Thought you’d seen everything? Not so fast! As Mets reliever Reid Garrett was warming up during the bottom of the 7th inning of last night’s Mets/Bosox game at Fenway, SNY showed that a simulated strike zone had been set up in front of bullpen catcher Dave Racaniello. For a moment I thought they were superimposing a virtual strike zone onto the screen, like they do when showing a batter up at the plate. Then I realized that it was a physical strike zone, made of orange string that ran along a pair of wires supported by two poles. I’d never seen anything like that before!
The setup prompted some chatter from SNY play-by-play man Gary Cohen and color commentators Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez, as follows:
Cohen: Look at that strike zone they’ve got there.
Darling: Yeah, how about that.
Hernandez: Would you like that, Ron?
Darling: Rick Peterson [who was the Mets’ pitching coach from 2004 through 2008] used to do that, many years ago.
Cohen: Rick Peterson called it “the .180 line,” at the bottom of the strike zone.
Darling: That’s right. I wouldn’t have liked that, personally. But I’ve seen the catchers — even when the ball hits the string, it doesn’t really alter the flight of the ball. [Right on cue, a pitch hits the orange string marking the strike zone’s border, causing the zone to shimmy a bit, but the catcher catches the pitch without any problem.]
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A few thoughts on this:
- I remember Rick Peterson’s tenure as the team’s pitching coach, but I have no memory of anything regarding a “.180 line,” and Google didn’t turn up anything either. Anyone know more?
- Two other Mets relievers warmed up in the bullpen during this game, but SNY didn’t show either of them using the strike zone setup, so this is apparently something that Garrett specifically wanted to use.
- During an era that’s become loaded with so many newfangled doohickeys, it’s amusing to see such a low-tech innovation, complete with sandbags anchoring the two posts.
- If you ever want to have a fun drinking game, have a drink every time Ron Darling says, “That’s right.” You’ll be soused by the end of the 2nd inning, trust me.
Like I said, I’d never seen anything like this used in a bullpen before, but maybe it’s more common that I realize and I just hadn’t noticed. If it catches on, it seems like the next logical step would be to eliminate the catcher entirely and just use a PitchBack, which has a built-in strike zone:
The Orioles used something like this I remember seeing in 2014, but the square they created with the bands was around 1×1 feet, barely enough for a baseball to fit in. They moved it around the strike zone in an attempt to improve the accuracy of pitchers hitting their spots. Based on the performance of Orioles pitching since basically Mike Mussina, it didn’t work.
“the square they created with the bands was around 1×1 feet, barely enough for a baseball to fit in”
Were they throwing BASEketballs?
“newfangled doohickeys”. That just made my day.
Note: It looks like the first bullet about the .180 line got cut off…
Either way I joked with my kid when I saw this last night this was the vaunted Mets “pitching lab” they keep touting.
The Dodgers have been using something similar since the 40’s
Really? In the bullpen during games? Not just in spring training?
Sometimes the best solutions are the obvious ones.
If it catches on, it seems like the next logical step would be to eliminate the catcher entirely and just use a PitchBack, which has a built-in strike zone
But then your catcher wouldn’t get the extra practice. And your pitcher wouldn’t get any human feedback from a valuable perspective.
And nobody would be able to throw the ball back to the pitcher. The pitcher would have to have a bucket of balls, and then walk over to the net catcher to gather those pitched balls. That’s a hilarious image, but inefficient.
A PichBack isn’t a net; the ball bounces off it. Ideally it would bounce back to the pitcher, although I imagine actually using one would lead to some dangerous bounces.
PitchBack was huge when playing backyard baseball as a kid, especially if it was just my brother and me. Nice to see it getting a mention on UW!
I’ve never seen this before but it seems a like a helpful invention. I’m surprised you don’t see it more at youth baseball practices.
At first I didn’t pay attention to the byline, but once I saw this was a Paul article I was like “yes, this is 100% the type of random, barely noticed interesting thing that Paul picks up and writes about”.
Hey it’s Paul! It’s always fun seeing what athletic minutia brings you back to Uni Watch.
This is actually a very old tech, going back to Branch Rickey at least. It’s called “the strings”, and in my memory that phrase used to be used around spring traninng as shorthand for pitching on the backfield practice mounds, as in “The middle relievers were back pitching in the strings this morning while th erst of the team ran defensive drills.
link
Ah, good call! Here’s a Dodgers spring training photo from 1948: link
I had a PitchBack as a kid in the 80’s. Great for baseballs, not bad for soccer and footballs too.
Is PitchBack the trademarked name? When I was in Little League, our coach called it the “Pitch ‘n’ Catch” which he pronounced “Pichencash.”
I’m assuming the “.180 line” is a reference to hitters having a poor batting average when pitchers can throw to the very bottom of the strike zone.
“That’s right”
There were several laugh emojis following that comment that did not appear, making my comment somewhat cryptic. [insert slanted mouth emoji here]
My dad built me one of these out of MDF and a carpet scrap. Once I got decent and it got rained on, the MDF didn’t last very long…
Was at Monday’s game and watched Diaz warm up with the doohickey though he never got in the game. So not just Garrett.
Thanks for that info!
I totally thought of the PitchBack ™ contraption when I first saw the lede photo. and then I scrolled down to see it! I think this Mets setup works better though, with a real catcher and a real home plate.