Long Toss
When I’m at Yankee Stadium, one of the things I like to do, before the game, is watch the starting pitchers and catchers, for both teams, work in the outfield – before warming up in the bullpen – doing some long toss. (Yeah, I’m a baseball addict, indeed.)
You don’t hear all that much about long toss – usually. However, Baseball America recently had a feature on how the Texas Rangers are focusing on extending their pitcher’s long toss routine. Here’s a snip from that:
For years, teams have generally stuck to the same model of long toss: Pitchers throw off flat ground starting at 60 feet, expand to 90 feet and then to 120 and work back in, finishing in about 10 minutes.
Now 120 feet is no longer a barrier.
[Rangers G.M. Jon] Daniels and [Rangers Farm Director Scott] Servais both declined to specify the hopeful distances the Rangers would like to achieve.
But the 200- and 250-foot markers would appear to be target areas considering the Rangers sought input from a number of former pitchers from different eras—their team president [Nolan Ryan] among them, of course—as well as Alan Jaeger, an advocate of expanded long toss. The Rangers eventually settled on a model comprised of a mix of ideas.
Ryan, who stretched his career to the 1990s and retired at age 46, estimated that his long toss reached somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 feet.
Jaeger for the past 15 years has advocated that baseball push through the 120 barrier. He launched a company, jaegersports.com, that teaches distances of some 300 feet, crazy by baseball’s conventions.
The Rangers’ initial steps in constructing a new long toss program began last fall when Daniels and other front office executives brainstormed for new ideas.
“We asked, ‘What’s the magic number behind 120?’ ” Daniels said. “And there weren’t any good answers.”
Servais said long toss distance will be developed on an individual basis and some pitchers will continue the program into the season. But he conceded that long toss is not for everybody.
I wonder if the Yankees use the 120 feet rule? And, if so, I wonder if they’ve ever considered moving that out, like the Rangers? After all, you build strong muscles by using them, right?
Nolan Ryan seemingly wants to change the culture of the Rangers and go retro and challenge the pitchers to go deeper into games etc so on. I think it might not work, not everybody is Nolan Ryan and when kids are in high school and lower they are not doing the old skool thing anyway. Hey, if 150 feet throws can help a team, so be it BUT will it work?