Comments on: Do Tall Pitchers Take Longer to Develop?

By: Lee Panas

Lee Panas — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 12:42:49 +0000

Very interesting article Geoff. As you said, there is nothing conclusive here but this is an interesting study that could go in a lot of different directions. Lee

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By: Geoff Young

Geoff Young — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 11:30:04 +0000

LM, you’re killing me! More moving parts? Yeah, I guess maybe I’ve been listening to a little too much “conventional wisdom” myself.

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By: LynchMob

LynchMob — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:29:46 +0000

Didi - I like the irreverence … seems very fitting for Bochy’s statement. Along those lines, I’ll ding GY a bit … what does “You�re dealing with more moving parts” mean??? How does being tall give you more “moving parts”???

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By: Didi

Didi — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 08:11:32 +0000

Interesting article, Geoff.
However, like you mentioned, there aren’t enough of those tall pitchers to do an in depth study.

Maybe, this calls for the raising of the mound back to 1968 height. Of course, this would mean that some pitchers are going to have to adjust to the higher release point which may simulate the advantages/disadvantages in development of “taller” pitchers.

On the irreverent side, what if the taller pitchers have shorter arms? Or shorter pitchers with longer arms? Does that make a difference?

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By: Geoff Young

Geoff Young — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 23:11:48 +0000

LM: Your approach probably is better. It’s also a lot harder. As you say, an exercise left to the reader.
Anthony: That is another good question. I should explain that I arbitrarily chose 6′6″ as the cutoff because there are so few data points when you go much beyond that. In the entire Lahman database there are only 10 pitchers 6′8″ or taller who have pitched 100 or more innings in a season:

Gene Conley
Lee Guetterman
Mark Hendrickson
Eric Hillman
Randy Johnson
Jeff Juden
J.R. Richard
Bob Scanlan
Mike Smithson
Chris Young

So, I guess first you have to answer the question, “How tall is tall enough to have one’s development time impacted?” Once you have the answer, and assuming there are enough data points to work with, then you start whacking at it via the method LM suggests.

The more I look at this, the more it becomes evident that the statement that “taller pitchers take longer to develop” cannot easily be proved or disproved. That’s good enough for our purposes.

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By: Anthony

Anthony — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:26:30 +0000

Did anyone say tall pitchers take longer to develop before Randy Johnson came along? He’s the most extreme example in terms of height and development. I can maybe see the logic if a pitcher is so extremely tall but for a guy who’s 6′5″ or 6′6″ it doesn’t really make sense to me.

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By: LynchMob

LynchMob — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 17:50:25 +0000

You took a very different tact on this question than I expected … to me “take longer to develop” means “pitcher becomes *good* at an older age” … which presumes they all start their development at the same time (ex. little league) … and so, for example, non-tall pitchers might “develop” (ie. become good) at ages 25-27 whereas tall pitchers might develop at ages 27-29 … so, a “study” to check for this would be to define “good” (either in absolute or relative terms) and then plot the age that happens vs height and see if there’s any correlation … an exercise left to the reader
My money is that this study reaches the same conclusion as Geoff’s … Bochy & “intuition” are off the mark.

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