Josh Outman, a pitcher for the Oakland Athletics (acquired in the Blanton deal), is a LHP who has some pretty decent numbers in the minors and performed adequately in his fall callup with the A's.

Zach Outman is Josh's brother, who I believe pitches in high school. Fritz Outman, their father, studied biomechanics for 15+ years and developed an unorthodox pitching style that involves taking the pitching arm and... well, they start in this position:

Sound interesting? Wait until you see the video...

This is a video of Zach pitching in HS:

Now that's definitely unorthodox.

Fritz's concepts involve getting a vertical pitching arm and recruiting more power from the latissimus dorsi, if I understand it correctly (his book has not yet been published). The only difference between how Josh and Zach were taught is that Josh is LHP while Zach is RHP - otherwise, their mechanics in HS were the exact same.

What I like about the mechanics can be summed up in the three very slow frames. If you look closely, you can see that Zach achieves a nearly-vertical pitching forearm and powerfully pronates through release as he inwardly rotates his pitching upper arm.

Baseball Prospectus ran a short interview with Josh Outman which is extremely well done. Here's a sample of the interview (DL = David Laurila):

DL: You grew up utilizing a unique pitching motion, which was taught to you by your father, and you changed it prior to becoming eligible for the draft. In an interview last year, you said that your old motion "wasn’t something that was projectable in the minds of Major League Baseball." Can you elaborate on that?

JO: It was just something that fell outside of the previous profile for draftability so there was a concern that it would scare people off. There are no pitching coaches who know it, or previous players who have used it, so I changed to a more conventional style to fit in better with people’s expectations of what a pitcher looks like. With a guy like Dontrelle Willis, his motion is more of a variation on a theme. Mine was its own unique theme.

DL: Phillies assistant general manager Mike Arbuckle was quoted as saying that you probably would have been drafted much lower had you not changed your motion, because people would have been afraid of the injury factor. What are your thoughts on that?

JO: I think that was an assumption made under faulty information. What I was taught actually took stress off of my arm, so there wasn’t full comprehension on how my motion worked. Using a vertical arm position freed up my rotator cuff and enabled the use of the larger pectoral and abdominal muscle groups rather than the smaller deltoids and various other shoulder muscles. It used my lats to slow my arm down rather than just the posterior deltoids, and because those are larger, stronger muscles that can withstand more force it took a large workload off of my shoulder muscles. And eliminating the leg kick in lieu of a normal walking step, I was expending less energy to get the same production from my body, while sparing my throwing arm much of the wear and tear associated with pitching.

DL: Looking at the big picture, what impact did moving away from your old pitching motion have on you--not mechanically and opportunity-wise, but from a mental standpoint?

JO: It was extremely frustrating. I had to take steps backwards performance-wise, especially the first couple years. It was aggravating becoming so wild after I never had any problems with walks through my first two years in junior college. And competing in general became difficult early in the transition because I really didn't have much of an idea what I was doing mechanically. Competing against hitters, and other pitchers, who had been using basically the same mechanics their whole lives and knew what they were doing in the batters’ box and on the mound, respectively, got to be very demoralizing when the success wasn't there like it had been.

Josh decided to change his mechanics to appease scouts, and in doing so, he developed control problems - one of the things that worry statistical analysts about his minor league numbers. However, it is worth noting that the change from the old to the new has brought about a few more miles per hour on his fastball - it jumped from high 80's to mid-low 90's. Of course, it is not necessarily true that the velocity spike was attributable to the switch to traditional mechanics - it could be simply maturing and growing into his body.

It just goes to show you that Major League Baseball is not really ready to accept major change - they fear that what threatens the status quo.

Let's take a look at Josh's mechanics today:

Part of what Fritz taught his sons is to take a small, low, and quick stride to the plate to help clear the hips to generate velocity without wasted effort. As you can see, Josh still retains this concept in his traditional mechanics, clocking in at 19-20 frames from maximal leg lift to footplant - very good!

Arm Action: Though Josh has tension in his shoulders when he takes the ball out of his glove (I prefer a loose pendulum swing back, down, and up), he limits reverse rotation and his pitching arm gets up early - vertical in plenty of time before his shoulders begin to turn. Very Good.

Ball Release: Josh has a very easy release, which most like, but I do prefer a little more aggressiveness in the delivery. I'd like to see him rotate his shoulders further to take strain off his arm and stick the pitching arm shoulder into the target. Nevertheless, there's nothing terribly wrong here, so I'll give him an Average grade.

Followthrough: Josh does a decent job of firming up the front side and easily rotating his glove arm into his hip. I prefer a higher glove finish, but it's minor nitpicking, as the general mechanic is pretty good. He looks like he is pronating the release of his slider, but it's really hard to tell with 30 FPS video. Still, I like the fluid finish and give him a Good grade.

Overall, I rather like Josh Outman's traditional mechanics. I think there's a lot to like about Fritz's ideas of a vertical pitching arm combined with a short low stride, but baseball is loathe to accept new ideas, as we have repeatedly seen.