Jon Niese's Release Point(s)

Looks like this hasn’t changed from earlier this year. I was wondering if his recent success in AAA had been partially attributable to blending his release point for the curve with the rest.

The contact rate from the lower release point may be a red herring. It could be that the movement of those pitches gets batters to swing, not the release point.

Again, don’t really know!

I completely missed last night’s start, so I didn’t get to see Niese. But having a breaking pitch thrown at a different release point isn’t the worst thing in the world. I can think of several pitchers who drop down to throw breaking balls (usually pitchers who throw slurves or sliders), some of them quite good. Hitters would know what was coming and still couldn’t hit the pitch.

In Niese’s case, I’d wager he and the staff are 100% aware he’s doing it and don’t much care, at least for the time being. Niese has that knee buckling curve; in order to get the same depth on the pitch, he likely has to throw it from a higher release point (he has to get on top of the pitch). If he were to throw it from the same point as his fastball, it would likely have less depth and more horizontal movement. It wouldn’t be as good of a pitch.

So the Mets staff have likely determined that it’s best for now that he bring his best pitches to the mound. And it’s a reasonably safe gamble—a breaking ball with that much vertical drop is very difficult to time correctly (hanging them will be bad, but all hanging breaking balls are bad). But if he does find his curves are getting hit hard, Warthen will have to work on a more consistent release point, to the detriment of the pitch.

On another note, was Niese actually throwing sliders? Were they curves thrown from a lower release point? Or were they cutters?

Now we can trade him at the deadline for the help we need to stay in the race!

(I’m kidding, I’m kidding, but I won’t breathe a sigh of relief until I see that Niese is still with this club on August 1st.)

This is neither something new or rare. Randy Wolf, who is maybe Niese’s best comp from a production standpoint, has a similar disparity in release points between his curveball and the rest of his pitches. And while it may hurt, it hasn’t prevented him from being effective.

has a full pitch f/x breakdown of Niese’s start and it’s good news!

Niese has 5 effective pitches that he can use in different ways against left and right-handed hitters. John Sickels disagreed with me before but I think his new pitches change his projection. Call me crazy, but I think we could have a real solid #2 on our hands in the mold of Mark Buehrle.