intelligence about how to pitch, using the ballpark he's in, understanding opposing batter's psychology, getting inside people's heads, etc. That granted, I was wondering if Pedro tries to pass along his thinking to his teammates, and whether doing so would be wise or unwise. Example: it's widely agreed that his plan last night was to get the Nats to hit the ball into the air a lot and make a lot of 380-foot flyouts. Brilliant. But that strategy is more effective for Pedro if the other Mets' pitchers are not doing the same exact thing. If the Nats are sick and tired of being teased into swinging at pitches that turn into flyouts, and if Pedro has a plan for continuing to get them to swing at such pitches, obviously Pedro is more effective if they're unused to seeing the strategy. OTOH, if Pedro has a brilliant game plan, and he shares it with his teammates, they have a better chance of winning their games, and getting Pedro into the post-season, etc. What's your sense? If you're Pedro and yoiu come up with a strategy that you think will work for you, do you try to spread it around, or do you dummy up and let your teammates look out for themselves? Again, I'm not really specifying the flyball strategy last night, which might have worked with Pedro's repertoire better than say Bannister's, so much as I'm wondering how much smart players try to show their teammates their plans, which in turn might make their plan less baffling to opponents.

Hillbilly Apr 13 2006 10:33 AM

Pedro's a smart guy. He got a 100% on his last exam! [url]http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/408528p-345806c.html[/url]

Centerfield Apr 13 2006 10:37 AM

Great question Bret. Add to that, that when you share your strategy, someone you share that strategy with could end up in the other dugout. For instance, say Pedro feels particularly talkative last season and shares his gameplan with a teammate in earshot of Marlon Anderson. Or, to take it another level, Pedro tells Marlon Anderson what pitchers are going to do to try to get him out. Now he's on the other side. Tough to say what the right thing to do here is.

Rotblatt Apr 13 2006 10:39 AM

I think you share your game plans. And I'm pretty sure that Petey does share them, in fact, although I could be wrong. I'm not sure if it makes a difference to Petey if someone else has used "his" game plan, because he's so good at adjusting based on what the hitters try to do. His game plan last night was going in and challenging hitters and watching them try to hit home runs and fail due to the huge park. That game plan worked brilliantly until the bases were loaded yesterday. So he adjusted, deciding that he needed to strike out Vidro. So he ponied up and succeeded in getting Vidro to swing and miss at a high hard one out of the strike zone. Next up, Guillen. Petey needed a ground ball. If someone remembers the exact sequence of pitches, please post them, but I seem to recall Petey working Guillen inside for the first time, then getting Guillen to ground out on maybe a changeup down? At any rate, my point is that Petey will change his plan based on what's going on around him, and it's that ability to think strategically that's earned him the "smart" moniker. Sharing his initial gameplan with fellow pitchers isn't nearly as important, IMO, as sharing the thought process he uses when the situation changes.

Yancy Street Gang Apr 13 2006 10:44 AM

I remember reading, I think in Keith Hernandez' book If at First, that pitchers share tips with other pitchers, and that hitters share tips with other hitters, but that pitchers and hitters don't share with each other. There appears to be a distinction between potential ex-teammates that you'll be facing one-on-one and those that will simply be sitting in the other dugout.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 13 2006 10:45 AM

Rotblatt wrote: Sharing his initial gameplan with fellow pitchers isn't nearly as important, IMO, as sharing the thought process he uses when the situation changes. Well, yeah, but I'm including that. You or I could say "It's a big ballpark, try to get them to hit balls in the air." That's not the brilliant part. The brilliant part is exactly what you're talking about. I'm saying that Pedro could conceivably have a two hour session with the pitching staff before every series, outlining his brilliance in dealing with the hitters, the ballpark, the game situations ,the backup plans, etc. and they'll probably get a little smarter as a result of that. But it might hurt his game if other pitchers are using some of the same principles. So what do you do? Share or not share? is it part of Pedro's job to help the other pitchers with his insight or is it proprietary insight?

TheOldMole Apr 13 2006 10:48 AM

I would think that smart baseball involves so much adjustment, an overall plan would be a relatively small part of it.

seawolf17 Apr 13 2006 10:49 AM

I don't know that a two-hour session is going to accomplish anything, because (a) that's Rick Peterson's job, and (b) Pedro's a different pitcher than the rest of the staff. Tom Glavine can't do what Pedro does; neither can Trax or Billy Wagner or anyone else. And besides, it takes more than a Mensa membership to be a great pitcher.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 13 2006 11:05 AM

seawolf17 wrote: I don't know that a two-hour session is going to accomplish anything, because (a) that's Rick Peterson's job, and (b) Pedro's a different pitcher than the rest of the staff. Tom Glavine can't do what Pedro does; neither can Trax or Billy Wagner or anyone else. And besides, it takes more than a Mensa membership to be a great pitcher. Neither a) nor b) speaks to the question I raised. Do you imagine I didn't know that the Mets have employed pitching coaches? Did you imagine the point I made about the different repertoires didn't address the issue that pitchers are far from interchangible? My question isn't about how effective such sessions are likely to be, it's about whether Pedro should explain to his teammates exactly how he plans to beat the Nats, and what his B plan is, and his C plan, or should he clam up and let them learn his plans like the rest of us do, by watching it?

metirish Apr 13 2006 11:11 AM

Doesn't Pedro change his game plan as the game goes along, at least that's what I keep reading, like how he wants the hitters to hit the ball at certain times, like last night with the bases loaded he wanted Guillen to hit that pitch and then trust his defence, I would say he's smarter than most.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 13 2006 11:18 AM

But does he try to teach what he knows? Believe me, I'm the last person on this forum to claim that, if you try to teach people difficult things, they will always be able to learn them. I've bashed my head against the brick wall of trying to communicate even the simplest principles for decades now with astonishingly limited results. But I keep trying, in the belief that even a little knowledge helps. The difference is that I'm not competing with my students--if I teach someone how to subordinate his sentences, that doesn't make my neatly subordinated sentences look less elegant. But if Pedro convinces Brian Bannister to do something that Pedro does well himself, and it works for Bannister, it may make Pedro less effective in trying the same strategy the next night.

metirish Apr 13 2006 11:22 AM

Pedro did try and teach Bannister his grip for his change-up but Brian prefered the way Duaner Sanchez grips it, so I think Pedro does share , didn't he help Glavine last year?, at the same time maybe Pedro feels that there are plenty of coaches and if you ant help come to me.

Bret Sabermetric Apr 13 2006 11:29 AM

I'm sorry to keep focussing on a limited question, but I assume pitchers will teach techniques to each other--Pedro doesn't gain if other Met pitchers throw lousy changeups. It's strategy I'm talking about. Not HOW he throws a changeup, but in which situations, to which batters, after which setup pitches. For example, if Pedro throws inside to Guillen twice, then follows that up with a changeup a half-foot outside that he lunges after, that can only work a couple of times before Guillen starts thinking "changeup here, look for it, let it go if it's outside"--so does Pedro spread his strategy around to the guy who pitches the night before he does?

seawolf17 Apr 13 2006 11:40 AM

Bret Sabermetric wrote: Does Pedro spread his strategy around to the guy who pitches the night before he does? I have no factual basis for saying this, but I'd bet that yes, he does.

metirish Apr 13 2006 11:41 AM

I don't know Bret, seems like a tough question to answer, I imagine if any pitcher asked Pedro about the way ho goes about things on the mound he would share, I seem to remember from last season Heilman talked to him about such things, but Pedro could talk to them all day about it and then they need to execute that, can't teach that though.

MFS62 Apr 13 2006 11:43 AM

Pitchers sharing information goes back a long ways. Jim Brosnan's The Long Season has a few stories about it. One line I remember was when they were sitting in the County Stadium bullpen discussing how to pitch to Hank Aaron. In the middle of the conversation someone yelled "Pena just struck him out with a spitter". They all agreed - "good pitch". As for the recent Mets, I seem to recall reading some stories about how Leiter and Glavine talked about their pitching styles one spring. Glavine had made his living "painting the black" on the outside of the plate, and Leiter had made his by coming inside on right handed hitters. They each tried to see if they could be successful trying the other's style. It screwed bot of the up for a while, but it looks like Glavine finally caught on and since the middle of last year has been effective doing it. When I started to read this thread, I immediately though that if one pitcher would actively reach out to Pedro for insight it would be Bannister. After his first major league start, he studied tapes of his first perrformance to see what he had done, good and bad, and discussed it with Peterson to make any necessary adjustments. While, according to Irish, he prefers what he learned from Sanchez, it also means that Pedro did share when asked. I believe that pitching is a fraternity, and the "us VS them" mentality means pitchers VS hitters, and the chance that someone who you teach something to will go to another team is not a consideration. Later

Willets Point Apr 13 2006 11:49 AM

I'll have to watch it again but I recall a scene in Still, We Believe with Pedro doing just what Bret is suggesting, talking about ways of approaching the batters with the other pitchers. Mind you it was a brief scene, it was in 2003 and it was with the Red Sox, plus I'm basing this on my sieve-like memory.

Rotblatt Apr 13 2006 12:11 PM

]I'm saying that Pedro could conceivably have a two hour session with the pitching staff before every series, outlining his brilliance in dealing with the hitters, the ballpark, the game situations ,the backup plans, etc. and they'll probably get a little smarter as a result of that. But it might hurt his game if other pitchers are using some of the same principles. So what do you do? Share or not share? is it part of Pedro's job to help the other pitchers with his insight or is it proprietary insight? Share. I don't think it will hurt him, since, like seawolf says, they all have different weapons at their disposal. Bannister & Glavine could throw the exact same sequence of pitches in the exact same location to Vidro and not get him to strike out because they have such different stuff. It's a question of knowing how batters will react to YOUR stuff THAT night, and I think that's where Petey can come in handy. Vidro fouled off a couple hard fastballs from Petey. On the final pitch of that at bat, you could tell Vidro was sitting on an off-speed pitch and the fastball just completely fooled him. Why DIDN'T Petey throw a change there? Did he see something in Vidro's penultimate swing that made him say "fastball away"? How do you read batters? How do you remember how batters reacted to a certain pitch 2 AB later? 2 games later? When you're warming up in the pen and you know you don't have your best stuff, how do you alter your game plan? How do you know how much to leave in the tank? How do you kick it up and maintian control? If Petey can help the Zambranos & Bannisters & Heilmans of the Mets learn that shit, by all means, he should impart whatever wisdom he has. And again, I don't think it will hurt him, because their stuff is so different. Actually, Heilman's fastball & change look pretty similar to Petey's now that he's back at the three-quarters delivery. Still, I have a feeling Petey will find a way to be successful. On a related note, did anyone else think that Petey called LoDuca out there because he felt suprisingly good after airing it out? In the 7th, Petey was up in the high 80's instead of mid-80's and I found myself wondering if maybe Petey realized he could throw a little harder without repurcusions. Anyone else think that?

Rotblatt Apr 13 2006 12:14 PM

I seem to remember an article about Petey coaching Reyes about the pitch sequence pitchers used when facing him, and Reyes saying it helped tremendously. Don't know if he does that on a regular basis, but it'd be nifty if he did.

Elster88 Apr 13 2006 12:32 PM

Not to throw too much cool water on Beningo's steaming head, but from listening at lunch time it sounded like he saw intelligence in Pedro in 3 things: a) letting the players hit the ball to the deepest parts of the park b) recognizing the need for a strikeout with bases load and no outs c) recognizing the need for a double play with the bases loaded and one out These are not examples of extraordinary intelligence. His ability to make induce all three of these is extraordinary. But, regarding the thought process, I don't see anything here that Jorge Julio wouldn't have been able to figure out. The difference is that Pedro made it happen. Of course relative to Beningo's intelligence level, these might be amazing insights into the game of baseball.

MFS62 Apr 13 2006 12:34 PM

]When you're warming up in the pen and you know you don't have your best stuff, how do you alter your game plan? According to Brosnan, in the pregame meeting, you tell the outfielders to "play deep and cut across". I know that feeling. I also used to remind my infielders to wear their cup on days when I pitched. Later

ScarletKnight41 Apr 17 2006 09:53 AM

FWIW, while I was watching Mets Fast Forward this morning, the announcers were commenting how Pedro, Bannister and Rick Peterson were having a major discussion that took up the entire break between the top of the second and the bottom of the inning, and that the conversation was followed up in the tunnel by Bannister and Peterson. That seems to indicate that Pedro is trying to pass along his knowledge to his teammates.