Saturday, April 13, 2013

Cody Beam, Joseph Shaw, and Other DBU Notes

Cody Beam is a junior right-handed pitcher for Dallas Baptist University. Here is some video of his delivery:



The fastball looked good, comes in hard, and he seemed to work it to all sides of the plate. His off-speed pitch is soft and wasn't impressive in movement. This pitch was hit hard. He also had a tendency to let go of the ball too soon and have a lot of balls stay way up. This was particularly a problem with the breaking ball. He occasionally got some decent tow way tilt low and way to righties with it, and the usage suggests a soft slider. His best pitch was clearly the high heat when it was close enough to the zone. Here is a video of Beam pitching, his pickoff move, and Dustin McAlpine throwing to 2nd trying to get a runner (though I accidentally ended the video too early)



Late in his short outing, he was hit on the hand by a hard groundball and seemed like he couldn't get the breaking ball over after that (even though the fastball command stayed okay).

Joseph Shaw is a freshman right-handed pitcher that was selected in the 40th round by the Astros in 2012 but obviously did not sign. He is a pretty big human being (listed at 6-5), but doesn't have a big stride in his delivery:


He obviously gets on top of the ball well, and he threw a lot of low fastballs. He wasn't as overpowering as I thought he would be. He located his breaking ball well but didn't have much plus movement or velocity.

Speaking of Dustin McAlpine, I got four of his pop times to 2nd base in warmups: 2.22, 2.16, 2.19, 2.22. These are not good times, but it might be important to note that they were thrown with a lot of effort or urgency. Most of the throws were strong, but opponents ran on him quite a bit, and his in game throws were not as strong (I have been fascinated by McAlpine's inconsistency behind the plate over the last couple of seasons, and I may be just spitballing here, but I did notice that he takes warmup tosses normally, and then, when the batter comes up to the plate, he puts a sleeve on his arm that has a sheet with what is probably a list of pitches, that has a part that goes over his thumb. I wonder if this is affecting his throwing. Probably not, but I found it interesting he threw his warmup thrown down without it on). He did get a better time of 2.03 in the game, and picked off a runner at first. I didn't get that time, but when he tried to pickoff a runner at first later in the game, this time unsuccessfully, I got a time of 1.65. At the plate, he hit a 6.37 second fly-ball to centerfield.

Justin Wall hit a 4.25 second fly-ball to center. Nash Knight hit a 5.29 fly-ball to right, a 6.03 fly-ball to shallow right, and a 5.25 fly-ball to left. Ronnie Mitchell ran a 4.37 time to first from the left side. Shane Lynch hit a ball off the center field wall for a triple, and then later hit a home run at 5.44 seconds to center.

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