Patrick Corbin is 34 with a World Series ring and all but one year’s worth of his six-year, $140 million deal already banked…so why is he tinkering with a new pitch, a cutter, this spring?
“Just trying to find something to maybe to help me versus righties a little bit better, and trying also to get more consistent with some of my pitches,” Corbin told Grant & Danny this week. “For me, more so down in the zone with a lot of my stuff, but finding something that's in between that slider and fastball, with some movement. So far this spring, I have had some success with it. To me, it seems a little more natural to throw than a change up or really mastering a wipe out change up, just because I've always been the slider guy, and my pitches tend to move that way. Just really looking forward to continuing to throw it. We've thrown a bunch of my first two outings here and have had good results, so I think being able to go out there and use it in a regular game is gonna be pretty fun.”
Corbin worked with Mike McFerran, who is the pitching lab coordinator at Wake Forest University, on that pitch, so it comes from one of the premier programs in the country…and one of the ‘craziest things I've ever seen’ in Grant’s eyes.
“I think he's from the Albany area and I met him up there around the holidays. Me and MacKenzie (Gore) have been kind of just talking with him, and obviously bringing (Sean) Doolittle in here, they just have been a good resource for some of that stuff. When I first came to the big leagues, we didn't have all these numbers, and, ‘hey, your slider's good,’ but not really knowing why.”
Corbin has always been about getting that analytics info if it was available, because ‘sometimes you feel good physically and just something's a tick off.’
“Obviously some pitches feel better than others, and location is also a big thing; even if the movement's a lot and it's middle-middle, it’s not ideal, so location is still important,” Corbin said. “For me personally, going from start to start, I’m looking at some of how I want my pitches to move; say a pitch isn't moving the way I want to, being able to correct that a lot faster I think is gonna be a big thing. So, I've definitely dove into some of some of the video and analytics stuff a little bit more this season. Still learning it for sure, but I think I have a pretty good idea of what I do well and what I want to try to do out there to fool these hitters.”
He’ll get all that and more from Doolittle, who was a peer and teammate at one point and time but is now the Pitching Strategist for the Nats.
“I joked with him and called him coach or whatever, but (Gerardo) Parra is here too, another player that we were with – but no, Doo has been very helpful, sending some video and stuff,” Corbin said. “This is his first year really diving into this as much as he's done; obviously he's pitched a long time in this league, and I just think sometimes hearing it from him…obviously, we have our own analytic department here, and Jim Hickey, our pitching coach, just having a good group of those guys able to relay it to the pitchers is big. And for me, the biggest thing is I was hoping we could find a way to tell all these younger guys what they do well, find out the two or three things that make them a big leaguer, and really focus on those things and be consistent with those. And I think you start there, and try to figure out who you are first and then move up from there.”