Pedro Martinez has a book? So does Jamie Moyer. It’s called “Just Tell Me I Can’t,” and Moyer and it were profiled on NPR’s “Fresh Air” show yesterday. There is a transcript of some of his highlights here.
And, with the caveat that I listen to NPR a lot so I’m not trying to make fun of them, there is definitely a different level of baseball analysis featured there than you or I may be used to. Listen to Moyer describe, in NPR’s terms, “using psychology to frustrate batters":
Knowing that we all have an ego — and that in baseball sometimes those egos can be really big — hitters can have really big egos and not only do they want to hit home runs but they want to hit them 30 rows back, because that’s what people want to see. So now take that ego that they have and use it against them. ... If I can throw a hard pitch — maybe it’s just off the plate — but [then] I throw the same pitch or a pitch looking just like it, but it’s 8-10 miles an hour slower ... and they swing like it’s the hard pitch, now all of the sudden they’re thinking it’s a fastball and they’re swinging way ahead of the ball, and now they become frustrated. And that’s where the game of chess, of cat and mouse in baseball really comes into play.
Or, as we all call it: throwing a changeup.
I can’t help but wonder how many non-sports fans listened to that and thought “hmm ... maybe there’s more to baseball than I realized?”
