Kalk: Seth McClung—Can We Just Call Him McNasty?

McClung as a reliever didn’t have a very repeatable delivery.  He would release the ball in a wide band from over the top to very close to three quarters.  The fastballs were over the top mostly and the curves and sliders from three quarters.  The result was a relatively straight fastball and a slurvy slider and curve.  Not only might he have been tipping the off speed pitches with the release point but he also wasn’t throwing them in the same vertical or horizontal plane.  My look into curves and sliders seem to strongly indicate that you need to hide the off speed stuff in one of the two planes or the hitters will sniff it out and it looks like that was happening to McClung.  He had so much movement on his curve and it came from such a different release point hitters would identify it and either let it go for a ball or crush it if it were a strike.

The new McClung has adopted even more of an over the top delivery than what he was throwing his fastball with before.  He has also moved more to the third base side of the mound.  You can see this by in increased height and horizontal shift in the new release point.  He is now really hiding his pitches in his release point and his curve has become much more 12 to 6 which means it is hiding in the same vertical plane as his fastball for much longer.  With this more consistent release point has come much better control (duh).  Here is how this change has affected the movement of his pitches.