The fellows over at Brew Crew Ball asked me to give a quick note about a Wisconsin-area HS pitcher named Brad Schreiber. They sent me fairly decent video, especially considering that it's from a digital camera taping of a TV broadcast!

Someone over there had this to say about him:

"As a pitcher, he works around 86-87 and can crank it up to 89 already, and you'll see in the video that the curve is pretty good too. He can command the change and all his pitches for that matter. He had an ERA under 1 in 30 innings. And some scouts like him as a hitter, he hit about .600 with 9 total homers this year. He got 3 ABs in the game and got walked twice and hit a grounder to short."

My quick analysis follows after the break...

Tempo: Brad is 24-25 frames from maximal leg lift to footplant, about the same as Matt Garza. This is Below Average.

Arm Action: Carlos Gomez had this to say about Brad's arm action:

Seems like a carbon copy of Scott Feldman‘s mechanics, whom I’m not a big fan of. Lacks real drive/body load. East/ West thrower. Stiff looking delivery. Lead arm action is not very good. Some athleticism to play with though.

I'm not familiar with Scott Feldman's mechanics, but here's what I see:

Performance issues:

• Brad prematurely opens his shoulders before footstrike. This will limit his velocity, as hip/torso separation is the single largest component of reaching your genetic ceiling for arm speed. As a result, I have trouble believing that he is consistently throwing 86-87 mph.
• Brad does not have an aggressive finish. In general, I prefer that the pitcher finishes aggressively and points the pitching arm shoulder at the target, like Justin Duchscherer does below:

Contrast that with Brad's video above and you can clearly see the difference.

Injury issues:

• Brad's single worst problem is his extreme forearm flyout as a result of a lazy glove arm. This slowed-down sequence of images portrays what I'm talking about:

• To counteract this, Brad needs to firm up his front side and finish with his glove at his shoulder. If he does not fix this problem, he will experience loss of flexion about the elbow as he continually "hyperextends" it.
• Brad's arm positioning at footstrike/shoulder turn seems fine - it is nearly vertical. Nothing wrong here.
• Brad's general arm action in getting the ball to the high cocked position has flaws as well. Watch as he takes the ball laterally behind his body, which can cause the forearm flyout he is experiencing and also unnecessarily stresses the anterior structures of the shoulder.

In general, I do not like Brad Schreiber's pitching mechanics. However, you'd be hard pressed to find a HS pitcher whose mechanics I do like. They are young and malleable; they have plenty of time to change the mechanical flaws they are experiencing. Whether or not they will actually do it is another issue entirely...