Last week, I wrote about Jonathon Niese tipping his curve ball with his release point. And then it turned out that like everyone has written about this topic. So what do I do? Write about it some more.
Well, let's keep the words to a minimum this time. Short and sweet. Here are the release points for Niese's last game, that one-run masterpiece against the Phillies:
He threw 14 curve balls. Seven of them came from the old release point, which looks starkly different from his other pitches here. The other seven came from a new release point, maybe from a different arm slot. (Thanks to @sabometrics on twitter for pointing this out.) In any case, Niese found a way to drop the hammer seven times from the same release area as his other pitches. With that new release point, he also finally got some whiffs on the curve (his first of the year according to Texas Leaguers) and also improved the strike percentage of the pitch, from 40% to 57%.
Those are all good things.